John Linton
As the local teens brought up by parents bereft of any moral or ethical values continue to attempt to justify their theft of other people's properties and the lunatic Krudd and his stalking horse Stupid Stephen continue to try and find a way of appeasing religious loonies with their net censorship proposals (and not forgetting the "NBN" proposals) its hard to think that there would be an alleged government anywhere else on the planet with even less of a clue about the future of communications technology than Australia's.
But wait...there are other Labor parties around the globe that rival Australia's in technical ineptitude if not in sheer stupidity and among their technically laughable plans there are now the signs of very, very real crackdowns on internet piracy. So have a read of this (get over the concept of 2 mbps broadband) and read on to the Irish and UK net piracy initiatives which are actually very real and simply the next step along the way to processes that were being enacted while I was in the UK last August:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article5611425.ece
Doubtless iinet are into their third $A100,000 of legal 'advice' by now in their law suit to deny they overtly encouraged copy right theft and will spend over $A1 million before the case is settled one way or another but it seems that both the parliaments of the UK and Ireland (and it is a safe assumption that these actions will be duplicated around the EU) are making the iinet lawsuit redundant by legislating way past the 'burden of proof' assumptions of Australia's larcenous down loaders.
"....hours after the British announcement, Ireland’s Eircom announced that it would disconnect users who download music illegally from the Web in a settlement that is believed to be the first of its kind in the world. It said it would isolate people who continued to download illegally after receiving two warnings."
Now this isn't a "proposal" - this has been passed in to law and it has been done because it specifically accepts that copyright theft is endemic and must be stopped. None of this "day in court and only if found guilty before a jury of your peers" nonsense - two allegations (in the legislated form) and "no internet for you any more you thief". That's the " hop and the step" and its now only a "jump" away from a "National Register Of Thieves Names/Addresses/Phone Numbers/Driving Licenses/Whatever" that will ensure the designated thieves will never be eligible to get internet again!??
....and the UK, and the rest of the EU, may well go exactly the same way ........and Australia?......well....who knows?
So while iinet is "flying the flag" for (and one would assume with the full 'moral' - what a laugh - and financial support of the other ethically bankrupt drones in the AIA it associates with) in its own personal, law suit it may well be the case that any result that may be achieved has already been 'short circuited' before any court determination is reached in Australia.
Now, this is not the BS that continues to surround the issue of copyright theft in the Australia media and chatter sites. This is legislation in a democracy and, as I said over a year ago, because so much money is being stolen the copyright owners will find (and may well now have found) the way of preventing the thefts. No nonsense about "my legal rights to steal whatever I like" - the legal rights of the copyright owners have been enshrined in law (just as every other person or entity's rights are protected by legislation) and the methodology for protecting those rights is spelled out.
No 'blurring' - no doubt - no whining about TV scheduling - no 'bush lawyer advice' - just a democracy stating the bleeding obvious via legislation for the benefit of people who have no moral or ethical basis for their lives - "you will be punished for taking goods without paying for them".
Perhaps the copyright owners (including Microsoft) have finally found the right approach to protecting their property? They have directly gone to the governments of law abiding countries and said words to the effect of:
"Either legislate against copyright thieves or we pull out our investments in your country which should be a 'big help' to you in the recession (Microsoft is huge in Ireland) and ban the import of our products - see how you like operating your government and businesses without Windows, Word and Excel and watch a television with no US content."
(the above is pure conjecture on my part as I have absolutely no knowledge of how it actually came about).
It will be interesting to see what transpires here.