John Linton ....maybe it makes their brain hurt thinking about things that have no direct bearing on their personal enrichment or perhaps they are just ethically challenged and morality is a concept they were never introduced to during their upbringing?
We met with two people (with two more teleconferenced in) from the Department Of Broadband etc yesterday as a part of their discussions with ISPs so they can brief the minister on, possibly, how to introduce a P2P illegal downloading policy for those ISPs who are prepared to 'voluntarily' agree with some yet to be decided (hence the purposes of this 'meet and greet' initial process) "guidelines". They were pleasant people with an apparently sound understanding of the issues and appeared to be genuinely interested in exploring our views as I am sure they had done with the one other ISP they had met with previously and the others they plan to meet with.
I assumed they were looking to find some way of addressing copyright infringement along the same lines that the UK government has done but perhaps they were considering something tougher such as the laws passed by the Irish and the French governments. They were aware of the IIAA's positioning based on a meeting they had held with them late last year which appears to be that any response to copyright infringement notices involves:
1) Intolerable burdens on the ISPs to do anything
2) Huge costs involved in developing the processes
3) Huge costs of the operating the processes
4) No legal basis for doing anything etc, etc
They had a set of points that the IIAA, and presumably others, had drawn up as to why it was impossible for an ISP to participate in any way with the control of the theft of other people's copyright. I had read them prior to the meeting (like all efficient people they had sent an agenda some three days before the meeting) and told them that everything they had asked about doing could easily be done at a trivial or zero cost by any ISP that wanted to do it....provided they used static IPs and at a very, very small cost if they used dynamic IPs. I also said that to implement 100% of their wish list would impose no operating cost on any ISP in any way and if anyone from any ISP continued to tell them anything to the contrary they were either simply lying or were so technically and managerially incompetent that they shouldn't hold any position in a commercial enterprise because they clearly lack the mental abilities to even tie their shoe laces. (maybe that's why they wear 'slip ons'?)
So we answered their follow up questions and showed them how Exetel dealt with the emailed copyright infringement notices we receive via email to 'abuse@exetel.com.au' every day along with the trivial amount of code that is needed to do that completely automatically with 'no human intervention'. They were impressed that we actually dealt with copyright infringement notices at all (it was their understanding that due to the enormous burden and cost it was impossible for an ISP to actually do anything) and appeared to be very surprised that it could be done so easily, at no cost and with no human being involved by us for almost five years- again totally contrary to everything they had been previously told.
They asked us if we had ever cut off anyone for receiving a copyright infringement notice and seemed intrigued with our answer that though we had never cut anyone off, a few customers each month elected to cut themselves off (by churning away at no contract cancellation fee). We explained that, as under the current laws we had no 100% certain way of knowing whether the copyright infringement notice was correct we simply passed the notice through to the alleged offenders email contact address and if we received a second notice we temporarily blocked the user's access via a 'block page until they took one of the simple actions available to them.
The block page had a brief explanation as to why the service was blocked and how to unblock it (by simply clicking on a statement that the customer had either not infringed or had infringed but had complied with the copyright notice by removing the offending material. The page gives the, optional, opportunity for the alleged infringer to reply to the copyright notice issuer via an anonymous (Exetel) email address should they wish to do so.
The third option is to not state that they deny the infringement and remain blocked which allows Exetel to completely absolve itself from any wrongdoing by:
a) If the customer denies (by clicking on the "I deny infringing" option or by clicking on the "Sorry but I've now removed the offending material option) any infringement/continuing infringement then Exetel has complied with the issuer's requirements and needs take no further action as, legally as we understand the law to stand right now, we are faced with an accusation of uncertain legal validity on the one hand and a categorical denial on the other hand. We, clearly, have no basis for adjudication and so we are legally advised that we are 100% absolved of any further responsibility.
b) If the end user we have blocked doesn't click on either of the denial/apology options then that user has, effectively, admitted breaching copyright and they remain blocked until they churn away - problem solved for Exetel (the customer made the decision on his/her own 'guilt' - not Exetel) and no 'blame' can be ascribed to us because the user has 'admitted' they did breach copyright and have no intention of complying with the breach notice's requests, nor with Exetel's terms and conditions of service supply.
It complies completely, and ethically and, I think probably morally, with the situation and, under the present legislation allows us to operate our business with a clear conscience and with zero additional cost.
Our visitors seemed to be impressed with both the legal elegance and the zero cost implementation of the solution that addresses every aspect of the "problem" completely and seemed more impressed that we had put it in place as a preventative measure many years ago (that everyone they talk to say is far too hard/impossible to address would seem to indicate that they are morally bankrupt and/or technically incompetent - well what other explanation can there be?). We made the final point that the code required to do it was available to anyone who wanted to download it under our open source policy if they truly believed it would take immense efforts and costs to write themselves.
However the fact remains that until Australian legislation clarifies the situation the impasse must remain as far as any ISP is concerned - an ISP can pass on an alleged infringement but if the person whose IP is cited then denies the allegation that is the end of it - the ISP has no ability to determine which party is correct and is obliged by no Australian law to involve itself further - it certainly is in no position to "cut off the internet service".
Our visitors left in, apparently, good spirits and I was equally pleased with what we may have accomplished.