John Linton The topic of copyright breach has swirled around the communications industry for so long I forget whether it was in the late 1990s or the early 2000s that it first became an issue. I know that it existed before we set up Exetel in early 2004 and that in those very early days we were very careful to do everything 'demanded of us' by the various 'agencies' then issuing copyright infringement notices with various levels of dire threats and doom laden consequences if we didn't break Australian law in complying with them. So having taken sensible legal advice we put in place the automated processes that allowed us to forward the copyright infringement advices and also the processes that required the end user to specifically deny the allegations so that Exetel was entirely within the law and entirely protected from the domm and gloom threats from the various 'authors' of the infringement notices.
Then there was the fiasco of the law suit against iinet and the subsequent appeal and now a further High Court appeal. These pathetic misuses of the Australian legal system resulted in us reducing our 'severity' of actioning copyright breach notifications by removing the requirement to specifically deny the charge but kept the process of on forwarding the breach emails to the end customer for their own information. We took this revised 'stance' on legal advice using an SC who, clearly, was far more able than the one(s) used by AFACT in their law suit - how they could have lost that unloseable case remains a mystery to me. So a new round of dire threats from AFACT have begun aimed at "building co-operation" between the copyright holders and Australian ISPs.
Personally, as someone who was taught the difference between right and wrong by my parents and grand parents at a very early age and then the concepts of morality and ethics by the teachers at the two schools I attended I am sympathetic to anyone who has their property stolen. But those same 'educators' also taught me to abhor bullying in all its forms - clearly that pillock who heads up AFACT had an entirely different education - assuming he had one at all. So while I see no difference between the Australians who casually steal copyright material and those louts in North London and other places in the UK who looted and burned "because they could" I can't, on behalf of Exetel, be bullied into breaking the established laws of this State and country.
We did agree to show AFACT how to parse the material provided to them by Media Sentry into emails that are the same as Media Sentry (and other such agencies) send to us (and presumably tens of thousands of other ISPs around the world) that allow them to be automatically forwarded to the end users of the IPs specified. Why Media Sentry didn't do this themselves is unknown to us. In any event our senior sysadmin wasted an hour or so of his time and showed their designated 'technical person' what is required for an ethical ISP to automatically on forward their allegations of breach of copyright and, one day, perhaps they will get around to doing this. Should they do that then, like all other emails sent to 'abuse@exetel.com.au' we will, if they are in the required format send them to the Exetel customer whose IP is allegedly being used to steal other people's property.
Unless the current laws change neither Exetel, nor any other ISP, is currently required to do anything else. Some people may argue that neither Exetel nor any other IP is even required to do this. I disagree. If someone is accusing me of breaking the law I would like to know about it and, I assume, so would the owners of IP addresses that may be being used by other members of their household illegally. If they don't, then they have the simple remedy of using their email client to block ever receiving more than one email from 'abuse@exetel.com.au - problem solved.
So round and round we go, yet again, with the unethical continuing to steal, liars from ISPs saying its too expensive and too resource laden to on forward emails and copyright holders threatening perfectly reasonable companies, like Exetel, with bankruptcy via legal process for not breaking the law. Not everyone has the moral and ethical 'standards' of the senior personnel at iinet - and those looters and arsonists in the UK perhaps best summed up in the looter's credo - "I steal and burn other people's property because I can do so without consequences to myself".
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
ABN 350 979 865 46
PS: You know things are not as good as the government avers when you read things like this:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Westpac-Bartholomeusz-CBA-earnings-season-banks-im-pd20110816-KSAJC?OpenDocument&src=kgb