blog So you’ve seen the reports about Federal Attorney-General George Brandis resuscitating the failed talks between ISPs and content owners about the pesky problem of Internet piracy? Have you ever wondered what measures the rights-holders feel should be taken to address such issues? Fear not, industry publication Mumbrella has published an extensive article (we recommend you click here for the full piece) detailing their demands. The site reports:

“Vanessa Hutley, general manager of Music Rights Australia told Mumbrella: ‘We hope the Attorney General will do as he said and allow rights holders to go to court and get a court order that would have ISPs block these sites’ … ASTRA’s Andrew Maiden said three strikes might be a way of changing consumer behaviour and shifting it to legal services such as Foxtel’s Play and Presto services, and Quikflix.”

So, in short, nothing big then. Just court orders to block websites and three strikes policies to cut off users’ Internet access if they pirate a few too many pieces of content. And of course, the issue of subpoena’ing users’ details from ISPs so they can be sued directly was already put back on the table by Brandis himself.

You know, the Australian representatives of content owners never cease to surprise me. The experience of ‘three strikes’ regimes in countries such as New Zealand and France has shown that such schemes do little to stop piracy occurring. It’s virtually impossible to block websites in 2014, with the widespread availability of Virtual Private Network technology. And, of course, the legality of subpoena’ing individual users’ details from ISPs is still legally questionable. But none of this will stop the rights-holders from trying every measure they can to deal with Internet piracy — every measure, that is, apart from making their content available in the format and at the price that end users want.

Blocking Australians from watching Game of Thrones on any platform but Foxtel’s extremely limited and pricey service and throwing the legal book at those who seek other options is not the way to go if you want to stop piracy. But then, Hollywood has never been big on common sense. And it appears now they’ve found an Attorney-General who shares that same attribute.

Image credit: Still from Game of Thrones