Internet providers unveil piracy crackdown plan

Updated

Australia's five major ISPs have revealed their plans to crack down on online piracy by sending warning notices to suspected illegal downloaders while assisting rights holders to pursue serial offenders through the courts.

The Communications Alliance - which represents Telstra Bigpond, iiNet, Optus, iPrimus and Internode - says its plan protects consumers while respecting the rights of copyright holders.

During an 18-month trial, rights holders would send copyright infringement notices, including evidence of copyright infringement and the IP address involved, to ISPs who would then send "educational notices" to the internet users concerned.

Users who are suspected of further copyright breaches would then receive up to three warning notices before rights holders are able to pursue court action.

"We believe the notice scheme can greatly reduce online copyright infringement in Australia while protecting consumer rights, educating consumers about how to access legal online content, and helping rights holders to protect their rights," Communications Alliance boss John Stanton said in a statement.

"Equally important is the need for rights holders to ensure that consumers have access to legal and affordable content online, to reduce the motivation to source content in ways that might be illegal."

The alliance says its plan protects the many internet users who "may not be aware that their online activity could be illegal".

Each ISP would only be obligated to process up to 100 copyright infringement notices each month, with the cost-effectiveness of this approach to be measured at the end of the trial.

Professor Michael Fraser, director of the Communications Law Centre at the University of Technology Sydney, says illegal downloading is "destroying our creative industries" and the Communications Alliance plan is an effective response.

"I congratulate them on a mature and prudent approach to managing the massive illegal peer-to-peer downloading in a constructive way, which respects the rights of all the parties involved including the copyright owners and the consumers," he said.

This is an experiment to see whether an educational approach can work to resolve this problem, and I'm confident that it can. Professor Michael Fraser

"We cannot sustain our creative industries if it becomes standard for people to pirate content. This is an experiment to see whether an educational approach can work to resolve this problem, and I'm confident that it can."

Professor Fraser, who has previously represented copyright holders, says the approach is far preferable to the three-strike policy found in other countries including New Zealand whereby ISPs disconnect internet users who receive repeated infringement notices.

"In today's information society, citizens and consumers expect to be able to communicate through their ISP as part of everyday life," he said.

"I don't think cutting people off from their ISP connection after three strikes is an appropriate kind of sanction."

The boss of Exetel, a smaller ISP, says while the trial is encouraging, it is unnecessarily limited.

"It is a step in the right direction if Australia believes that the protection of property ownership from thieves is something that a civilised society should provide, but restricting the number of notices sent to 100 a month makes no sense at all," John Linton said.

"It is a simple process to on-send an infringement notice automatically and therefore there is no need to restrict the number in any way."

Mr Linton says smaller ISPs including Exetel have been taking this approach for seven years "without any cost to ourselves".

"Keeping track of to whom these notices have been sent is also a trivial cost to write the code and no cost to maintain records relating to this process," he said.

"Any statement to the contrary is simply lying nonsense."

Online piracy has proliferated with the use of file-sharing websites including The Pirate Bay to download large files.

The Communications Alliance says its plan follows discussions with the Federal Government and representatives from the film and television, music and video game industries.

"This is a discussion paper; it will need more work with the industry, rights holder organisations and, crucially, consumer groups in order to bring it in to actual effect," Professor Fraser said.

"But I think this wouldn't have been released unless their was a fair degree of agreement among those in the discussions to date."

Attorney-General Robert McClelland and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft have been contacted for comment.

Topics: internet-technology, internet-culture, copyright, australia

First posted