In brief: Industry schedules iiTrial briefings

Having owned and managed an ISP from the very early dial up days in Sydney I sold it off a few years ago with illegal downloads being one of the reasons. I remember getting many emails every week from Sony and other US companies which were forward from the upstream data provider. We were a smaller private ISP with around 7000 users and had one tech full time contacting end users and scanning our servers for illegal music and video files. It was nearly impossible to manage and stay on top of, not to mention the cost to do so? Now when you are the size of Iinet or Optus these is no way you can manage and stay on top of illegal downloading, the case brought upon Iinet was just crazy! Yes it fairly easy to generally detect who is using the common torrent ports but another thing to prove what is legal or illegal?

Brett

Today infringement and copyright are out the window when whole books can be scanned at home.now im not at all up with the digital age and respectfully like those who legally are trying to understand how to solve nothing, do know that any ruling,or an advert on a copied film about piracy demonstrates the fultility when the jacketed illegal copy costs as little as a dollar and is often out before screening.Its the multi million dollar criminal activity that has not been addressed.From my perspective the IT industry is squeaky clean and the real crims are rubbing their collective hands.

This is really about an old business model desperately trying to hang in there and using the Law as it's instrument.
Creative destruction is an important part of competition as it allows industries to modernise. Failure to innovate has been the death of many an industry, and taxpayers shouldn't support industries once they are dead, nor should the law be used to prop-up profits that are not deserved.
As iTunes showed, people *do* want to pay for data...so long as it is not clearly rip-off prices and it has a decent range. Folks don't like dealing with criminals, which is what the current industry incumbents are!

Until early last year I used bittorrent a lot. I never downloaded copyrighted material - ever, and yet I now cannot find an ISP that lets me use bittorrent because of the allegation that it is only (or often) used to download copyrighted material. (I'm looking at your BigPond/Optus/3Mobile - and quoting your overseas support staff when I complain about the port blocking and disconnects).

Unfortunately I am restricted to wireless as living next to the Canberra Airport means I can't get ADSL - so I can't use iinet. (Tell me again Telstra - how Majura is in Watson and Majura lane/rd doesn't exist...)

As a software developer, without bittorrent I can't cheaply or quickly download source code - and the current policies unfairly discriminate against those of us who cannot afford huge bandwidth bills from distributing code. It's even more difficult if you are a film maker or musician who wants to get out of the current distribution monopoly - but then, *that is the point of this charade*

While much fuss is made about "alleged" lost income by Hollywood - the privacy implications, and effect on those that use bittorrent as a legitimate distribution method are ignored. And let's not ignore the implications of ignoring due process. Isn't this a police matter?

What next - the car industry suing bicyclists for lost income? Does no one have the backbone to call "lying, cheating, scumbags"?
eg. I know of downloaders who download many copyrighted movies - and I know they would not buy a single one if they had no other choice. The figures repeatedly show the claims are false - the number of sales lost by video rental, record, and video stores is less than the internet sales and pay-per-view in the same period. And the industry profits grow every year - the share returned to the artist shrinks - but that has nothing to do with "pirates".

The reality is that Hollywood doesn't really lose any money - the internet allows them to distribute their content at far greater profit, a profit that grows with each passing year.

The real agenda here is to shut down an alternative distribution network, kill any semblance of Privacy, and remove the police from their rightful role.

Does any of the ISPs have an actual auditing process that monitors what their staff "inspect"? (I already know the answer - it's no).

What could possibly go wrong? (hint: Chile, Alan Bond).