Posts by Matthew Poole
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ISPs wouldn't be pushing and providing broadband with bigger caps if there wasn't something in it for them.
It's called getting volume. Making 1% margin on $1m of turnover is much nicer than making 10% on $50k. If you have high caps, you'll get users. People are shifting their usage patterns, and want to have the option of making heavy use of YouTube and other bandwidth guzzlers. That doesn't mean the ISP makes much money off them. In many cases, DSL is a loss maker. Once you account for Telecom's cut, a lot of the accounts out there are offering a gross margin to the ISP of two or three dollars. From that they have to provide network services, pay staff, and make a profit. If they make a buck out of those accounts, they're doing well.
The high-cap accounts cost more, sure, but they also generally attract users who use more data, and that's expensive. We're fucked, as a country, by the Southern Cross monopoly on international transit. Capacity on that pipe has multiplied several times over in recent years, but we're still charged as though it's a scarce resource. Anything that has to come from offshore is chewing up ISP margins something awful. That's why services like Akamai are so popular with ISPs here. -
But there's no principle in our society that says that provision of a service separates you from any responsibility at all for how that service is used. In some instances that's the case, in some it's not.
You're right that responsibility isn't absolutely abrogated simply because you're a service provider. But the general principle is that you aren't responsible for what people do with services you provide. Telecom isn't responsible for the actions of people who make obscene phone calls, or who make extortion demands by phone. Vodafone isn't responsible for the actions of users who send threatening text messages.
To keep it just to directly-related actions, ISPs aren't responsible for any other activities by their users. They're not responsible for users posting defamatory comments, or spamming, or looking at dodgy material, or breaking into computers. AKill's ISP wasn't prosecuted for enabling his bot net activities, for example.
So why should they be made responsible for downloading? That's a dramatic policy shift, and I don't consider it to be reasonable. If the ISP refuses to disconnect a user in the face of a court order, that's one thing. But refusing to disconnect a user who's being accused on dubious grounds, by people who carry no risk if they're wrong, is something else entirely. There is no burden on the accuser to be right. There's no penalty if they're mistaken, or malicious, and that doesn't encourage accuracy. The carpet-bombing extortion tactics employed in the US by RIAA are directly related to the near-zero cost for being wrong. If there's a penalty for being wrong, it encourages accuracy. Take away the risk, and there's nothing to lose. -
28 days is unworkable because it has a zero deterrent value to the people who are using copyrights they don’t own. Telling someone off is no deterrent at all for using copyrights you do not own, there has to be another way.
Mark, as you observed, you've got a period measured in fractions of a nanosecond in order to pull material from the 'net before it ends up in the permanent file. So why does it matter if the period is 28 days? Even if it's a week you're still waaaaay outside the archival period of the average intarweb crawler, and once that point is passed you gain nothing by acting faster.
If you make the period too short, you deprive people of the chance to seek competent legal advice. At this point it's incredibly tempting to make a deeply cynical remark about the RIAA tactic of trying to stop people from consulting lawyers, who might tell them just how bullshit it all is, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're just trying to do the impossible and limit the spread of infringing material.
Why should the ISP be involved beyond passing on the notice from the alleged rights-holder (I say "alleged" because we've seen plenty of cases from the US of take-down notices being sent without any colour of right)? Why should they take an extra-judicial enforcement role? We don't expect them to do it when their customers are viewing objectionable material, we just expect them to pony up the info when presented with a search warrant. If you want people to sympathise with you, stop trying to drag third parties into your actions. Your beef is with the ISP's customer, not with the ISP. We don't hound Transit/councils and the car manufacturers in the event of a fatal car crash (except where the crash was actually caused by some negligence on their part), but they're clearly enablers of the driving that lead to the crash.
Also, lay off the "stealing". Downloading isn't theft, it's copyright infringement. The law says what theft is, and downloading ain't it. You do your cause absolutely no favours by misusing terms to try and extract a gut response. It might play with the unwashed masses, but it doesn't play here. And people on here speak to the unwashed masses, and are quite prepared to call you on the "stealing" bullshit. It's copyright infringement, nothing more and nothing less. Until your industry can convince the pollie tubbies to change the law such that copyright infringement meets the legal definition of theft, with the accompanying attention of properly-appointed law enforcement bodies, please don't twist words.
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The cost to the recording industry will still outweigh the cost of infriongement?
Only if they're unable to use carpet-bombed infringement notices, and ready-made settlements. As soon as return is vaguely related to cost-of-enforcement, it becomes a losing proposition.
I realise that we don't have the same kind of bullshit going on here as goes on in the US, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Our copyright legislation is very similar to theirs, and if we're unfortunate enough to have National negotiating an FTA between us and the US it'll become even more similar.
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it seems that there's a good parallel between selling pirated DVDs at the public market and sharing pirated files on the net.
No, there's not. One is a criminal act, punishable by fines, or even jail time. The other is a civil infringement. One is clearly a deprivation of income (whether it's the same level of income as the official product would've enjoyed is a different matter, since bootleg copies tend to be cheaper than the real deal), since people are actually paying for the goods. The other has no such clear nexus, because someone downloading something may or may not have been willing to pay for the same product.
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If I remember my fourth form social studies correctly there is a maximum penalty which can be assigned to either or both parties.
Yes, there is. By default Disputes will accept claims to a maximum value of $7,000. By mutual agreement between the parties, it can be increased to $12,000.
So Disputes is probably not really suitable, because it will rule out telephone-number judgements against people who shared a couple of CDs online </only-slight-tongue-in-cheek>
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To those confused by my earlier post, I was meaning the big-money side of things, the industry lobby groups such as RIANZ. The local counterparts to those wonderful folks at RIAA/MPAA.
National don't give a flying fuck about the artists, I'm sure, but they do love to follow the money. And those lobby groups have some pretty serious moolah to throw around.
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Maurice Williamson (Nat IT spokesman) says he voted for the bill, but admits he doesnt know why.
Is it overly cynical of me to say "Because his corporate overlords at RIANZ said it was vital to the preservation of the Kiwi way of life"?
Seriously, National aren't known for doing anything that's not sought-after by the recording industry. They say jump, National asks "Would you like fries with that?" At least Labour gave us something vaguely like fair-use, which I'm certain wouldn't have eventuated if National were in charge of drafting the new legislation.
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The extra-judicial nature of the termination is what worries me. There's no requirement for a right of appeal, and whilst the ordinary court processes of injunctions and lawsuits will, of course, be open, that's just not a path that's going to happen unless someone who's a) wealthy and b) gives a damn gets disconnected. Think Seeby, or Malcolm Dick. Though, of course, they're both immune since they're never going to be disconnected by the ISPs they founded.
As others have pointed out, that it's a process triggered simply by allegation, not by any kind of adversarial system, opens it up wide to abuse. And the poor ISPs are the ones who face the lawsuits if it's all bogus. Which, based on the behaviour of copyright holders in the US under the DMCA, is pretty much a certainty.
As for Tizzard and her kiddy porn comment, DIA's compliance division usually get tipped-off about people viewing inappropriate material (often by way of international investigating agencies) and then go to the ISPs with a warrant to request details associated with the IP address(es) in question. They have to get a judge to sign the warrant, which is one hurdle. They have to develop information in order to get the warrant, which is another hurdle. They cannot just walk into an ISP and say "We think 1.1.1.1 was viewing inappropriate material at 10:10 on 10th October, hand over the details", which would still be a greater hurdle than alleging it was so and the ISP then disconnecting the user. As an anecdotal note, when I was involved with getting user details for DIA investigations into use of inappropriate material, there was no expectation that the ISP would close the user's account in the event that a conviction was obtained.
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nice to see that all our economic problems are the fault of rich pricks like John Key and not over-extended debt junkies whose votes are being pandered for without shame
The way I see it is that the bigger the tax cut, the greater the leverage available to keep on spending in excess of one's means. Labour's being irresponsible, in encouraging yet more near-worthless consumer spending, but National's just taking it further. Plus National's signalling to business that we don't need your R&D, thanks very much, we can do the impossible and get long-term economic recovery done through low-quality worship at the altar of consumption.
I came across a great quote from US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes yesterday: "I like paying taxes. It is how I buy civilisation."
Shame we don't hear that line a little more often. Especially in response to Act and their "Taxes are evil" mantra.