Australian Film Industry emulates last centuries failed business models - suing ISPs

Well, at least (for now) it’s not users, but news today via the Sydney Morning Herald that Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), the histrionically named consortium of Australian Film and Television companies such as Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Disney and the Seven Network,

has launched a major legal action against one of Australia’s largest internet service providers for allegedly allowing its users to download pirated movies and TV shows.

Note to AFACT - it’s over, done, dusted, the world’s moved on, the geni is out of the bottle. In this downturn, where budgets are tight, don’t waste your money suing large scale legitimate businesses , who are ironically quite possibly protected by -

safe harbour provisions that were introduced with the US free trade agreement, which provides immunity for ISPs in certain circumstances such as transmission, hosting, caching and referencing activities

Make your offerings fair priced, more convenient and better value than unlicensed material (piracy is what bad guys with AK47’s do in the waters of Somalia, in the South China Seas, and elsewhere in the world. Whatever people are doing watching unlicensed material, it’s sure as heck not piracy) and as the music industry has seen, people will gladly buy instead of downloading from file sharing services.

But every time I put a DVD on for my daughters, to have to site though an interminable copyright warning that treats me like a thief, and frustrates my two girls under 3, which I can’t skip through you are actually providing a worse service than unlicensed copies that don’t have this notice (just for the record, I have many dozens of paid for DVDs, and no unlicensed ones).

What is wrong with this country, where both the Federal Government, and now the entire film and television industry it would seem is hell bent on making the life of ISPs as difficult as possible, doubtless driving up prices in a country where broadband adoption still languishes behind much of the rest of the world?

Like the French in 1939, this is fighting the last war.

One last thing. Why not go after the really big guns - BigPond or Optus, instead of iiNet? I imagine because those companies pockets are deep enough that they are much less likely to settle than iiNet, setting a precendent for future actions.

Haven’t you people heard there’s a recession on - stop wasting your money on nonsense like this, and start providing reasons for people to give you their hard earned money.

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