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Post by trog @ 10:28am 05/11/09 | 79 Comments
 On the other side of the planet, the EFA reports on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations that are currently underway, where evidence has come to light that it is also very much about copyright enforcement on a global scale, which may have strong effects on Internet usage if it is taken up. Read Nic's analysis for more information, but here's a good summary: There is a real danger here that Australia may abdicate its ability and responsibility to determine appropriate domestic copyright laws. If the text of the ACTA requires changes to our law, we risk being once again locked into the US-driven copyright agenda, without either public discussion and debate or proven benefit to Australia. The level of secrecy in these negotiations, for measures that could potentially drastically alter our copyright balance, is completely unacceptable. There is no rational reason that such negotiations need to be kept secret – copyright laws are assumed to be enacted to achieve a balance for the benefit of society; it is only if they do not achieve this balance that their details would need to be kept from the public. 
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Posted 10:33am 05/11/09
If the majority believe it's acceptable to pirate, so be it.
Posted 10:47am 05/11/09
Posted 10:51am 05/11/09
Posted 10:59am 05/11/09
whut?
Posted 11:01am 05/11/09
Posted 11:03am 05/11/09
Posted 11:05am 05/11/09
They are probably still on hold in the Indian call center.
Posted 11:11am 05/11/09
Your great grandkids shouldn't make money from a video of you sticking a car up your butt and getting xrayed at the drs. You get ten years to make money from it, then it should be returned to the public domain. No creative works are created in isolation, it is all built on the ideas and performances of others and since you relied on public domain to create your work, it should be returned there so that others may contribute to global culture by adapting and building on and being inspired by what you have done
Posted 11:57am 05/11/09
Posted 12:16pm 05/11/09
Decent read, trog. I can see both sides of the copyright argument. If you do something, you should be entitled to some reward.
AFACT are just approaching this the wrong way. The internet revolution (and flowing piracy revolution) should have encouraged media conglomerates to restructure their business methods. For the first time in history data (and thus information) and inexpensive and fast. It's sink or swim, and I feel AFACT is sinking fast whilst refusing to learn how to doggie paddle.
I have a feeling this is going to be on my exam tomorrow (Nic is the unit co-ordinator).
Posted 12:21pm 05/11/09
No longer can a bunch of execs in suits hold consumers to ransom, they are obsolete.
They want to continue making mega bucks off an industry where they are just not needed anymore, there time is done.
I feel ultimately the artist will win out of this revolution.
Posted 12:25pm 05/11/09
nats: the rights should be inheritable and tradable but they should only exist for a fixed period of time. it is insane that someone should get less compensation for their work because they happen to be on their death bed. if the rights are tradeable then content producers should be able to extract most of the benefit even if they know they are about to die in a couple of years.
Posted 12:32pm 05/11/09
Once upon a time when information was restrictive (before technology to share/copy on a large-scale), supply/demand allowed these large-scale companies (news, film and music) to make a healthy profit. It's market economics.
Nowadays technology has eased the supply restrictions that previously made this business model profitable.
So you can:-
* technological protection measures (which has been shown to be nigh on impossible); or
* restructure operations.
I'm not sure on my overall feelings, without $$ you won't see the hundreds of millions available to make films like LoTR.
Posted 12:36pm 05/11/09
Posted 12:39pm 05/11/09
thats a fucking amazing statistic, I work in the industry and I would guess only about 10-20% of our traffic is bittorrent
this guaged purely by the difference in our graphs when the P2P shaping is in place and when it isn't*
Posted 12:42pm 05/11/09
IINet turn around and sue the film industry for allowing people to steal their movies which clogs up their network
"You stand accused of being idiots, allowing your movies to fall into the hands of pirates which is causing a massive internet bandwidth problem"
Posted 12:44pm 05/11/09
Posted 12:49pm 05/11/09
especially if they won
Posted 12:52pm 05/11/09
Posted 01:08pm 05/11/09
Makes clear-as-day sense to me.
Posted 01:10pm 05/11/09
Posted 01:11pm 05/11/09
They don't look at it that way though, they want to bone the consumer for as much money as possible on the single unit.
Posted 01:13pm 05/11/09
This.is.fucking.bullshit. :( Was reading about it this morning, I sure hope Australia will come to their senses and will not become a member... but given our Comm.Minister is Stephen Conroy, my hopes are fading, fast..
Posted 01:20pm 05/11/09
Posted 01:36pm 05/11/09
I have purchased more games than I ever have in the past for two reasons.
1) It's easier to browse/obtain and thus harder to skip over 'impulses' - Previously, I have wanted to buy something that I couldn't be bothered driving to go get, or have gone to get it and on the way thought 'Do I realllllly want to spend $110 on X game? when I might just buy Y game in a few months instead?'
2) Price, whilst I love my game boxes and manuals, it's not worth it, one of my mates purchased a game off the shelf, the same steam equivalent was LESS than half the price; AFTER currency conversion, the box alone cost more than the content of the game if viewed in this way!
This has a flow on effect in that, due to decrease in price, instead of Linux ISO of X, and buying Y, I'll buy both X and Y and it costs the same as either!
The exception to this is MW2; Even if it had proper dedicated server support, I would outright refuse to pay $89.95 USD for a Digital copy; its extortion and I hope it falls on its ass as a reason for it, lest we start to encourage digital copies to be $90-100, and boxed copies to be $150+
If, DVD's of movies were available in a same method as steam, which gave you the rights to create a backup to DVD (or simply just burn it to DVD) I'd be inclined to use it.
Especially if said DVD's were released on the digital medium well in advance before the shelf DVD release, or not too long after box-office. (at a reasonable and discounted price - since you're not getting a Disc nor a box etc.)
These dried up bags of cunthammers who are running these companies have no clue how to turn what is being used against them, to help work for them.
It may not solve the problem completely, but these cunts are kidding themselves and it's all an ego cock-stroke of 'how dare you steal from me, I could pummel you the weight of my wallet in $100 bills alone!'.
Total, and utter, dicks.
[edit] Meant less on steam, not more
last edited by Mephz at 13:36:33 05/Nov/09
Posted 01:31pm 05/11/09
if they just improved their methods of content delivery consumers would pay for the convenience. Why haven't they learned from the itunes revolution?
The civil litigation game is a total waste of time and only lawyers win in the end.
Posted 02:08pm 05/11/09
http://tiny.cc/EkAe4
They think Piracy is bad now wait till people in suburbs start sharing their movies over wireless networks.
Posted 02:11pm 05/11/09
There are heaps of ways to reward people for helping seed. Earlier access to movies (x days), discounts on purchases, access to the sort of features you would normally see on the 'extras' component of a DVD (cast interviews, etc.). Reward people with points for the number of gigabytes they seed... accumulate enough points and offer them merchandise for points (posters, hats). These are just a bunch of ideas that a schmuck like me can think of in 3 minutes.. im sure with a bit of brainstorming they could see a whole bunch of ways to entice people to seed.
its just frustrating - it all makes so much sense, but there are no indications that they are considering this path.
Posted 02:15pm 05/11/09
If I ever download an album its because it wasn't for sale anywhere that I could find it
Posted 02:25pm 05/11/09
Interesting that piracy does not have the same inflection point in the US than that of Australia. I think this is because there are readily available alternatives here (Tivo, iTunes, High Definition cable, or triple play), and piracy does not have the weighty threat of revenue decimation that it does in Australia.
While in my opinion iiNet has been built off the back of piracy, It seems pretty unfair and certainly a cynical attitude to go after iiNet alone, when really by net volume of delivered traffic, someone like Telstra is certainly more obvious and a likely candidate.
I think it's also unfair because I think a good proportion of people would be inclined to actually buy content if there was a comparable option, it's only because there is really no peer (ahem) to bittorrent as far as a delivery mechanism is concerned. Fast, practically free, high quality, on demand. On DSL at the current time it seems too hard to compete there.
I hope any judgement against iiNet takes into account the predatory nature of AFACT and their deliberate targeting of, let's say a major player, but certainly not innocent and certainly not the 'obvious' choice, if you are to go by a simple rights' holders declaration, devoid of political or economic considerations, to me it seems iiNet have been unfairly lynched.
Posted 03:03pm 05/11/09
Make is so you cannot be sued for copyright infringement if the copyright owner does not provide a legitimate, workable, real option that allows people to purchase copyrighted works.
Basically, if there is no legal way to acquire a piece of copyrighted content legitimately in your territory, it should not be illegal to infringe the copyright.
This would fix a lot of problems:
- it would instantly solve the problem of global licensing, arguably one of the biggest causes of worldwide piracy. If a product isn't available for purchase in your territory, then you're free to copy it. If the rest of the world had the same access to legitimate media channels as the USA did, it would be a much better environment.
- it would force media companies to make sure that ALL their copyrighted works are available online, all the time, for everyone. Shit, if a bunch of scruffy pirates from Sweden can do it for nothing then surely the worldwide media cartels can handle it - right?
- companies can no longer just sit on old, ancient copyrights solely for the purpose of licensing.
- it would force media companies to release TV shows internationally, all the time, online as downloadable options. If a new episode of some awesome TV show comes out, noone in Australia is going to wait for it to get aired weeks later on Australian TV (and knowing Australian TV stations, out of order or fucked up in some other useless manner).
- a pet hate of mine - old books that are out of print that are no longer available because it's not profitable to sell them. Why are they not in the public domain? Making a digital copy of them would cost nothing and allow people to access them.
Posted 03:49pm 05/11/09
Posted 03:52pm 05/11/09
edit: meanwhile, I've been reading this thread and just received two Cease and Desist letters courtesy of the MPAA etc (via TPG)
Posted 04:00pm 05/11/09
If the product is around to copy it, then it's available...Everything is available in our 'territory' which is now 'the world' since the Intarwebs is king.
Project Gutenburg
Posted 04:00pm 05/11/09
Posted 04:05pm 05/11/09
Posted 04:17pm 05/11/09
F'n WHAT!? Crazy logic.
By that reasoning they might as well argue that mod cons like washing machines and microwave ovens free up time that might otherwise have been spent in domestic drudgery that can now be spent robbing banks.
Posted 04:19pm 05/11/09
Posted 04:38pm 05/11/09
Heh, I have a feeling that we're in for a wild ride if we ever invent some technology like teleportation or replication like in Star Trek etc. Instead of thinking of all the ways it will benefit mankind my guess is the transportation and manufacturing industries will develop lobby groups to encourage legislation against using the tech without paying levies to those who used to work as farmers
andor bus drivers.Edit: I'd hate to be the poor bastard working as a farmer AND a bus driver
last edited by Dazhel at 16:38:20 05/Nov/09
Posted 05:17pm 05/11/09
Posted 05:36pm 05/11/09
Posted 05:44pm 05/11/09
Posted 06:14pm 05/11/09
Why do we pay more for digitally delivered product when for them, its no more expensive to "send" it here than it is to the US?
Ways to fix piracy...
Further introduction of online shopping / distribution of media.
e.g. (in Australia)
TV Shows (from US networks)
Movies
Albums etc.
(competition to itunes, so that prices are driven down).
No regional pricing for digital downloads (duh).
I dont care if i pay for everything in USD, as long as I pay the same amount as people in America / UK / Wherever.
Posted 11:48pm 05/11/09
A Patriot Act for the Internet.
Posted 12:05am 06/11/09
i dunno. regional pricing is pretty good if you live in a poor country. a lot of products which are heavy on intellectual property use discriminatory pricing so they can sell the product to consumers in poor countries. if they can't price discriminate then people in those countries don't get to buy the product.
Posted 07:56am 06/11/09
I think it's already been mentioned, but if my linux isos where released in australia on or about the same time as the states, I would obtain through legitimate means.
ie: some of channel 10 programs are broadcast a week after the states.
Posted 08:17am 06/11/09
I don't think that closing down all P2P is a bad thing. The effect though would be enormous as it would close down Multiplayer network systems for PS3, Xbox360 and IWnet. Perhaps forcing developers to produce dedicated server software for their games. Gotta love the ripple effect.
Posted 09:01am 06/11/09
Yeah but thats the problem pinky, with the internet, your location isnt meant to make any difference, becuase everyones on a global medium, but the media companys dont care about this, they still want to regionalise everything, im sure they have some reasons that seem logical to themselves, but no one else understands.
Its probably down to licensing agreements that have been agreed with the local traditional media distributors (tv, dvd's etc). They just dont want to lose control of the media, its was alot easier to control before the internet, people didnt have a choice, now they do but the tv stations dont want to change.
Posted 09:21am 06/11/09
Actually no, Steam has regional pricing.
There's a big uproar about it at the moment (Europeans get shafted with a local currency that is often way more expensive than buying in USD), see http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=770231
Posted 09:33am 06/11/09
Posted 09:40am 06/11/09
they have an advert for mad men 'every episode'
you can buy each episode from the show from season 1 & 2, not 3, for $1.95 each, or buy entire season for $4.95/month. Sounds great right, nope
you have three days to watch your bought episode and for the monthly fee you can only watch four episodes.
So you are paying us iTunes pricing for temporary access to old episodes.
That's why there's piracy. I would pay $2 to watch this weeks US madmen to watch on the train rather than havng to download and convert it, but only three days access and I don't get to keep it. That's shit value. The monthly access fee is a joke
also for ten dollar a month you can watch 100 video clips (and only four episodes of select shows)
if afact want to kill piracy in Australia that's all they have to do - stop acting all prissy and top shelf when they are really slow arsed skanky aids riddled whores. Provide reasonable priced quality service and the problem will go away
Posted 10:00am 06/11/09
I do, its the root of all evil
scrilla.
Posted 11:16am 06/11/09
Posted 11:40am 06/11/09
Banning all peer to peer traffic means all peer to peer traffic. This means that you can't play games that are peer to peer.
Posted 11:47am 06/11/09
Posted 11:49am 06/11/09
short of running all torrents on port 80, theres no sure fire way of fooling your ISP
Posted 12:12pm 06/11/09
How is that possible? The header is the only thing not encrypted and it's just the same as every other god damn packet out there used for other stuff?
Posted 12:30pm 06/11/09
There is more information to be gained from packets than just their payload and header.
The big thing that encrypting torrents gets you is that noone knows what data you're torrenting (except the endpoints, which is part of the reason they're getting machines into the p2p networks to take part in it.
Also, I'd say that it's possible to identify torrent traffic on port 80 as much as it is possible on any other port.
Posted 12:57pm 06/11/09
Monitoring the tracker addresses could help too.
Posted 01:02pm 06/11/09
example: if you've got a 40 connections open to different random ips on high ports (30,000+) and one stable connection to a tracker, you can tell the device to should shape that pipe
I've setup these kind of systems, its a fucking nuisance because you end up blocking some legit traffic with it and that causes innocent people to whinge
on the other hand, if its saving you $20k/mo in bandwidth you can afford to lose the odd customer
Posted 01:19pm 06/11/09
A licence to host a tracker, and a licence to use p2p!. Maybe another licence to buy a HDD.
Posted 01:41pm 06/11/09
ohh wai....
Posted 02:05pm 06/11/09
Not on a private tracker they couldnt. Also there are methods now for ensuring that cant happen like bittorrent over TOR (google it) etc.
Also teq those methods sound like a sure fire way to block proper traffic. I know TONNES of stuff that would P2P to random 'high ports' while maintaining one connection to a 'tracker'. For exmaple Heroes of Newerth keeps 1-2 connections alive to the hon server while the game data flows between peers...
Also the 'deep packet' bullshit that people think they can do, rest assured would add bottlenecks when doing it at the level that iiNet and Telsasluts and stuff would have to do. I doubt its even possible given the profit margin they probably make on each customer... and the fact they need to remain competitive (increase their peering and get more customers - aka increase their isp etc)
That leads me back to... would it even be possible to block p2p traffic... i dont think so. I havent heard a single statement yet that shows otherwise...
Posted 02:06pm 06/11/09
Posted 02:23pm 06/11/09
Even if they did have this budget for this purpose, why would they? What's their benefit? They can sleep well at night because they are good blokes? Not likely.
It needs to be regulated and legislated. And the problem with that is legislation is so slow and technology is so fast. The legislation will have to be so broad, and have so many loopholes in it - I just can't visualise it.
Businesses need to stop wasting time with large-scale anti-piracy cases and start to tackle the real problem which is their failing business models. I can't begin to think of what would be a better business model though, especially one which is a compromise between readily available (and copyable) formats like DivX/XviD and MP3/OGG.
Media that 'streams' is particularly difficult because if someone can watch it (in the most secure encrypted manner possible), someone else can record it into a shareable format.
I think what YouTube does now when you look up a song clip is really great - offers you the iTunes link to purchase the song, breaks down the boundary to purchasing it and also capitalises on the spur-of-the-moment impulse buy mechanism that makes consumers spend so often.
Posted 02:31pm 06/11/09
read my post again, I mentioned this
we have one customer who can't use a particular program to talk with his old buddies from the war (think ham radio but online)
its pretty much a case of "stiff shit"
if we dont filter the traffic it costs us anywhere upto 30k/month in extra traffic
a few customers can be sacrificed for that kinda scrilla
whats bullshit about it?
I have two of them right here in front of me, they're worth more than my house
if they're saving you $20k/month they pay for themselves very rapidly
I know these systems backwards and the only way i've ever figured out how to get around it is to setup a VPN to a US host, costs me $20/month for 1TB of data in the US
just deal with the 200-300ms lag
Posted 02:33pm 06/11/09
Private trackers have members, and considering that some very serious targets have been taken down over time do you really think your favourite tracker can't be infiltrated? Do you know all the people who use it? Does anyone who uses it know everyone else that uses it?
They don't have to block all peer to peer traffic. They just have to knobble most of it. If it becomes the legal responsibility of the ISPs to block that traffic (or at least make a decent attempt), say goodbye to the fun internets, and say goodbye to a lot of other things besides.
Do you think in the scheme of things that anyone will care that you can't play Heroes of Newerth? If the ISPs are forced into it, they'll do what they can do, and HON will be broken until they release a patch that stops them being detected as torrent traffic. Same will go for a lot of applications out there.
Engage your brain. If this becomes a precedent, we will suffer in lots of ways. Stop concentrating on bogus reasons you think it's not possible to interfere with your linux isos. Yes, if you really want to you can get the data you want to around amongst your friends. Laws and prosecution would put a pretty big damper on doing much else though.
Do you really think it would end there? Think about it this way: your pc is protected from viruses because some very smart people spend serious time on developing counter-measures and detection signatures to cope with the programs that other people spend their time writing.
There are lots of reasons this _shouldn't_ become a precedent. Hopefully, sanity will prevail. Don't rely on "it's not possible", because that won't save us from this mess.
Posted 02:43pm 06/11/09
I agree with some of your points, but not this. There are so many alternatives - especially for the technically-minded. mIRC, Usenet, RapidShare/MegaUpload and similar to name the most common. And the number of 'piracy haven' countries in the world where it's nigh on impossible to take down a server (save a high-altitude bombing strafe) - there is a long long long way to go in the war against piracy.
The media industry needs to develop a proper, enticing, user-pay business model. I think the turning point will come soon where it will be fast enough to download full DVDs (as an example) that media retailers will be able to offer cheap and simple download solutions that will appeal more the masses than a more technical piracy approach (if the regulation is right).
Posted 02:55pm 06/11/09
The more those things change, the smaller the library and correspondingly the smaller the use of torrents/p2p will be.
Even technically-minded users rely on less technically-minded users for their data. The more people have to switch clients, the more they have to hide, the more care they have to take about what they do, and who they do it with, the less torrents.
Oh, here's another one: 4) It's more convenient and less restrictive than obtaining and using the data legally.
Posted 02:56pm 06/11/09
If you want total anonymity and security for your peer-to-peer networking, use one of the following:
Truly anonymous p2p:
http://freenetproject.org/ - FreeNet
http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/ - Mute
Darknet/closed network p2p:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/waste/ - WASTE (buy the guys that wrote Winamp; it was so scary to Winamp's parent company AOL/Time Warner that within hours of its released it was shut down and revoked - see http://www.nullsoft.com/free/waste/. I believe that apps like WASTE are the future of p2p).
You will find that all of the options come with a big penalty - speed. Mostly because there are less people using them, but also because speed is one of the tradeoffs you have to make in terms of security and privacy.
Posted 03:00pm 06/11/09
gg iinet
Posted 03:07pm 06/11/09
Yeah i do actually. because ISPs are not governments they are businesses they care about profit. I can tell you now ISPs wont spend a dollar more then they have to, to acheive the absolute minimum in terms of catering for any legislation the government puts in place.
---
I agree with what someone said above though that the legal legislation process is too slow to keep up with the methods people will use and move to in terms of P2P.
---
A few people have mentioned that the business models have to change. (Not having a go here) I wonder if thats the right mentality of the majority of the population? (I agree btw...) or if its our minds that are bios and beleive this because we like the freedom of our linux isos.
---
Thanks for those links Trog. Some good stuff in all of them. I do beleive people would suffer the speed degridation if it means the freedom of what we've always done. Once eough people start flocking to a certain thing (a good example is newgroups/usenet that we've seen people pick back up or never left) these projects will begin to get the resources they need to self maintain.
This only further solidifies my stance that I dont beleive a war on PROTOCOL will ever be won... as someone above mentioned there is always another method. Surely the IT gurus that consult for the government and these record companies etc dont seriously think they can block a protocol?? Or that there wont be numerous ways around it. It's the internet contect filtering thing all over again, what a joke that was. Wasnt it a kid in year 7 that got around it using a open relay socks 5 proxy with only self taught it skills?
Posted 03:51pm 06/11/09
Posted 04:09pm 06/11/09
Oh, okay Mr Isp runner or whatever... since you think thats some qualification that somewhat trumps me being a consumer...
Do you think I would stay as a customer of your ISP if you filtered/blocked traffic more rigerously then other ISP did? If you went above the minimum legislation?
If there was another ISP around that allowed me a possible way around the block you would lose customer pretty damn quickly. I mean after all thats how internode and iinet aggrigated their customers so quickly being one of the few that dont count upload traffic and also somewhat protect their customers from copyright bs by not forwarding the notices and decent data plans at good speed.
Posted 04:26pm 06/11/09
This statement says it all, you have no idea as a consumer what even the smallest, let alone the largest ISPs will invest in
the vast majority of my customers are government subsidies, we go above and beyond what the govt require us to do because its GOOD for business
Doing the bare minimum, skimping by the skin of your teeth on things is a pretty sure fire way to drive a business into the ground
why would an isp risk its carrier license just because they can take a few customers from another ISP if they don't block something they're told to?
what good are those customers without a carrier license
But please feel free to throw around some more uneducated comments, I'm here till 4.30
Posted 04:55pm 06/11/09
Posted 05:36pm 06/11/09
What gamer is saying, I assume, is why would an ISP do any more than they are obliged to by law to block customers from doing whatever they want? Clearly, it's in the majority of ISPs commercial interests to allow BitTorrent traffic - not, I stress, because it lets their customers pirate, but because it gives them the freedom to do whatever they want and take responsibility for their own actions. Which is how it should be.
edit: that seems massively different to a "regular" ISP who aren't going to have a primarily govt. subsidy-based client base. It would probably be good for your business to block p2p traffic (or whatever), because they won't or shouldn't be using it anyway, right?
Posted 06:31pm 06/11/09