Leaked State Department Cable Confirms What Everyone Already Knew: MPAA Was Behind Bogus Australian ISP Lawsuit
from the pulling-the-strings dept
When it comes to copyright issues, the various State Department leaks via Wikileaks have only served to confirm what pretty much everyone already knew. Earlier we'd covered revelations about US diplomatic involvement in new copyright laws in Spain, and the latest (as a bunch of you sent in) is the rather upfront admission that the MPAA was absolutely behind the decision to sue iiNet in Australia. As you may recall, the lawsuit, which was officially organized by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) along with the Australian arms of various movie studios, complained that Australian ISP iiNet didn't do enough to stop unauthorized file sharing. This was really a trial balloon of a case, because the MPAA knew damn well that blaming ISPs for the actions of their users was a tricky game to play. So, they tried to hit up iiNet from a slight tangent, sending over examples of infringement and then freaking out when iiNet didn't somehow magically stop all infringement.Of course, the reality was that this was all driven directly from the MPAA in the US and iiNet was carefully chosen as a trial balloon given its size. As Richard Chirgwin notes, iiNet got to enjoy this experience because of its "Goldilocks status. iiNet was just right: Telstra is large, loud, litigious, and possessed of significant lobbying experience; too small a target and the case risked inviting the “bullying” perception that the MPAA was keen to avoid."
Despite the lead role of AFACT and the inclusion of Australian companies Village Roadshow and the Seven Network, this is an MPAA/American studios production. Mike Ellis, the Singapore-based President for Asia Pacific of the Motion Picture Association, briefed Ambassador on the filing on November 26. Ellis confirmed that MPAA was the mover behind AFACT's case (AFACT is essentially MPAA's Australian subcontractor; MPAA/MPA have no independent, formal presence here), acting on behalf of the six American studios involved. MPAA prefers that its leading role not be made public. AFACT and MPAA worked hard to get Village Roadshow and the Seven Network to agree to be the public Australian faces on the case to make it clear there are Australian equities at stake, and this isn't just Hollywood "bullying some poor little Australian ISP."Amusingly, the cable claims the case is "very strong." Turns out that was wrong. iiNet famously won the case, and AFACT was even told to pay iiNet's legal costs. While an appeal somewhat limited the original (excellent and perceptive) ruling, it still crowned iiNet the winner. Perhaps the US government shouldn't trust the MPAA in setting the odds on its own lawsuits.
Why iiNet? Ellis said they were the right target on several levels. First, they are big enough to be important - iiNet is the third largest ISP in Australia. (Telstra, owners of top Australian ISP BigPond which has about half of the market, are the "big guns", Ellis admitted. It was clear Ellis did not want to begin by tangling with Telstra, Australia's former telecom monopoly and still-dominant player in telephony and internet, and a company with the financial resources and demonstrated willingness to fight hard and dirty, in court and out.) Ellis also said iiNet users had a particularly high copyright violation rate, and that its management has been consistently unhelpful on copyright infringements.
Anyway, while most people already knew that the MPAA was the key player here, it's nice to see it laid out in black and white. I'm also curious if the folks who usually rush to the comments to claim that the MPAA/RIAA aren't involved in some of the lawsuits we talk about will have any comment on this, since we've explained that most of these legal actions are coordinated from those two groups.
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Filed Under: australia, copyright, state department, wikileaks
Companies: afact, iinet, mpaa
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We all know these are US cables, but being able to kick out the "Julian Assange made it all up with his military boytoy!" pillar of the argument.
Something else that I think would be interesting would be an indepth study pushing for answers as to why some of these things were secret in the first place. Some most likely should have been secret, but they tend to just slap the blanket over the whole pile because we let them. And given the government idea that if we do it in secret its not breaking the law... yeah... we need to reserve "secret" for real things not just embarrassing things.
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Lawyers would have a field day if half of the crap that happens inside of the cables were to happen out in the public eye, but instead the cables are "off limits". And everything else is "classified".
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Hey Australia
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And then why they knowingly made false statements to the original court and iiNet barristers. Though it will be a small part, it will make a lot of AFACT executives and their own counsel squirm and could get interesting for us involved in the case
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If Australians are "pirating" so much then I suspect it has the same incentive as here in Spain - regional restrictions, high prices and lack of legal digital services. Resolve these and there goes half your problem, along with a large chunk of any social acceptability file sharing has.
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Spot on.. Australia's in a worse position than most.. Prices here are ridiculous, easily among the highest in the world.. Combine that with regional restrictions and no decent digital services at all.. We're basically screwed...
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A single sentence, and you out yourself as a moron, throw in an ad hominem attack and make a "point" that's so astoundingly stupid it would take a full paragraph to explain everything wrong with it. Bravo.
You have 2 people from different continents stating exactly what's wrong with the industry from their point of view, and how this actively encourages infringement. Maybe you people should listen for once, instead of attacking a 3rd party for actions he never endorses?
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Those are the countries most likely to comply with anything the MPAA wants.
Although in France there is an scape from any crimes, all pirates should join the Légion étrangère(French Foreign Legion) :)
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"One practice popular in the main French army at certain times – surrendering – is not encouraged in the Legion, members of which are routinely expected to fight to the death."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/3546207/The-French-Foreign-Legion-t he-last-option-for-those-desperate-to-escape-the-UK.html
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Hmm
Some Allies....
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The Judge worked it out
To quote Justice Cowdroy from Roadshow Films v iiNet:
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The RIAA is a economically weaker than it was ten years ago. Any company or industry that is shrinking is forced to pull back on activities that don't show a profit, and the war on piracy falls in this category for the RIAA. Suing private music infringers cost a lot of money and produced very little income while having a plethora of negative effects. Lobbying is expensive and fighting piracy does little if anything to actually increase sales. At the end of the day retracting industries are forced to be pragmatic, and pragmatically fighting pirates is not productive for the RIAA.
The RIAA still has plenty of execs who chant the "Pirates are killing us" mantra. But they also have people working quietly in the opposite direction. I think the MPAA is fortifying the RIAA and keeping it on the bandwagon publicly, but behind the scenes you have a lot of RIAA people promoting bands and artists, especially the ones who have signed "360" deals. Promoting 360 artists means getting their music heard by just about any method possible.
The movie industry and the music labels are in very different situations. The music industry really needs to promote bands and artists. For the music industry, the songs themselves are promotional. The songs bring the fans out to concerts and provide other potential revenue streams. On the other hand, the MPAA sees the movie itself as the revenue stream. For music there is a very plausible argument that a pirated song may very well create a concert ticket sale. It is harder to sell the idea that a pirated movie will sell a movie ticket. There is also a scale factor involved -- it is easier for a music exec to stomach giving away a 99 cent song when it might sell a 100 dollar concert ticket. It is a lot harder for the movie producer to see how giving away a 20 dollar copy of a movie makes sense for getting a one dollar Redbox rental. (Yes, I know that the marginal cost for reproducing the song and the movie are near zero for the industry, but I am talking about the modern business exec who doesn't understand basic microeconomics.)
The final analysis will probably show that unauthorized copying is not hurting the movie industry nearly as much as the MPAA currently believes. However, the movie industry is still doing rather well. At least they can still afford to spend $300 million to pump out mediocre movies. If the industry can afford to that, they can afford to live in fantasy worlds for at least a little while longer. However, as the movie industry continues to price itself out of the market it is going to have to face reality. I am just hoping that they don't manage to do severe damage to the Internet, the rest of the economy, and the First Amendment before that reality sets in for the MPAA.
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"For music there is a very plausible argument that a pirated song may very well create a concert ticket sale. It is harder to sell the idea that a pirated movie will sell a movie ticket."
I personally think a pirated movie will sell a movie ticket, if the movie's good. Even if the person who viewed the pirated movie doesn't go, so much of a movie's promotion is through word-of-mouth that non-paying eyeballs can definitely result in paying ones. However the flip side is also true, pirated copies of bad movies probably do result in less people paying to see it, and I'm not too cut up about that. It might improve the average quality of the Hollywood's output.
I have bought tickets to movies I first saw in an unauthorized manner and I've gone out and bought DVD's even when I already have a digital copy. The reason is simple; both offer a superior experience to a downloaded version, but only if the movie is a good one.
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I've even skipped seeing a movie in the theater because I caught some of a downloaded/bootlegged version, and it turned out the movie was crap and not worth the ticket price. Of course, I only ever did that after I was so fed up about paying ticket prices for too many movies that weren't worth it, so really, Hollywood is their own worst enemy here. They drove me to piracy. If I felt any confidence about a movie being worth the price, I wouldn't even question myself about going to see it. But they put out too much crap, and so I need to protect my own bank account.
Sure, a lot of people will say, "Then just don't watch them, you don't have to pirate the things and rob the people who worked on it of their financial reward!" or something like that. The thing is, I'm not robbing anyone of anything. If I liked the movie for free, I'll go see it on the big screen and have no problems paying for the theater experience. If I didn't like it for free, then it's one that I'd have either opted not to watch in the theater, or I would have seen it, gotten pissed cuz it sucked, and then made up my mind not to watch anything from that studio/producer/director...whoever, without a 5 star, two thumbs up, glowing review from a close, trusted friend. The ability to watch a bad movie without paying for it actually makes the chances that I'll go to the theater for a later movie from that studio significantly higher.
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Not only did I feel sick after sitting through that piece of crap, I wondered what on earth could have been worse... even old dubbed Kung-Fu movies on TV where the voice dubbing was so bad that the characters lips moved for 2 minutes before we hear 'Your Kung Fu is not strong, HA..' were more entertaining.
Keep selling people crap and expecting them to keep paying for it is no longer a sustainable business model..
Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me
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Using a country's name to refer to the country's government or policies is common. For example, when the news says "The UK is bombing targets in Libya" I doubt anyone thinks all 60 million of us are out there with explosives (well, except you - so let me assure you we're not).
Also sometimes the name of the capital city is used similarly - diplomatic stories often talk about "the view from Washington" and they're not referring to the Potomac.
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So the case is still ongoing, due to this even though this is new evidence, it could still be used in some way against what AFACT told the court way back in original case ie: outright falsehoods.
No time at moment, but if possible I will put a summary of what the grounds for appeal are in either a comment, or submission to mike. Until then here is an ok report from zdnet Australia regarding the appeal.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/afact-wins-iinet-high-court-hearing-339320303.htm
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"The Appeal & therefore case is not over yet, AFACT recently were granted the ability to appeal the decision to our High Court (think SCOTUS) on a few grounds."
Too much blood in my caffeine system I think!
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Anti-trust
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If I want something bad enough I will find it used somewhere.
MAFIAA the only thing you can get from me is you sucking out my dirty dog's asshole !!!
FUCK YOU
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Go find a cave.
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US sues
And by deliberately NOT talking about certain 'classified' subjects that means by a process of elimination you are telling people which things you will talk about and which you won't which means they can work out what's 'classified" and whats not..................
and buried in an unmarked . rest assured good citizen that is no longer a threat to our national security, and soon we will take his family and them until they are all .>
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grrr
And by deliberately NOT talking about certain 'classified' subjects that means by a process of elimination you are telling people which things you will talk about and which you won't which means they can work out what's 'classified" and whats not..................
-interruption by the US government - This evil terrorst has been -classified- and buried in an unmarked -classified- rest assured good citizen that is no longer a threat to our national security, and soon his family will all be -classified- until they are all -classified-
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