Australian Media Company CEO Accuses iiNet ISP Of Piracy 'Lies', Says Illegal Filesharing Is Theft
from the elegant-explanations dept
For many years, Techdirt has been covering the dogged efforts of the Australian ISP iiNet to stand up for its users against bullying by the copyright industries. After Hollywood lost its big lawsuit against iiNet back in 2012, things went quiet until recently, when the installation of a new government in Australia has led to years of careful research in the field of copyright being thrown out, and a return to dogma-based policy-making that has no time for the facts.
An interview by Luke Hopewell in Gizmodo Australia with Graham Burke, co-CEO of the Village Roadshow Australia media company, provides further evidence of how Australia is stuck in the past when it comes to copyright. It's striking how it trots out just about every tired and discredited argument in favor of harsher punishment for those allegedly sharing unauthorized files, along with the repeated claim that iiNet is lying:
"What iiNet are saying to govt is 'oh, let's just have everything available at the same time, cinema and everything and the [piracy] problem will go away. They know that's a lie because of the music industry. In June alone there was 1.2 million illegal downloads of music, and that's released at exactly the same time everywhere," Burke said.
Nobody claims that making everything available at the same time will make piracy go away completely. That's partly because the "piracy problem" in Australia as elsewhere is often more a problem of poor service, as this story from TorrentFreak last year makes clear:
News Corp owns 50% of pay television company Foxtel, the outfit with the rights to show Game of Thrones in Australia. At last count during August the company had around 2.5 million subscribers, but despite the show being legally available to them, the News Corp CEO said that 20% of Foxtel customers still chose to watch the show illegally.
This shows that even when they have access to the legal services, a significant number of people turn to illegal downloads, presumably because they are more convenient -- a pretty damning verdict on the state of the commercial offerings. Making everything available immediately won't solve that problem -- only offering well-designed legal services will -- but research shows that easy availability through legal services does cut down the level of illegal filesharing, which is presumably what iiNet is trying to get the Australian government to understand.
Next, Burke comes out with a favorite trope of the copyright maximalists:
Piracy produces less of a financial burden for the music industry, according to Burke. Producing an album only costs around $300,000 at the top end, whereas the cost of making a film in the studio model starts at $5 million, and ranges right up to $200 million for epics like Skyfall, Man of Steel and Avatar to name a few.
Of course, that makes the huge and unjustified assumption that such $200 million "epics" are an indispensable part of cinema. In fact, one of the exciting developments in recent years has been the democratization of film-making through high-quality, low-cost video technology that lets people make films for thousands, not millions, of dollars. As Burke himself points out, piracy isn't really a problem for such productions -- another argument in their favor.
He then moves on to another discredited idea -- three-strike schemes -- plus some more name-calling:
"It's sad that to forward their case, [iiNet] use what they must know is a fabric of lies. They're saying that there's no proof that graduated response works. They're instancing a number of countries where graduated response was frustrated by lobbying and the power of Google, which pays little to no tax in Australia and creates nothing," he said.
Graduated response was not "frustrated by lobbying", it failed because it is an inherently flawed idea, based on fear, not fairness. And it's telling that Burke tries to distract attention from this by introducing Google and its irrelevant tax affairs here, even going so far as to say that Google "creates nothing". Since people use its free services, and in vast numbers, they presumably see value in them, which means that it most certainly does contribute to Australia, just not in the form of making films or music, say. Bizarrely, Burke then goes to accuse iiNet of the same sin:
They [iiNet] are also demonstrating the fact that their business model is predicated on selling time, and of course they want the present regime to continue. [Pirates] have a smorgasbord of content online that they are accessing, and paying iiNet for the systems to do so. This is a company that has produced nothing in Australia."
But iiNet is not a production company, it's an ISP. It provides access to the extraordinary, multi-faceted riches of the online world, of which unauthorized content forms a very small and unimportant part, despite the copyright industries' obsession with this particular component. The amazing possibilities that access opens up to its customers is what iiNet "produces", and it arguably provides rather better value than money spent buying -- sorry, licensing -- a film or two.
Burke saves the best for last:
"If people are given elegant explanations of why [downloading content] is theft, the bulk of people will be reasonable."
Yes, it's the old favorite "filesharing is theft" argument, which is not just wrong, but so widely known to be wrong, that not even "elegant explanations" could ever make it right. Indeed, it's partly because people like Burke continue to make this ridiculous assertion -- as well as casting slurs on anyone that dares to challenge their purely self-interested view of the Internet -- that the general public holds the content industries in such low esteem.
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Filed Under: australia, copyright, graham burke, isps
Companies: iinet, village roadshow
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After all, if it's supposedly good for iiNet...
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I wish Steam would share numbers
I would take a guess that the safe and easy access to games Steam has allowed has done way more to stop piracy than any DRM ever has.
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It bears repeating
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Re: It bears repeating
The DRM alone kills most of them. I don't want to purchase something I cannot watch whenever I want, wherever I want, and on whatever I want.
Nevermind the fact that they have fractured everything to the point you need to search to find what you want from a number of sites only to find that none of the sites have what you are looking for.
Netflix works because it is a single place to go, and for the most part, it works on all my devices. I even managed to get Netflix working on my Linux devices, but it is kludgy. If they could release a Linux client, I'd be peachy.
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The world would be a better place without Cameron shitting all over the place.
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The claim that the copyright companies support local artists and local businesses. Only the artists that are supported for the music side is anything but local; the examples being used were Rihanna and Lady GaGa.
Iinet's response I rather liked...
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It's unfarthenable...unfathominable...it's baffling that these people seem to be confusing a pointer to something with the actual thing, but that's sure what it looks like.
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Sounds like they need a class in C/C++...
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Its because they think that if Google didn't point to said content, then literally nobody would be able to find said content.
Basically it would be like if suddenly map makers started marking Drug houses on maps. And instead of going after said drug houses they instead went after the map makers because "nobody could find drugs if they didn't know what house to go to".
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Google has lots of money and if you rattle them a bit they may give you a little to go away.
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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140616/11410827596/appeals-court-says-sherlock-holmes-is-still-p ublic-domain-no-matter-what-conan-doyle-estate-believes.shtml
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The 40 year max?
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"It wasn't a very good lock, so I'm not really stealing."
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"I want a monopoly, so I'm going to call it property."
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For illicit copying to be theft, the people making the copies would have to have stolen the master recording from the studio, thereby denying its use to its owner.
The idea of theft breaks down when you have a post-scarcity business model. The owner of that master can make unlimited first generation copies, and someone making a second or third generation copy doesn't deprive the owner of his property.
If illicit copying is theft, then every time you walk past a bakery or restaurant, smelling their food but not buying anything you have also committed theft -- you enjoyed the smell of the food without paying for it.
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"These guys are a bunch of dicks, so I don't respect them."
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It is fairly obvious that he would like this elegant explanation to be delivered by a judge during sentencing.
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If these explanations existed they would have been offered a long time ago. As in two or three centuries ago. Instead the copyright lobby has always gone straight to special pleading and laughable legal theories -- and that's when they don't just stick to dogmatic assertions.
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After someone breaks in and steals every master recording the studio has and takes or destroys all their production footage (so they can't reconstruct the master recording short of re-shooting the entire movie), they might discover the difference between unauthorized copying and actual theft.
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Really?
Cool! Let the fuckers cost themselves out of the market while I continue to watch indies.
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However, unlike the MPAA/RIAA, the Internet allows independent artists to publish and distribute their works, so at least that is one way in which they differ.
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Google are distributors, but not publishers. That is they provide a distributions service to anybody who wants to publish their own work. Unlike publishers, they do not choose what to publish, or demand assignment of copyright. The traditional publishers would like to classify Google as a publisher, because they would then be liable for the content on their services, but Google has chosen not to become a publisher.
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...but despite the show being legally available to them, the News Corp CEO said that 20% of Foxtel customers still chose to watch the show illegally.
If the show is legally available to them, how can them watching the show be illegal? They are paying for access to the show; why does it matter that they chose to watch it in a different way?
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Turn that around...
This also shows that even when people have access to free pirate sources as well as legal services that they have to pay for a significant number of people turn to the legal services anyway such that the providers of those services still make a considerable amount of money.
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