Anti-piracy laws will increase piracy, says Budde

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blog It’s no secret that a large percentage of the technology sector thinks that the current proposal by Federal Attorney-General George Brandis (pictured) to crack down on Internet piracy will have little impact, given that most such attempts in the fast have broadly failed, and the commonly held belief that commercial avenues represent the best way to handle the situation. However, some commentators feel things will go still further. Veteran telecommunications analyst Paul Budde wrote this morning on his blog that he expects the anti-piracy measures to actually increase piracy. His thoughts (we recommend you click here for the full article):

“As has been argued by many people around the world, companies – and indeed whole sectors – will need to transform themselves in the wake of the technical changes that are now underpinning the digital economy. Many organisations that have embarked on this have had to change their old business models in order to operate successfully in this new economy. Singling out certain sectors and making it unnecessary for them to change by giving their old business models special legal protection (in the case of copyrights, for instance, some of that protection is based on laws dating back to the 17th century) is not going to solve the problem. People clearly will continue to see this as unfair and as a result piracy will actually increase.

The proposed rules will not address the underlying reasons Australians resort to content piracy and, unless the government addresses those issues as well, piracy will simply increase as technology makes it easier for people to bypass the unfair practices of the content providers.”

It’s hard not to agree with Budde’s comments. Piracy has been successfully addressed in other content industries — music through iTunes and streaming music services like Spotify, gaming through Steam and the online platforms of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, and books through Amazon, Apple and Google. It’s hard not to make an argument that Australians would certainly pay a very decent amount of money for much of the filmed content they’re currently pirating — if that content was more readily available. Just the prospect of a “Steam for TV shows and movies” is enough for most of us to think about pulling out our credit card and plonking it down on the digital table.

I’m not sure if I agree with Budde that the punitive measures being proposed by Brandis (warning and disconnecting users and blocking websites) will actually increase Internet piracy in Australia. But I am pretty sure that they won’t do much to solve the problem, especially in the long term.

Image credit: Parliamentary Broadcasting

22 COMMENTS

  1. As I understand it, the TPP has very little to do with trade and much more to do with requiring the government to pass laws such as this. I don’t understand why the TPP is not the subject of greater scrutiny in Australia. Perhaps because the big media companies here want what’s in it??

    • “I don’t understand why the TPP is not the subject of greater scrutiny in Australia”.

      Because this ‘government’ isn’t interested in transparency (though Labor was also secretive). If the public knew the extent of what was in the TPP (ie, not in Australia’s interest), there would be rioting in the streets! Copyright is just the tip of the iceberg.

      About the only way we’ll get any real info on this is if there is a future Snowden leak.

  2. “I’m not sure if I agree with Budde that the punitive measures being proposed by Brandis will actually increase Internet piracy in Australia”.

    It may well. Those that download will continue to do so, perhaps taking extra precautions, and those that don’t will be alerted to the possibility as the issue gets more prominence in the media – The Streisand Effect.

    The only way to reduce downloads is, as everyone knows, to make the content available immediately, widely and at a reasonable price. But this ain’t gonna happen any time soon in this country due to vested interests.

    • “to make the content available immediately, widely and at a reasonable price”
      This x100. They just can’t seem to grasp that concept can they! The evidence is there.

    • I expect it will increase piracy quite considerably. 1 Gbps speeds are going to allow people to download what they want, when they want, and do so very fast. They wont be online and connected to a swarm long enough to get caught.

      Whether you agree with downloading shows and/or movies is a personal call, but the whole world is making it so much easier to access the content. So what does the industry think will happen? That we’re suddenly going to revert to dialup speeds, or that VPN’s will magically disappear?

      Connect to a swarm with a 1 Gbps connection and you have the latest episode of a popular program inside of 5 minutes. How do you stop that?

      • > Connect to a swarm with a 1 Gbps connection and you have the latest episode of a popular program inside of 5 minutes. How do you stop that?

        On my current connection and its 2 MB/s that’s 600 MB in five minutes, which should be well more than enough for 45 minutes of H.265 (or even H.264) in HD. So if that’s the use case then it’s hardly going to make a difference, is it now? The premise of having 1 Gbps lies, to a greater extent, in other directions. 1 Gbps ain’t for content consumption in the iTunes/FOXTEL model on current devices. The coalition’s MTM thing should be quite sufficient for simple SD/HD media distribution, so at least they get a check mark for that. Is that worth $29.5 billion or $41 billion? No.

        • Definitely quink, I was just pointing out that with faster speeds you’re going to leave far less fingerprints as the bandwidth pipes catch up. In theory, you should be able to DL 120 mb/s on a 1 Gbps connection, so you’re in and out very quickly.

          In reality you wont see that, but it should beconsiderably faster than now which was my point. Which makes piracy easier when getting caught is harder.

          Is that the sole benefit from faster speeds? Far from it. But in the contect of this story it has to be considered.

    • I feel it will increase piracy.
      If they bring this stuff in, people are going to start paying for VPN’s (more people).
      You only have one chance to get money from somebody, if they pay for a VPN they are going to maximise their utility of that and as such pirate all the things!

      Getting the content by legal means needs to be just about easy as it is to pirate it.

      Take a look at GOG, they do it well, simple login, add to cart, boom its yours with no drm, not tied to any particular platform or magic application.

      I’m not a big consumer of media and I’m a notorious tightass when it comes to spending money on entertainment. But they got me to sign up and spend $5 on simcity 4 and I had it on my linux PC in under 5 minutes without needing to install any bloated badly written crap. If you do the business model right, you can sell a decade old game to a person who doesn’t spend money on games.

    • Anyone lucky enough to have NBN fibre connected prior to the MTM “option” becoming the official model

  3. deleted – I re-read the Paul Budde quote and now disagree with what I originally posted…

  4. Have sent an email to Senator Brandis in regards to this topic will need to keep checking my Spam folder for the reply.

  5. @ Federal Attorney-General George Brandis

    Sir,
    Would you be so kind as to provide a link as to where I can obtain / view a legal version of Game of Thrones in Full H.D that’s 1080p

    Eagerly awaiting your reply
    Mike

  6. While I agree that the TPP has always been a big, dark secret, Labor attempted to be transparent, unlike this lot who much prefer their faecal flavoured propaganda.

  7. Myself and the other disgruntled people will make sure that anti-piracy laws will increase piracy.

    Just because we hate you money grubbing hollywood fucks.

    • Eh, I don’t mind the Hollywood ones, cooperating with Netflix as they are, as much as I do the local ones. The US cable providers, on the other hand, oh dear do I hate them.

  8. And even if they succeed to the wildest of their expectation, FOXTEL will still be but a drop in the ocean compared to what is on YouTube in particular. Game of Thrones or no Game of Thrones. I can survive without it. YouTube and Steam have shown a model that allows the three guys in the garage how to reach an audience of millions where the only entry criteria is to provide entertainment.

    As entertainment is commoditised, democratised even, the per unit cost drops and drops. If they want to do three strikes, let them go ahead. Worst comes to worst, there are billions of minutes of entertainment on YouTube, on Steam and Netflix and on websites and in your public library that it doesn’t make one iota of difference. Waste of taxpayer money? Sure. Maybe the monument they have built towards this idiocy will serve as an even more excellent vantage point as they stare from its peak into the deep, deep abyss of just how wrong they were.

    All they will accomplish in the long run is making “their” content utterly irrelevant. Which is 100% just fine by me.

  9. “Just the prospect of a “Steam for TV shows and movies” is enough for most of us to think about pulling out our credit card and plonking it down on the digital table.”

    /nods

    Not much else you can say about it really. It’s a shame George has his bald head so far up his arse he can’t see that…

  10. “I can’t think of any other circumstance where you would say ‘I think you charge too much for this product therefore it is legitimate to steal it’,”

    “There’s a moral disconnect there which I just don’t get.”

    That is Bruce Meagher of Foxtel in response to this attitude as it pertains to GoT.

    So unsurprisingly, when questioned about their tyrannical pricing regime, Foxtel’s attitude is “Eat shit, the AG is on my side.”

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