During the week Australia’s Federal Court handed down a
decision in favour of the owners of the movie Dallas Buying Club, against a
small group of internet providers. As a consequence the Internet Service
Provides will have to hand over the names and addresses of their customers who
have shared the movie illegally online.
I have been reading articles about what the decision means
for pirates in Australia. I found this response in a Sunday newspaper which
explains exactly how the author feels about piracy and the possible
consequences for those who engage in illegal downloading. I agree with
author in that piracy isn’t taken seriously by the authorities who are rightfully
so more interested in other more serious offences. In Australia piracy has
become a way of life and because someone can illegally download doesn’t make it
right. Paid content is cheaper to buy and easier to access than fluff around with
illegal downloading for those of us not in the know about technology. Like the author,
I too know people who seem to watch content available before the due date.
It will be interesting to see whether this QC is right and
what kind of action the owners of Dallas Buyer’s Club take. Personally, I
believe the only way to deter Australian pirates is too make the cheap legal
content available in other countries like the US available in Australia and to
educate Internet users about the consequences of their actions other than legal action. Research has shown streaming
services like Netflix offering cheap all you can watch content are making a
difference to consumer’s viewing habits and slowing down the pirates. So
perhaps the energy of the Government and others interested in combating illegal downloading should really examine the way in which content should be supplied in Australia.
I have circulated some newspaper articles about the decision
on Google +.
Warning Shot For Pirates by Tom Percy published in The Sunday Times 12
April 2015. (No copyright infringement intended)
You see a lot of
different things when you are down at the law courts every day. From hardened
criminals being dealt with for the most hideous crimes, right through to people
being prosecuted for the most trifling offences imaginable.
But there is one thing
I’ve yet to see, someone facing the stripes for illegally downloading
copyrighted material or possessing bogie CD’s or DVD’s. Unless they contain
pornographic material the authorities never seem interested.
Police execute search
warrants on dozens of properties around Perth everyday looking for drugs,
firearms or evidence of other crimes and inevitably must come across a plethora
of Bali DVDs, CD’s or dodgy downloads. But no charges are ever pressed.
Every day planeloads
of tourist go through Perth airport with contraband copies of their favourite
music and movie recordings, None ever seems to be confiscated or referred to
the courts.
Since the computer age
came upon us, it’s been considered fair game, in some quarters, to download
anything you can get your hands on from the net without paying for it, if you
are so inclined.
Not that it isn’t an
offence. Anyone who legitimately rents a DVD will be aware of the dire warning
that precedes the movie, likening the access of pirating to stealing.
Which of course it is.
And then there are no
shortages of laws, federal and state, that could be used to prosecute these
offences. But somehow it never seems to happen.
Perhaps Customs and
cyber-monitoring authorities have their time cut out dealing with the bigger
fish-drugs, serious porn and the like.
It would hardly be a
productive use of resources to prosecute anyone who brought a few episodes of
Game of Thrones back from the Kuta markets.
Or who had once
downloaded some popular CDs from Limewire or more important equivalents. But
that hardly makes it any more acceptable. I always suspected that the day might
come when a harder line might come into play.
And that may well have
arrived this week, with the decision of the Federal Court in the Dallas Buying
Club case, in which a number of internet provides have been ordered to hand
over details of clients who may have been downloading illicit copyright
material.
It certainly sent a
shiver through few of my more technologically savvy colleagues who are inclined
to watch the latest releases well before they come on the market. Personally,
as a technology challenged sexagenarian, I have enough difficulty doing it
legally through iTunes and the modest $1.11 fee you pay made it hardly worth
the trouble to do it on the sly.
In the US the
penalties are condign. Offenders can face claim from the distributors of tens
of thousands of dollars for a single movie.
In Australia, I
suspect, it would probably on cost you the price of the legal download if the
rightful owners could be bothered pursuing you. And while I also suspect they
would rarely bother, the decision in the Dallas Byers Club has fired shots across those so inclined.
It may well mark the
beginning of a new approach by the court, and an incentive to the authorities
to get serious about CD, DVD and internet piracy generally. And probably not
before time.
Any law that isn’t
rigorously applied and prosecuted isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
If you have been
taking your chances on getting away with it, you might want to carefully
rethink your approach.
While it might not yet
be time to pack you toothbrush for Casuarina and the consequences of you
details becoming available might be fraught more with embarrassment fraught
with dire financial or penal sanctions. I sense the tide has turned and it
might not be long before I see some of you down in the salubrious waiting areas
of the Central Law Courts.
