[LINK] Brandis loves companies, hates people

[Jan Whitaker]

At 04:13 PM 14/02/2014, Roger Clarke wrote:
>[Even worse than merely increasing corporate welfare, the Govt has:
>-   adopted the industry's blatantly illogical 'theft' and 'piracy'
>      rhetoric in relation to copyright infringement, and
>-   proposes to impose police functions on ISPs.
>
>[The one piece of good news is that there's a chance this could
>involve court-issued injunctions, which would force corporations to
>produce evidence, and should therefore filter out large numbers of
>spurious take-down notices.]


And the Age's version:


George Brandis signals government crackdown on online piracy

Matthew Knott
Published: February 14, 2014 - 1:15PM

The Abbott government is considering a major crackdown on online 
piracy, including forcing internet service providers to block 
websites that allow users to illegally stream or download movies, 
music and television shows.

The federal government is also considering implementing a "graduated 
response scheme" that could lead to consumers' internet accounts 
being temporarily suspended if they ignore notifications to stop 
downloading illegal content.

If implemented, the reforms could see popular file sharing sites such 
as The Pirate Bay blocked by some internet service providers.

Attorney-General George Brandis flagged the changes in a major speech 
to the Australian Digital Alliance forum on Friday.

"The government will be considering possible mechanisms to provide a 
legal incentive for an internet service provider to cooperate with 
copyright owners in preventing infringement on their systems and 
networks," Mr Brandis said.

"This may include looking carefully at the merits of a scheme whereby 
ISPs are required to issue graduated warnings to consumers who are 
using websites to facilitate piracy. This is a complex reform 
proposal, and how it is paid for is one of the principal unresolved issues."

He continued: "Another option that some stakeholders have raised with 
me is to provide the Federal Court with explicit powers to provide 
for third party injunctions against ISPs, which will ultimately 
require ISPs to take down websites hosting infringing content."
[uh, this assumes the ISP hosts the content, otherwise, there's no 
way for them to "take down websites" - so he is showing his ignorance 
with this quote.]

Such measures would be welcomed by entertainment companies and 
sections of the artistic community, but are likely to prove 
controversial among internet users and providers.

Australians are among the most avid users of pirating websites in the 
world. For example, Australians accounted for 16 per cent of all 
illegal downloads of television program Breaking Bad.

In his speech Mr Brandis said he stood firmly on the side of content 
creators in the copyright debate.

"I firmly believe the fundamental principles of copyright law, the 
protection of rights of creators and owners did not change with the 
advent of the internet and they will not change with the invention of 
new technologies."

He described the Copyright Act as "overly long, unnecessarily 
complex, often comically outdated and all too often, in its 
administration, pointlessly bureaucratic".

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This story was found at: 
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/george-brandis-signals-government-crackdown-on-online-piracy-20140214-32q62.html 





Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how 
do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
~Margaret Atwood, writer

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