That’s why the news today that the ruling National Party is being sued for copyright infringement has somewhat amused the German-born businessman. The party is led by political rival Prime Minister John Key, one of Dotcom’s most vocal critics and a leader who the Megaupload founder says played a key role in having him arrested in 2012.

The lawsuit, filed by Eminem’s publishers, follows allegations that the song “Lose Yourself” was used in a 2014 New Zealand General Election advertising campaign run by the National Party.

Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated told local media that Eminem’s publishers were not approached to use the songs.

“It is both disappointing and sadly ironic that the political party responsible for championing the rights of music publishers in New Zealand by the introduction of the three strikes copyright reforms should itself have so little regard for copyright,” the publishers told 3News.

“We do not hesitate to take immediate action to protect the integrity of Eminem’s works, particularly where a party, as here, has sought to associate itself with Eminem and his work.”

The National Party insists that it obtained all necessary licenses by purchasing the track from official sources known to work with the film and entertainment industry. However, in order to try and calm down the complaint by the publishers use of the song by the party was withdrawn two weeks ago, an unusual thing to do if money had indeed been invested in a legitimate license.

“We think it’s pretty legal, we think these guys are just having a crack and have a bit of an eye for the main chance because it’s an election campaign. I think they’re just trying to shake us down for some money before the election,” said National’s campaign manager Steven Joyce.

While “pretty legal” probably isn’t the standard required by Eminem’s publishers, Kim Dotcom was already made up his mind on how to end the dispute. Posting on Twitter, the Internet Party founder didn’t let a golden opportunity pass to take a shot at his arch political rival.

“Extradite John Key,” he wrote.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

—

The Australian Government recently called for submissions into its plans to introduce a range of measures that are the long-standing dreams of the copyright lobby: ISP liability, website blocking for alleged pirate sites and graduated response.

The Government’s discussion paper specifically asked respondents to ignore other Government inquiries into copyright. This meant ignoring an inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) into copyright in the digital economy and an IT pricing inquiry. These reviews both covered important aspects of sharing culture in the 21^st century, yet they were completely ignored by the Government’s paper and respondents were instructed to ignore issues covered in them.

The ALRC review examined issues around the emerging remix culture, the ways the Australian copyright regime limits options for companies to take advantage of the digital environment and issues around fair dealing and fair use. It recommended a raft of changes to update Australian copyright law to modernize it for the digital age. Whilst the recommendations were modest, they were a step in the right direction, but this step has been ignored by the Australian Parliament.

The IT pricing inquiry held last year, looked into why Australians pay exorbitant prices for digital content, a practice that has been dubbed the Australia Tax. Entertainment and Tech companies were dragged in front of the inquiry to explain why Australians pay much more for products than residents of other countries. The review found that, compared to other countries, Australians pay up to 84% more for games, 52% more for music and 50% more for professional software than comparable countries. The result of this review was to look at ways to end geographic segmentation and to continue to turn a blind eye to people using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to circumvent the higher prices in Australia.

Between the Australia Tax and the substantially delayed release dates for TV shows and movies, Australians don’t feel too bad about accessing content by other means. According to some estimates, over 200,000 people have Netflix accounts by accessing the service through VPNs.

Pirate Party Australia (PPAU) responded to the latest review with a comprehensive paper, outlining the need to consider all of the evidence and what that evidence says about file-sharing.

To say the Government’s discussion paper was biased understates the single-mindedness of the approach being taken by the Government. A co-author of the Pirate Party submission, Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer summed it up:

The discussion paper stands out as the worst I have ever read. The Government has proposed both a graduated response scheme and website blockades without offering any evidence that either of these work. Unsurprisingly the only study the discussion paper references was commissioned by the copyright lobby and claims Australia has a high level of online copyright infringement. This calls into question the validity of the consultation process. The Government could not have arrived at these proposals if independent studies and reports had been consulted.

The entire review was aimed at protecting old media empires from the Internet. This is due in part, to the massive support given to the Liberal (Conservatives) and National Party coalition in the lead-up to the 2013 federal election which saw Murdoch owned News Ltd media, comprising most major print-news outlets in Australia, actively campaign for the in-coming Government. There is also a long history of media companies donating heavily to buy influence. Village Roadshow, one of Australia’s largest media conglomerates, has donated close to four million dollars to both major parties since 1998: in the lead up to the 2013 election alone, they donated over $300,000 to the LNP.

The sort of influence being wielded by the old media is a big part of what Pirate parties worldwide were formed to counter. The Internet gives everyone a platform that can reach millions, if the content is good enough. The money required to distribute culture is rapidly approaching zero and those who built media empires on mechanical distribution models (you know, physical copies of media, DVDs, cassettes etc) want to turn the clock back, because they are losing their power to influence society.

Much of the Pirate Party response centred on the need to allow non-commercial file-sharing and dealing with the wrong, bordering on fraudulent assumptions, the paper was based on. From the paper:

Digital communications provide challenges and opportunities. Normal interactions, such as sharing culture via the Internet, should not be threatened. Creators should seize the new opportunities provided and embrace new forms of exposure and distribution. The Pirate Party believes the law should account for the realities of this continually emerging paradigm by reducing copyright duration, promoting the remixing and reuse of existing content, and legalising all forms of non-commercial use and distribution of copyrighted materials.

The discussion paper asked, ‘What could constitute ‘reasonable steps’ for ISPs to prevent or avoid copyright infringement?’ This was of particular concern because it is aimed at legally overturning the iiNet case, which set a legal precedent that ISPs couldn’t be sued for the behavior of their users. This section was a not-so-subtle attempt to push for a graduated response (‘three strikes’) system which has been heavily criticized in a number of countries.

The agenda laid out in this discussion paper was very clear, as demonstrated by Question 6: “What matters should the Court consider when determining whether to grant an injunction to block access to a particular website?”

The Pirate Party obviously disagrees with the implication that website blocking was a foregone conclusion. Censorship is not the answer to file-sharing or any other perceived problem on the Internet. Government control of the flow of information is not consistent with an open democracy. The Pirate Party submission attacked website blocking on free speech grounds and explained how measures to block websites or implement a graduated response regime would be trivial to avoid through the use of VPNs.

On Tuesday September 9, a public forum was held into the proposed changes. The panel was stacked with industry lobbyists, no evidence was presented while the same tired arguments were trotted out to try to convince attendees that there was need to crack down on file-sharing. It wasn’t all bad though, with the host of the meeting, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, flagging a Government re-think on how to tackle piracy after the scathing responses to the review from the public.

Despite signalling a re-think, the Australian Government is still intent on implementing draconian copyright laws. Consumers may have won this round, but the fight will continue.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

But in early 2012, following a huge backlash from the public and technology sector, the dream turned into a nightmare. SOPA was not only dead and buried, but Hollywood had made new enemies and re-ignited old rivalries too.

In the period since the studios have been working hard to paint the technology sector not as foes, but as vital partners with shared interests common goals. The aggressive rhetoric employed during the SOPA lobbying effort all but disappeared and a refocused, more gentle MPAA inexplicably took its place.

Yesterday, in ongoing efforts to humanize the behind-the-scenes movie making industry as regular people out to make a living, “Beyond the Red Carpet: TV & Movie Magic Day” landed on Capitol Hill.

Among other things, the event aimed to show lawmakers that those involved in the movie making process are not only vital to the economy, but are the real victims when it comes to piracy. The message is laid out in this infographic from the Creative Rights Caucus.

As co-chair of the caucus, U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif. will be hoping to maintain momentum on issues such as tax incentives to keep film production in California, but yesterday the words of MPAA CEO Chris Dodd provided the most food for thought.

In comments to The Wrap, Dodd said that the MPAA is no longer seeking anti-piracy legislation from Congress.

“The world is changing at warp speed. We are not going to legislate or litigate our way out of it,” Dodd said.

For an organization that has spent more than a decade and a half tightening up ‘Internet’ copyright law in its favor, the admission is certainly a notable one, especially when the favored alternatives now include winning hearts and minds through education.

“We are going to innovate our way out by educating people about the hard work of people,” the MPAA CEO said.

“In this space everyone has to contribute to ensure that peoples’ content can be respected. Instead of finger pointing at everybody and arresting 14-year olds, the answer is making our product accessible in as many formats and distributive services as possible at price points they can afford. We are discovering that works.”

This tacit admission, that the industry itself has contributed to the piracy problems it faces today, is an interesting move. Over in Australia content providers and distributors have also been verbalizing the same shortcomings and they too have offered promises to remedy the situation.

But the development of new services doesn’t exist in a vacuum and time and again, across the United States to Europe and beyond, the insistence by Hollywood is that for legal services to flourish, use of pirate sources must be tackled, if not through legislation, by other means.

And here’s the key. Successfully humanizing the industry with lawmakers will provide Hollywood with much-needed momentum to push along its agenda of cooperation with its technology-focused partners.

ISPs will be encouraged to engage fully with the six-strikes “educational” program currently underway across America and advertising companies and big brands will be reminded to further hone their systems to keep revenue away from pirate sites.

But perhaps the more pressing efforts will entail bringing companies like Google on board. Voluntary agreements with the search sector can certainly be influenced by those on Capitol Hill, but with Google’s insistence that Hollywood moves first, by providing content in a convenient manner at a fair price, the ball is back in the movie industry’s court.

Dodd, however, is now promising just that, so things should start to get interesting. And in the meantime the MPAA can continue to fund groups such as the Copyright Alliance, a non-profit which regularly testifies before Congress on copyright and anti-piracy matters and of which the MPAA is a founding member.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Not only has the chasm between some of the key ISPs and rightsholders remained large, but even those expected to be on the same page have been showing signs of division. The two key government ministers in the debate, Malcolm Turnbull and George Brandis, last week contradicted each other over who should pick up the tab for any online piracy scheme.

Brandis balked at the idea of ISPs being “innocent bystanders” in respect of piracy, instead insisting that their role in infringement must lead to them financially supporting rightsholders. Turnball, on the other hand, said that he didn’t find that a “persuasive argument.”

But if Turnbull thought he was only at odds with Brandis, he’s now been shown as out of touch when it comes to rightsholders. The minister recently said that if rightsholders want to send a message that they’re serious over piracy, they need to strategically sue a few people – “moms and dads and students”.

As expected the comments weren’t well received by the public, but now the very people Turnbull said should take action have dismissed the idea as unworkable.

Speaking with Fairfax Media, Village Roadshow chief Graham Burke said that suing people only makes lawyers rich, but above all it simply doesn’t work.

“We don’t want to sue 16-year-olds or mums and dads. It takes 18 months to go through the courts and all that does is make lawyers rich and clog the court system. It’s not effective,” Burke said.

Village Roadshow famously dragged local ISP iiNet through the courts for many years over the issue of service provider liability. They not only lost that case, but also sparked a rift between rightsholders and iiNet that continues today, often being played out in public.

Still, at some point all sides will have to come to the table. Despite the disputes, Burke and Turnbull are on the same page when it comes to ISPs being involved in an educational program to deter would-be pirates, and punish them if necessary. Both believe that Australia needs a three-strikes style system to deter online infringement, ending in Internet throttling for the most persistent infringers.

However, if current indications are anything to go by, there is a lot of work still to be done before all parties are on the same page. Whether consensus will be reached voluntarily of by force remains to be seen.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Instead of pure head-on attacks against websites, their finances are being undermined through deals with advertisers and their sites blocked online. Rather than attempting to batter ISPs into submission through the courts, partnerships are sought instead. And when it comes to the end user, it’s largely education and more education.

In Australia the debate is familiar. On top of a legal framework to have websites blocked at network level, rightsholders are now seeking friendly cooperation from ISPs in order to deliver a message to subscribers that content should be purchased, not pirated.

The debate is well underway with the government seeking input from interested parties. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been putting pressure on rightsholders to ramp up their game in respect of pricing and availability too, which is definitely a step in the right direction.

But yesterday, during a televised interview with Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, Turnbull made comments that transport the debate back many years, raising the specter of tough punitive action to send an anti-piracy message.

At first things started as expected, with the Minister telling Sky that people need to be educated. He raised the usual shoplifting and stealing analogies, noting that taking content from supermarkets is no different from downloading content online.

Then, after outlining New Zealand’s “three strikes” system, he noted that if content owners are suffering losses, then it should be them who foot the bill for any introduced anti-piracy measures. Content owners aside, few would disagree there.

Turnbull also noted that disconnections for persistently pirating Internet users would be met with a lot of resistance so were probably off the table, but then the bombshell.

“Rightsholders are not keen on taking people to court, because it doesn’t look good, because it’s bad publicity. What happens if the person you sue is a single mother, what happens if it’s a teenager, what happens if it’s a retiree on a low income?” Turnbull said.

“The bottom line is though, rightsholders are going to have to be tactical about who they take to court, who they want to sue.”

Education, it seems, only goes so far in Turnbull’s eyes. In addition there will need to be punishments for those who don’t get the message and that in turn will help to solve the problem.

“What you do is that when you raise awareness of this, and as people recognize that there is a risk that they will be sued, and have to pay for what they have stolen, then the level of infringement and theft will decline,” the Minister said.

So who should the rightsholders “strategically” target?

“It is absolutely critical that rightsholders…are prepared to actually roll their sleeves up and take on individuals. They have got to be prepared to sue people. Sue moms and dads and students who are stealing their content. They can’t expect everybody else to do that for them,” Turnbull said.

This kind of aggression from a key Minister in this debate is bound to raise alarm bells. As rightholders head down the cooperation and education route, here is a clear sign that the government thinks that yet more legal action against the public will solve the problem.

It won’t, and ISPs such as iiNet almost certainly won’t like the sound of this either. Whether this will hurt cooperation moving forward remains to be seen, but it’s likely to paint a picture of a government and an industry holding up new carrots, but keeping the same old tired stick in reserve, just in case.

The whole interview can be seen here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Much of the negotiations have Attorney-General George Brandis at their core, with the Senator regularly being accused of lacking transparency.

This week Aussie news outlet Crikey obtained (subscription) a leaked copy of a discussion paper in which Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull seek industry feedback on new anti-piracy proposals.

The discussion paper

Dated July 2014, the paper begins by outlining the Government’s perception of the piracy threat, noting that all players – from content creators to ISPs and consumers – have a role to play in reducing the illegal consumption of content.

It continues with details of schemes operating in the United States (Six-Strikes), UK (VCAP) and New Zealand which aim to develop consumer attitudes through education and mitigation. Inevitably, however, the paper turns to legislation, specifically what can be tweaked in order to give movie studios and record labels the tools they need to reduce infringement

ISP liability

The 2012 High Court ruling in the iiNet case signaled the end of movie and TV studio litigation against service providers. With their dream of holding ISPs responsible for the actions of their pirating users in tatters, copyright holders would need new tools to pursue their aims. It’s clear that Brandis now wants to provide those via a change in the law.

“The Government believes that even when an ISP does not have a direct power to prevent a person from doing a particular infringing act, there still may be reasonable steps that can be taken by the ISP to discourage or reduce online copyright infringement,” the paper reads.

“Extending authorization liability is essential to ensuring the existence of an effective legal framework that encourages industry cooperation and functions as originally intended, and is consistent with Australia’s international obligations.”

“The Government is looking to industry to reach agreement on appropriate industry schemes or commercial arrangements on what would constitute ‘reasonable steps’ to be taken by ISPs,” the paper notes.

Website blocking

Given several signals on the topic earlier this year, it comes as no surprise that website blocking is under serious consideration. The paper outlines blocking mechanisms in Europe, particularly the UK and Ireland, which allow for court injunctions to be issued against ISPs.

The Irish model, which has already blocked sites including The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, is of special interest to the Australian Government, since proving that an ISP had knowledge of infringing conduct is not required to obtain an injunction.

“A similar provision in Australian law could enable rights holders to take action to block access to a website offering infringing material, without the need to establish that a particular ISP authorized an infringement,” the paper notes, adding that such provisions would only apply to websites outside Aussie jurisdiction.

It’s likely that most copyright holders will be largely in favor of the Government’s proposals on the points detailed above, but whether ISPs will share their enthusiasm remains to be seen.

Stakeholders are expected to return their submissions by Monday 25th August.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Hadopi, the authority responsible for administering the scheme, has just published its latest report presenting its key figures to July 1 this year and they make interesting reading.

The cornerstone of the scheme is the warning system, with great importance attached to the first notices sent to subscribers. If the anti-infringement message can be successfully delivered at this stage, fewer follow-ups will be required.

Hadopi reveals that since it sent the very first warning notice in 2009, the agency has gone on to send 3,249,481 first warnings to Internet subscribers. It’s a sizable amount that represents almost 9% of all Internet users in France.

The big question, however, is how many took action to avoid receiving a second warning. According to Hadopi, during the same period it sent 333,723 second phase warnings by regular mail, a re-offending rate of just over 10%.

Those who receive first and second warnings but still don’t get the message go on to receive a third notice. Hadopi says that a total of 1,502 Internet subscribers received three warnings, just 0.45% of those who were sent a second.

The agency’s figures state that a large proportion of this group, 1,289 overall, had their cases examined by Hadopi’s committee. Of these, 116 cases went before a judge. Most received yet another warning.

Also of interest are the reactions of 31,379 subscribers who telephoned Hadopi after receiving an infringement notice.

According to the agency, 35% “spontaneously agreed” the accuracy of the facts set out in their warnings, with around 25% engaging or offering to take measures to avoid content being made available from their connections in the future. Reportedly less than 1% challenged the facts as laid out.

On the education front, over the past six months around 72,000 users have accessed an information video on the Hadopi website, while 49,000 sought information on what to do after receiving a warning.

The figures presented by Hadopi French, (pdf) clearly show a low re-offending rate, with an impressive gap between those receiving first and second warnings. Hadopi sees this as an indicator of the system’s success, although there is always the possibility that subscribers wised-up on security and safer methods of downloading after getting the first notice.

That being said, the agency counters this notion by citing figures from a small poll carried out among letter recipients which found that 73% of those who received a warning did not subsequently shift to another method of illegal downloading. However, that doesn’t mean they all jumped on the iTunes bandwagon either.

“Receiving a warning does not result in a massive shift towards legal offers,” Hadopi explains.

Overall, 23% of respondents who received a warning said they went on to use a legal service. That suggests that three quarters simply dropped off the media consumption radar altogether, which doesn’t sound like a realistic proposition.

Next year will see half a decade of graduated response in France. Will media sales have gone through the roof as a result? Time will tell, but it seems highly unlikely.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The decision did nothing to change the positions of either company and in recent weeks a very public dispute broke out between iiNet Chief Regulatory Officer Steve Dalby and Village Roadshow co-CEO Graham Burke. The topic? The former’s continued but now legally supported refusal to take responsibility the activities of its customers.

While some may have a level of sympathy with Burke’s predicament, retreading old ground over ISP liability can hardly be the solution. Today even more inflammables were thrown onto the fire.

Should a knife manufacturer be held responsible for what happened in the Psycho shower scene? Should Ford be held liable for a drunk driver piloting one of their vehicles? These rhetorical questions have well-trodden answers, but Burke hasn’t been paying attention.

In a new interview with CNET, Burke again attacked Dalby, accusing him of “distorting the picture” in the face of the Village Roadshow chief’s self-claimed fairness.

“For him to be continuing to distort the picture when he clearly knows otherwise is very depressing,” Burke said. “I’m dealing with it in a transparent and open and honest way and I wished we could get that from iiNet.”

And then the bombshell.

“iiNet are selling a car which happens to kill people on the roads, so they should be paying towards that. It’s the car that’s faulty. In this instance it’s the fault of the car, not the driver. They’re providing a service which enables people to steal other people’s property, so…some of the costs should be theirs,” Burke said.

“All Mr Dalby wants is to continue to have this extraordinary smorgasbord of product that’s made by creative people, with the sweat of their passion and labors, and that he can have a mechanism where he can be the conduit that provides that free and he clips the ticket. He’s complicit.”

Clearly there is nothing inherently faulty with iiNet’s service. It’s essentially an empty pipe that the customer can fill in the manner of his choosing, and one that’s no more broken than the postal or telephone systems that preceded it. Nevertheless, Burke still wants to shoot the messenger and Dalby is having none of it.

There can be no doubt that Village Roadshow and its Hollywood affiliates feel they have a big problem to solve, but with arguments like these it’s easy to see how the dispute with iiNet has gone on for so long. Indeed, there appears to have been no progress made in half a decade.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the government will step in with the three strikes system that Burke is pushing hard for. If that happens, Burke will have “won”, but when that victory will arrive is another matter entirely, raising the specter of yet more out-of-date legislation before it even arrives.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The party is currently preparing for the general election in September. While Dotcom will not be on the voting ballot himself, he remains one of the main influencers of the party’s policy.

As the name suggests, many of the party’s core issues revolve around the Internet, copyright included. Today the Internet Party released a draft of its copyright policy with several suggestions for an overhaul of current legislation.

One of the key issues the Internet Party wants to change is the liability New Zealanders face for using VPN services and other circumvention tools to access legal content. At the moment, it is illegal for them to stream content from U.S-based Hulu and Netflix via proxies or VPNs.

TorrentFreak spoke with Kim Dotcom who notes that consumers shouldn’t be punished for the inability of Hollywood to release its content globally. Dotcom hopes that these changes will eventually put a stop to the unnecessary release delays.

“The primary goal of this policy is to force copyright holders to release their content globally, without geographical restrictions. If a TV-show is not available in New Zealand for three months after the U.S. release, there should be no enforcement during this period,” Dotcom tells us.

“Content owners should be held responsible, not the public. The ‘geo blocking’ proposal forces Hollywood to change its business model and release its content worldwide without delays,” he adds.

Dotcom hopes that the Internet Party proposal will serve as model for future copyright law that will eventually be adopted around the world.

Internet Party leader Laila Harré notes that the current situation is unmanageable. The Internet has made it possible to release content worldwide without any delays, but content owners refuse to give consumers what they want.

“A Kiwi who wants to watch the latest season of first run TV shows like Games of Thrones, for example, shouldn’t be forced to jump through hoops to access what should be legally and easily available online. It’s a ridiculous situation in this day and age,” Harré notes.

Thus far most progress has subsequently been drawn in the opposite direction. In an attempt to crack down on people who bypass geo restrictions, Hulu recently started to ban all visitors who use a VPN connection.

Instead of fighting circumvention, the Internet Party believes that copyright holders should address the root of the problem themselves. Making sure that the latest TV-shows can be watched legally is a must, and although some progress has been made over the years, the legal options are still lacking.

“Some excellent work has been done by some copyright owners and content providers to make good legal options available to New Zealanders. But there’s still a long way to go, especially for some types of content such as globally popular first run television shows broadcast overseas but not available in New Zealand for weeks or months, if at all,” Harré says.

Aside from geo blocking issues, the Internet Party also wants to abolish the Internet disconnection sanction available under New Zealand’s “three-strikes” law, and strengthen the “safe harbor” provisions for Internet services to prevent abuse by copyright holders.

The full draft of the Internet Party’s copyright and open research policy is available here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

If the government is to be believed, many of the issues could be solved if copyright holders and Internet service providers would only shake hands, sit down for lunch, and agree on the best way to punish their errant subscribers. Trouble is, they’ve tried that, it didn’t work, and Hollywood – via local movie company Village Roadshow – ended up suing ISP iiNet.

The record showed that iiNet won that battle in a big way, leaving Hollywood licking its wounds and banking on a return to voluntary discussions. Sadly, as recently confirmed in the senate, those talks are dead, but that hasn’t stopped both iiNet and Village Roadshow making their feelings known.

Last week iiNet Chief Regulatory Officer Steve Dalby urged his customers to fight back against attempts to introduce fresh legislation, something which prompted Village Roadshow co-CEO Graham Burke to make his own voice heard. In an interview with Gizmodo yesterday, on more than one occasion Burke accused iiNet of lying over piracy.

Outrageous liars – the gloves are off

“It’s sad that to forward their case, [iiNet] use what they must know is a fabric of lies,” Burke said.

“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, going on to attack Dalby directly.

“Some of the stuff Steve Dalby has said is just outrageous, and he’s got to know its outrageous too,” Burke said.

Not content with letting Burke have the last word, after the publication of the Gizmodo piece Dalby fired back, accusing the CEO of calling Australians “content thieves” without revealing their huge contribution to the industry.

The fightback – outrageous!

“Perhaps we’ve touched a nerve,” Dalby began. “Mr Burke is obviously concerned about the increasing threat to his ‘middle-man’ status by the changes in technology and has failed to mention his colleague Simon Bush’s comments that the (Aust Home Entertainment Distributor’s Assoc) figures showed that ‘on a per capita basis Australia is second only to the United States in digital consumer revenues’.”

“So Australians are not only the worst pirates, but one of their best performing markets. Outrageous!” Dalby said.

Clearly riled at being described as “outrageous”, Dalby suggested that Burke should look in the mirror.

“Mr Burke suggests that my comments are outrageous. I’m sure he doesn’t like us pointing out some of the outrageous suggestions from his own industry. You know … stuff like ‘You wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a handbag’.”

“It’s not our job to catch car thieves. It’s not our job to catch bag-snatchers. It’s not our job to stop on-line infringers. Whoa ! Outrageous!” Dalby fired back.

Responding to Burke’s earlier claim that iiNet makes the most money from pirating customers so has a clear incentive to let them continue, Dalby said that Burke doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Movie boss is ignorant

“Mr Burke also shows his ignorance of the ISP revenue model. Not only is he totally wrong, but I think he fails to be outrageous. The ISP subscription model, commonly in place in Australia, does not charge by the download, as he suggests, it is a fixed fee per month. In that model ( a bit like gym membership) the less data a customer uses, the more profitable they are,” Dalby explained.

“This was an argument that failed the logic test in the High Court, but don’t let that get in the way of your outrage Mr Burke.”

And then, the inevitable. Local companies and anti-piracy outfits in piracy disputes often claim to be protecting local artists, yet as we saw in New Zealand, when subscribers got their first strike notices they were for artists like Rihanna and Lady GaGa. This type of scenario has not escaped the iiNet man.

Doing Hollywood’s bidding

“Finally, if this is all about protecting 906,000 Aussie jobs why is it that not one single example of Aussie content ever gets a mention. It’s always about American movies, music and TV,” Dalby said.

“If you want to protect Aussie jobs, Mr Burke, how about you turn up to the industry talks and put something on the table? Where is the quid-pro-quo for Australian ISPs to do the bidding of your American masters?”

“No. I thought not,” Dalby concludes.

The final bell – for now

It’s pretty rare these days to see this kind of public dueling, but after the legal trauma Hollywood and Village Roadshow put iiNet through, it’s not really a surprise that diplomacy is in tatters. Voluntary agreement still possible this year? Let’s get them on Jerry Springer to find out.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.