Pirates Beware

[Doc63]

No, its not massive news, by any definition (my reference to porn was my lame attempt at humour).

My point is, as greedy as the litigants are, we are actually taking something we should be paying for for free.

We download as much as anyone in this household, but if it all ended tomorrow, it wouldn't worry me. The judge wouldn't have had to say "you may prosecute for fair recompense and the court will assist with that, but you may not use that as an excuse to take people's houses away over something worth $10. You must be reasonable" if we actually paid for it in the first place.

[Tannin]

That's rubbish Doc. The situation prior to this verdict was that people guilty of a very, very minor offence indeed, people who harmed no-one, were having their entire lives ruined by insanely vicious and greedy lawyer-vultures.

The situation now is that these people are looking at a penalty proportionate to the offence.

Remember two things:

First, the companies the lawyer-vultures represent lost nothing. In most cases they didn't even lose a sale, as the downloaded product was not available for sale in this market, or not available in a form suitable for the consumer (a copy-protected music CD, for example, is completely useless to someone who wants to listen to a song while jogging), and if it was available, as we know from a vast amount of research, the vast majority of the downloaders wouldn't have bought it anyway. (People only shell out money for things they really want to watch or listen to. Most of the people who will download a given tune if it's free wouldn't bother if there was a cost attached: only a small number happen to like that particular tune enough to want to pay for it. The revenue forgone by the copyright holder, in other words, is a small fraction of the number of downloads multiplied by the price of the item, typically around 5-10%.)

Second, the offence is trivially minor. The market value of the item in question is usually tiny, typically less than $10. For offences that small, the generally accepted penalty is also small. For not putting $10 in a parking ticket machine, for example, the fine is about $130. For not buying a $9 train ticket, you get fined a couple of hundred.

But in this case, the lawyer-vultures were claiming tens of thousands of dollars for a $10 offence. In the States, they were taking people's houses away and wrecking their entire lives. In the US people were getting a bigger penalty for watching a $10 movie than they get for murder.

This verdict puts an end to that insanity, at least in Australia, and it is expected that it will provide a lead to other countries too. It is indeed big news.

(Disclaimer: I have no personal interest at stake. I have zero interest in downloading music and even less in American movies. But, as should any intelligent citizen, I have a profound interest in civic fairness and the healthy operation of the justice system.)

[Doc63]

I actually agree with you Tannin.

But, most people in Australia download programs that are either on Foxtel, or, on free to air, but aired much later than in the U.S.

My family fall in both of those categories. I'm too tight to subscribe to Foxtel (I'd have to give up my Legends Membership), and I want to watch Game of Thrones before some bozo tells me what happened.

I agree, threatening to financially wipe people out for downloading something that would have cost them $10 to buy was pure greed, and its a good thing that it has been knocked on the head, for now.

Now, people who download every episode of a series, or multiple series, could be up for more I suppose. Could this ruling mean that they would be up for the cost of the DVD set? If that is the case, that could be about $50 per set. We are the biggest down-loaders in the world - some people could be up for hundreds.

[Dave The Man]

[Tannin]

[Tannin]

Foxtel is dead in the water.

They moved heaven and earth to destroy the NBN and save their sorry arse, but Netfix and Co are creaming them big-time.

[Dave The Man]

[Dave The Man]

[stui magpie]

[pietillidie]

[What'sinaname]

[Dave The Man]

[Dave The Man]

[The Prototype]

Stan. and Presto see to be okay, but I am not that much of a fan of Netflix Australia just yet. A lot of the films I have wanted to watch are unavailable and it's staring to annoy me.

[Wokko]

Netflix wins in our house because of the native smart TV app. Stan is a rubbish app and has to be cast to a TV. Don't kow about Presto, but I assume no native apps on TVs yet.