[AusNOG] "ISPs agree to graduated warnings for pirates"

[Mark Newton]

On Feb 23, 2015, at 8:13 AM, Paul Brooks <pbrooks-ausnog at layer10.com.au> wrote:

> The group that put this together had a deadline to put out a draft code that both sides could at least live with - if they don't meet the deadline with a draft that the service providers AND the content industry can live with, then the Government was going to 'create' one themselves and impose it whether you liked it or not - and most people figured that would be worse. They still might.

Nope, that’d be much better. 

Make the government take some gooddamn responsibility for the inevitable public backlash. Make it their mess, beginning to end, enacted in a democratic forum where voters can make submissions and have a say, and the whole process can get watered down in the Senate. Make it so that when ISPs screw-over customers, customers are in no doubt whatsoever that they’re being screwed over due to government policy, and they can scream blue murder at their MPs and get the law changed.

By agreeing to turn it into an industry issue, Comms Alliance has given the government plausible deniability, and usurped the democratic process by turning it into a cosy negotiated arrangement behind closed doors, where the content owners get what they want, and the service providers get them to agree to be nice, and we the public get literally no say in it whatsoever.  And when service providers screw over customers, customers will quite rightly direct their ire at their ISPs.

Best possible outcome for the Government and the rightsholders: Free kicks for everybody! ISP industry rolls over again, and will subsequently wonder why they never have any political influence over anything, and keep getting treated with contemptuous disregard by both sides of politics because they are literally the easiest industry in the entire economy to house-train.

  - mark


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