Today’s press release from AFACT, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, needs to be read very carefully. While seasoned readers of TorrentFreak and other publications which are becoming increasingly suspicious of the propaganda war down under, to the casual passer-by it might appear that AFACT had come out on top in their recent case against ISP iiNet.

“Despite being successful on many grounds in their appeal to the Full Federal Court, the film companies will seek to overturn the ruling that iiNet did not authorise the acts of infringement that it knew occurred on its internet service,” the release reads.

For those on the other side of the debate, “successful on many grounds” actually grinds down to “lost the case for a second time” as in February the Full Bench of the Federal Court dismissed the movie industry’s appeal against last year’s judgment which found that ISP iiNet did not authorize the copyright infringements of its file-sharing customers.

Not that AFACT don’t have a point, though. If the movie industry had provided iiNet with better infringement notices in the first instance and the ISP had still not acted on them, the outcome of the case may have been different, the court decided.

“Prior to the case, iiNet was provided with substantial evidence of copyright infringement by users on its network, which iiNet accepted was 100% accurate,” said AFACT this morning. Although the words “100% accurate” don’t appear to have been used by iiNet verbatim, in court the ISP did use the word “compelling” to describe AFACT notices.

Nevertheless, two of three judges in the Federal Court found that iiNet had not authorized the infringing activities of their file-sharing subscribers and it is against this majority decision that AFACT are appealing.

“We say [the judges] did not apply the legal test for authorisation correctly,” AFACT chief Neil Gane said.

Furthermore, AFACT says that the Court’s conclusion – that iiNet did not have enough knowledge of infringements taking place in order to be found as authorizing them – was also wrong.

“We are confident of our grounds for appeal and hopeful that special leave to the High Court will be granted,” Gane concludes.

However, while AFACT are like a dog with a bone in pursuing this legal action, iiNet continues to call for the movie industry to spend their money on something more creative.

“It’s time for the film industry and copyright holders to work with the industry to make their content legitimately available,” iiNet’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Malone said today in response to AFACT’s announcement.

Malone said iiNet had received positive feedback “from both consumers and the industry” following the publication of its ‘Encouraging Legitimate use of Online Content‘ report earlier this month and that all parties should consider moving forward on that basis.

If the case does indeed move to the High Court, no decision is expected until late 2011 or early 2012.

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When FileSoup administrator Geeker had his home raided in the summer of 2009, police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) literally trashed his place. In a previous interview Geeker vividly recalled the events.

“I got back home just before 8pm to find my belongings had been turned upside down, the dining room was a like a whirlwind had gone through..[]..they’d turfed out all the drawers of the desk, chucked back what was of no interest to them, left a pile of paperwork scattered across my desk and table with wires everywhere, talk about a nightmare!”

The police officers and ‘agents’ of the MPAA-funded FACT tagged everything with a chip in it, and bagged them as evidence. In the following weeks some items were returned, including a mobile phone, sat nav and video camera, but most of the hardware was kept under lock and key.

As Geeker and fellow FileSoup administrator Snookered were released from all charges by the Crown Prosecution Service last month, their belongings were finally returned this week. This final step in the dreadful legal proceedings should have been a day to celebrate, but the police once again trashed the party.

From the looks of it the police and FACT did not return all of the seized property, and the hardware that was given back appears to be completely trashed.

“Initially it looks like only a couple of things such as power supply units might be missing, but, as you will no doubt appreciate, there is a heck of a lot of stuff to check, it’s going to take me some time to go through it all,” Geeker explains.

“What concerns me the most about my property, is the condition it is now in… the way it was seized and bagged and how it was probably handled and transported to goodness knows where, the thought just horrifies me,” he adds.

The pictures below document the disaster. A 40 minute audio clip of the agents returning Geeker’s property is available here.

To say that the evidence was not properly stored and shipped would be a huge understatement. It looks like the computers have been taken apart, dragged through the mud, with no real attempt to reassemble them or clean things up.

According to Geeker none of his systems will boot up, which may not come as a big surprise considering the photos. The big question is why?

It almost appears as if a frustrated FACT employee trashed the hardware on purpose before it was sent back. How else could it turn into such a mess, and why take the computers apart piece by piece in the first place? What were they looking for? Warez?

Geeker is clearly not happy with how his property was handled, and he encourages everyone to help him get the story out.

“Please do me a favour everyone… tell everybody you know about this, blog about it, tweet about it, facebook and myspace or wherever else you feel it might do some good, let the whole bloody world know exactly what these evil gits have done …and will probably keep on doing if something isn’t done to stop this kind of crap from happening and people and their property being treated like this!,” he said.

Geeker has contacted his lawyer to see what the best response to this mess is.

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Founded in 2003, UK-based FileSoup is one of the original torrent sites. It outlived many of the sites that sprung up around the time and developed a great reputation and a warm community in the years that followed.

After years of operating the site without any noticeable trouble, in the summer of 2009 police and the Hollywood-backed Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) conducted a raid on the home address of the site’s owner, known online as ‘TheGeeker’. Another raid was carried out around the same time on the property of fellow administrator ‘Snookered’. Both were arrested and taken in for questioning.

In the summer of 2010 the two administrators were charged with conspiracy to infringe copyright for their involvement with the site. As in previous cases in the UK, the evidence was solely gathered by the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group FACT. No independent investigation was carried out by the police.

This critical lack of investigation on the prosecution’s part was brought to the Court’s attention by the solicitors of the two administrators. The solicitors, who successfully defended the owner of BitTorrent tracker OiNK in an earlier trial, pushed the prosecutor to formulate their charges. This turned out to be problematic.

The prosecution failed to understand some of the technical issues, did not know whether to prosecute FileSoup as a business or not, and was unsure whether the copyright holder had caused prejudice. Since there was no independent investigation into the case, all these questions remained unanswered.

Today the Crown Prosecution Service decided to drop the case entirely. It concluded that the alleged offenses are a civil rather than a criminal matter and decided not to spend any more public money on the prosecution. As a result, ‘TheGeeker’ and ‘Snookered’ are free to go.

Both men are relieved that the case has finally come to an end, and are grateful for the excellent work their solicitors carried out.

“It has been a long and stressful 18 months but I am happy to finally have the weight lifted from me,” Snookered told TorrentFreak. “During this time my solicitors, Burrows Bussin and David Cook in particular have kept me sane. Nothing was too much for them. I owe them a debt of gratitude along with my Barrister Ian Whitehurst.”

“I hope to have some more details in the next few days so I may say more then. Thank you to everyone for all the support. It was greatly appreciated,” he added.

Morgan Rose solicitors, who defended TheGeeker, are now able to add another win in a prominent BitTorrent case to their resume, which is welcomed by other UK-based operators of file-sharing sites.

“This case is not a one-off,” David Cook, Snookered’s solicitor said in a comment. “We have now seen two prosecutions for allegations such as these, both of which were fundamentally flawed. We have persistently worked in exposing the flaws in these cases, which have resulted in the absolute failure of both prosecutions.”

Today’s news is a great blow to the UK anti-piracy outfit FACT, who have spent tens of thousands of pounds on this case alone. According to the prosecution FACT’s involvement created a great inequality. The movie industry funded group has enormous financial resources while the defendants only ran a non-profit website.

Yet again the prosecution was led by FACT to believe that they were dealing with a criminal gang, a picture that didn’t hold up on closer inspection. Luckily for the UK tax payer and the FileSoup admins, the Court realized in time that justice was best served by dropping the case.

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Should Internet service providers be held responsible if customers use their services to share unauthorized movies, TV shows and music? It’s a question that has been asked dozens of times worldwide during the past several years and one that Australia should be a little closer to having an answer to on Thursday.

Tomorrow, a full bench of the Federal Court of Australia will announce their decision on whether an earlier ruling on the issue should stand or be overturned. The former would mean that ISPs and file-sharing subscribers can cautiously crack open a bottle of bubbly. The latter and opposite outcome is the one favored by the entertainment industries.

The epic legal battle dates back to 2008, when AFACT – the Hollywood-backed Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft – began legal action against ISP iiNet. AFACT claimed that the Perth-based ISP had authorized the copyright infringements of its BitTorrenting subscriber base by failing to stop them from sharing unauthorized material.

AFACT had monitored iiNet users in their allegedly illicit activities and sent corresponding infringement notices to the ISP. When iiNet failed to suspend or terminate customer accounts on the basis of these notices (which were based on untested AFACT-gathered evidence), the fight was on.

After close to a month in court during October and November 2009, with countless documents perused and a parade of witnesses heard, the Court was adjourned. For close to three months both sides had to wait for the decision of Justice Cowdroy.

In early February 2010 his ruling came, but for AFACT and the near three dozen movie and TV show companies supporting it in the case, the news was bad.

Although Justice Cowdroy agreed that the studio’s copyrights had indeed been infringed upon, he decided that iiNet did not authorize the copyright infringing activities of its subscribers and therefore could not be held responsible for their actions.

“It is impossible to conclude that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement … [iiNet] did not have relevant power to prevent infringements occurring,” Justice Cowdroy said in his judgment.

BitTorrent networks were outside the control of the ISP, Cowdroy said, adding that the ISP was covered under so-called “safe harbor” provisions.

AFACT executive director Neil Gane described the ruling as “a set back for the 50,000 Australians employed in the film industry,” and late February 2010 he announced that AFACT would appeal.

“The court found large scale copyright infringements, that iiNet knew they were
occurring, that iiNet had the contractual and technical capacity to stop them and iiNet did nothing about them,” Gane said. “In line with previous case law, this would have amounted to authorization of copyright infringement.”

The waiting since last year’s appeal seems to have gone on forever but is set to end tomorrow. Will it be victory for iiNet, ISPs and subscribers everywhere? Or will copyright holders be the ones celebrating? Tune in to find out.

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Following on from other DDoS attacks in recent days, yesterday another wave took down the website of AFACT, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft. This latest assault, carried out in the name of Operation Payback, also had some very serious unintended side-effects. According to AFACT host Negregistry, other sites it hosts were affected too. AFACT said those sites, some belonging to the government, numbered nearly 8,000.

During the last couple of weeks we’ve reported almost daily on the effects and aftershocks of Operation Payback. This action, largely consisting of coordinated DDoS attacks against those chasing down online piracy or seeking to profit from it, has taken in a number of significant targets.

Although the attacks against the MPAA and RIAA websites generated the most headlines thus far due to their profile in the United States, the attack with the most consequences was that against the UK’s ACS:Law, the notorious law firm that with its partners seeks to turn alleged infringements of copyright into a cash business. That business is now in shreds after ACS:Law bungled an attempt to bring its site back online and published its own email database to the public.

Last night, as first reported by Slyck.com, Operation Payback took aim at a new target, AFACT – the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft. Although it took a little while for the site to go down, the attack eventually achieved its aims but now it seems that it also generated some serious unintended side-effects.

According to an announcement by AFACT’s host, Netregistry, “A DDoS attack began to take place at approximately 8:30AM AEST, with a group of hackers attacking the firewall by flooding it with connections attempting to take down all servers.”

Although referring to those charging their Low Orbit Ion Cannons as hackers is something of a stretch, and even though the attacks were eventually dealt with by Netregistry, according to Neil Gane from AFACT nearly 8,000 other websites were also taken down in the attack.

“A lot of these sites are small Australian businesses and Government web sites,” Gane told ITnews. “They have been affected by this senseless act.”

Currently Operation Payback is showing few signs that it is running out of steam. One has to wonder though. Although some will argue that there is a strong need for civil disobedience to draw attention to a cause where perhaps few are listening, things can easily take a different turn.

Although we have no cast iron evidence other than his comments, it’s believed that ACS:Law’s Andrew Crossley called in the police last week after he was harassed at home. He has since used the word ‘criminal’ to describe the actions against his website and few will disagree that taking down 8,000 websites, even temporarily and/or accidentally, is a serious affair. When some of those sites belong to a government, questions start to get asked.

Will Operation Payback continue as promised or will it stop of its own accord? Will it be stopped by force? Is it even possible to stop it by force, any more than it’s possible to stop people sharing files? Time will tell but one thing is certain. If Operation Payback was designed to generate attention, it has done that, in a very, very big way.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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Another day, another anti-piracy campaign. This one, from the MPA and AFACT-backed Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation, is trying a slightly different approach. Instead of accusing people outright of being movie and TV show pirates, it cuts them some slack and treats them like children instead. It seems that some people just don’t know they are pirates.

The relatively new Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) was created by the Australian movie and TV industries to “promote the value of the industry by raising awareness, understanding and appreciation of intellectual property, and its role and value in society.”

Members of IPAF include Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), Motion Picture Association (MPA), Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, Australian Visual Software Distributors Association and various cinema owners and DVD rental outlets such as Blockbuster.

Last year IPAF embarked on a campaign to educate Australia’s children on the evils of copyright infringement in an attempt to “motivate a change in attitudes and behavior to reduce public demand for illegal copies of film and television programs.”

While many anti-piracy groups take a fairly aggressive angle when sending their message, IPAF take a more softly-softly approach. If AFACT is bad cop, IPAF is his gentler, more reasonable-sounding counterpart.

Good cop has just launched his new nationwide anti-piracy campaign with the unusual title of ‘Accidental Pirate’.

“New research, released just today, revealed that 34% of Aussies see piracy as stealing or theft but then regularly do it by burning, buying or downloading illegal or unauthorised copies of films or TV programs,” explains IPAF. “In other words, 1 in 3 of us do something that we don’t agree with. So to describe this disconnection between actions and beliefs, we coined the phrase ‘Accidental Pirate’.”

Right. So people know piracy is ‘wrong’ but because they still carry on it’s an ‘accident’? That doesn’t seem to fit very well does it?

You can see what IPAF are trying to do though, it’s just badly executed. If you’re going to educate people on the premise that they didn’t know that their actions were ‘wrong’ in the first place (so as not to immediately antagonize them), at least don’t patronize them. “There, there, you know it’s wrong but let’s just pretend it was an accident, eh?” Please.

So what does the campaign have to say. Well, it’s pretty much standard stuff. The campaign’s homepage is running a Flash questionnaire with five questions that readers have the chance to answer. Getting a question right gets a round of applause from the assembled cinema audience, but getting one wrong gets a big X and a short lesson in copyright.

Questions 2, 3 and 5 all involve copying or buying pirated copies of real DVDs and the legalities of that. People don’t ‘accidentally’ believe that pirate DVDs are legal – do they?

Questions 1 and 4 involve file-sharing but if the industry IPAF claims to protect would simply get their act together, these questions wouldn’t even be necessary.

Question 1: Your favorite TV show has just aired overseas. It won’t be shown here for months. While browsing the web you notice it’s available for download for free. Do you download it?

Every time TV-show downloaders in Australia are asked why they do what they do, one of the top answers is always because they are treated like second-class citizens when it comes to release dates. Why do their favorite series take months to appear officially down under? Whatever the reason, it’s a very, very poor one, and no surprise people turn to BitTorrent.

Question 4: You’re browsing the Internet and come across a free download site. You notice a movie that’s just hit the cinemas here. Do you download it?

If people find those then, yes, they probably would. The movie industry is always very clear – if you see a brand new movie on the Internet it’s illegal, because we (stubbornly) don’t offer this service. This type of piracy could be all but wiped out by offering people a legal alternative at a reasonable price in their own homes.

Quiz aside, it’s all pretty much standard stuff. Movie industry people and actors rolled out to make ‘accidental’ pirates feel sorry for the little guy in the film-making world.

You can take the questionnaire for yourself. If you get any ‘wrong’ move directly to the back of the class, put you hands on your head and please try to do better in the future. And stop accidentally downloading torrents. The movie industry depends on it.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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After an earlier ruling went in iiNet’s favor, the ISP and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft were back in Federal Court for the fourth straight day of the appeal today. AFACT, representing many Hollywood studios, argued that Internet subscribers should be held accountable not just for their own infringements, but for those carried out by anyone using their account.

As the hearing entered its fourth day, AFACT, representing the Village Roadshow and more than thirty Hollywood studios, and ISP iiNet were back in Federal Court for the appeal in their copyright infringement dispute. Three judges will eventually decide if iiNet can be held accountable for copyright infringements carried out by its customers.

In the meantime, AFACT would like to go a step further, as it insisted today that Internet subscribers should not only be responsible for their own infringements, but for those carried out by anyone using their account.

AFACT lawyer Christian Dimitriadis told the panel of three judges that is was irrelevant if an account holder infringed copyright or not, adding: “The fact that the user may be another person other than the subscriber doesn’t change the fact that the information relates to the personal affairs of the subscriber.”

Dimitriadis said that even though the Internet bill-payer was the only one to physically enter into an agreement with iiNet, by default all other users of that connection must also agree to be bound by the same terms. AFACT continues to argue that if subscribers break the terms of their agreement and use their accounts to break the law, iiNet has the ability and power to terminate their contracts and disconnect them from the Internet.

According to another report today, that notion has started to receive the sympathy.

In a continuation from our earlier report, yesterday two of the appeal judges questioned Justice Cowdroy’s reasoning in the original ruling which deemed that disconnecting customer accounts was an unreasonable response to infringements.

Cowdroy reasoned that from the evidence provided in the case, it could not be decided to what extent any subscriber had used their account for infringement.

Lawyer for iiNet Richard Cobden told Justice Arthur Emmett that on this basis it would unreasonable to close a customer account. Justice John Nicholas then asked if the evidence ever showed to what extent customers used their accounts for piracy.

“We’re just saying that the reasonable step that would be incumbent upon an ISP must be tailored to what has been put in front of them,” said Cobden, according to The Australian.

“And if what’s put in front of us is that there’s not a significant use of quota on an account in relation to this, it affects the question of whether the reasonable step to be taken is to turn over the whole account which, as we say, is what our learned friends seek.”

In other words, the evidence provided by AFACT – which shows that a particular account was infringing copyright at a precise moment in time – does not show to what extent an account was used to infringe copyright overall.

Justice Emmett, however, suggested that maybe an important point had been arrived at.

“Maybe the stage is reached where it’s reasonable to say, ‘Look, you’ve had warning after warning. Maybe you’re doing other lawful things, but if you insist on doing this unlawful activity, we’re going to close you down’.”

Cobden later countered that he could only go by the evidence provided in the case, and that shutting down an account was not an appropriate response to it.

iiNet weren’t the only ones to point to a lack of evidence in order to refute an argument. In the original hearing, iiNet said the existence of its legal content distribution platform, Freezone, showed that the ISP had made efforts to discourage users from sharing illegal content and that this model was a better way to deal with piracy than legal action by outfits such as AFACT.

AFACT lawyer David Catterns told the Federal Court that the existence of Freezone is irrelevant, since there is no evidence that portal reduced piracy on iiNet’s network.

The two sides also clashed on the implications of the Telecommunications Act and whether ISPs could use it as a reason not to deal with infringement notices issued by rights holders such as AFACT.

The hearing continues.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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Yesterday the Federal Court saw the return of two old rivals, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft and ISP iiNet. The pair were there to fight the appeal of the decision handed down several months ago by Judge Cowdroy and today, on day two of the hearing, iiNet lawyer Richard Cobden began setting down the ISP‘s case.

After successfully defending legal action brought by Hollywood anti-piracy group AFACT back in February, iiNet is back in court today for day two of the appeal. AFACT, representing the Village Roadshow and many Hollywood studios, would like the panel of three judges in the Federal Court to hold iiNet accountable for copyright infringements carried out by its customers. iiNet maintains it is not responsible.

As detailed yesterday, AFACT – which has chosen not to go after primary infringers (iiNet customers using BitTorrent) – says that by doing nothing to stop infringements, iiNet effectively ‘authorized’ their illegal activity which renders the ISP liable for their actions.

In the original hearing AFACT said that iiNet had full knowledge that its customers had been pirating AFACT members’ copyright works because the ISP had been given evidence to prove that. AFACT also stressed that the ISP had enough power to do something about those infringements, either by taking technical measures such as throttling, or terminating accounts.

As reported by ARN today, there are four steps to identify authorization:

A person provides the means of infringement, a person makes copyright material available, a person provides the means of infringement and whether reasonable steps were taken to prevent copyright, that is, the power to prevent.

In the original hearing it was decided that since iiNet did not provide the means to infringe as indicated in the opening guideline (as BitTorrent was out of its control) the other steps were irrelevant. AFACT is now arguing that the steps in the guideline do not have to be read in strict order.

A veteran from the earlier hearing, Richard Cobden representing iiNet insists that the guidelines be handled sequentially, as they were originally.

When it was AFACT lawyer David Catterns’ turn to speak, he returned to the topic he initiated yesterday, that iiNet had plenty of power to do something about BitTorrent infringements.

In the original hearing iiNet chief Michael Malone said privacy laws prevented the company from identifying customers, but Catterns pointed to the procedures employed by the ISP to deal with customers who send out spam. These, he said, lead to account suspension and ultimately termination.

For iiNet, Cobden said no matter which steps were taken, be they letters or throttling, AFACT would not be happy unless the measures ultimately ended in account termination. He said that this most final of sanctions would not be a reasonable action to take on the basis of notices generated by AFACT. In the original hearing, Justice Cowdroy agreed with this assertion.

According to iTNews, Catterns also referred to a press release that iiNet had sent out earlier about its legal battle with AFACT. The fact that the ISP chose to use BitTorrent (it ran its own installation of RivetTracker) to distribute the announcement, argued Catterns, sent a message that it the ISP had no intention of doing anything about infringements.

The hearing continues.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Two administrators of Filesoup – the longest standing BitTorrent community – have been charged with conspiracy to infringe copyright for their involvement with the site. The case is the second against UK-based BitTorrent site operators. The first case was brought against the owner of the OiNK BitTorrent tracker, who was later cleared of all charges.

Founded in 2003, UK-based FileSoup was one of the original torrent sites. It outlived many of the sites that sprung up around the time and developed a great reputation and a warm community in the years that followed.

After years of operating the site without any noticeable trouble, in the summer of 2009 police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) conducted a raid on the home address of the site’s owner, known online as ‘TheGeeker’. Another raid was carried out around the same time on the property of fellow administrator ‘Snookered’. Both were arrested and taken in for questioning.

From the information that we received after the raids it became clear that the MPAA-funded anti-piracy group FACT had been the driving force behind the case, and that they were responsible for gathering the intelligence that led up to the arrests.

Similar to other cases in the UK, such as that against TV Links, it was not the police but the private anti-piracy group FACT who took charge of property seized from the Filesoup operators. As it turned out, the police themselves knew very little about the suspects and their alleged crimes.

This became clear when Geeker was questioned by the police after his arrest last year. In common with other FACT-run cases, the nature of BitTorrent proved difficult for law enforcement to grasp, with Geeker having to explain how everything worked – including what URLs and domain names are.

Now, nearly a year later, Geeker and a fellow administrator Snookered have been charged with conspiracy to infringe copyright for their role in the site. Notably, Filesoup is mainly a discussion board and although torrent files are linked on the site, it hasn’t operated a tracker for half a decade.

The full text as it appears on the charge sheet is as follows:

Between the 1.1.2003 and 1.9.2009 Stephan […} and George […} conspired together with others unknown to infringe copyright in a work communicated to the public in the course of a business namely the website ‘Filesoup’ knowing or having reason to believe that copyright was infringed.

Conspiracy to Infringe Copyright by Communicating the work to the public Contrary to Section 1 Criminal Law Act 1977

Both admins are currently out on bail but have to surrender to the custody of Taunton Deane Magistrates in Taunton, Somerset, during early August.

Geeker told TorrentFreak that he has been in contact with the same solicitors who successfully defended the admin of the OiNK BitTorrent site, who walked free earlier this year after a UK court cleared him of all charges. He can’t give out any more details on the case at the moment, but has promised to keep us updated as soon as he can.

Although OiNK and Filesoup are both BitTorrent sites, the charges are quite different. Instead of going for ‘conspiracy to defraud’ as with the case against OiNK admin Allan Ellis, the Filesoup operators are charged with copyright infringement offenses.

It appears that FACT has instructed the authorities to try a different approach this time around since Allan Ellis was not convicted. The most worrying part in this and other cases is that private anti-piracy organizations have so much control of the authorities, up to the point where they can keep seized goods in their possession.

Geeker is confident that he and his fellow admin have a strong case. He believes that, like Alan Ellis, he has never done anything wrong and hopes to convince the court of the same. To be continued.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 2% [?]

According to the early published results of a new survey conducted by news.com.au and market research firm CoreData, most individuals downloading illicit media from the Internet would do so legally if only the entertainment industries would provide them a cheap and convenient platform from which to do so.

The survey of 7,000 people who admitted to downloading or streaming media from unauthorized sources in the last 12 months also discovered that easy access to media using file-sharing systems such as BitTorrent was of greater attraction than a low or free price tag.

When asked if they would pay for a service which provided an advertising and DRM-free TV show, movies and music experience, an impressive 66.4% of respondents said they would be prepared to pay for that.

The prices they would generally be prepared to offer are $1 per TV episode, $2 for a movie and 50c per music track. ($1 AUD = $0.91 USD)

So, presuming that these 7,000 respondents paid nothing for the media they acquired in the last 12 months over the Internet, getting any money out of them at all would be a decent bonus for the entertainment industries. But to do that there would first have to be the services available with which to tempt those latent online consumers away from file-sharing networks.

However, as confirmed by Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft boss Neil Gane, people have to stop sharing files first before the industry is prepared to “compete”. He says that the industry and the government need to address rampant infringement online in the first instance, in order to create the right environment for competition.

“Movie industries obviously want to make their content available online, but they can’t compete currently with a free alternative that’s perpetrated through theft. Once there is a level playing field, I think you’ll begin to see a lot more flexible, innovative business models,” he told news.com.au.

So here we go again. Let’s not kid anyone. There are plenty of people – around 35% according to this survey – that won’t pay anything for their media and that is unlikely to change in the near future. But there are definitely people who will put their hands in their pockets for a good product with good service at the right price. But they have to be available first.

It is pointless talking about introducing such a service when there is a “level playing field” because that situation will never come. What Gane really means is that the industry will only be prepared to offer their products online when they can do so at a much higher price than the market will currently pay.

So what exactly will people pay? The survey discovered that of those prepared to hand over money for media, nearly 50% said they would pay $2 for a movie, with 28% offering $5 and under 5% offering $10.

Gane said the industry is not interested in $2 per movie, calling it an “unrealistic ask”. One would imagine they might be interested in the $10 tag to tempt pirates, but that could only be achieved by eliminating most other unauthorized sources of media. Rest assured though, if all online piracy was stamped out, the industries would either a) jump online at prices few would be prepared to pay offering products infested with draconian DRM, or b) go back to selling plastic discs.

Gane says that there is an element of the online community who believe that if products are online they should be free. Well here’s some breaking news – they are, whether Hollywood likes it or not.

It’s time to at least try to compete, because next year’s survey won’t be any more encouraging than this. The clock is ticking and more opportunities are being lost.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]