The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) wants local internet service providers (ISPs) to identify, contact and caution Australians illegally downloading or sharing movies and TV shows and will be presenting its proposal to the Australian Telecommunications Summit 2007 being held in Sydney today.

The lobby group is stamping its feet demanding action and expressing its frustration at effectively being ignored by the Internet Industry Association (IIA) which AFACT claims hasn’t done enough to combat online piracy in Australia. The group wants to bring in “a graduated system of regulation” as it calls it which it claims has had “positive results” in the US. AFACT did not outline what that system of regulation would entail.

“We have tried to engage with the IIA in order to reach a code of practice for internet service providers (ISPs) that would tackle the levels of copyright infringement that the motion picture industry is currently facing.” said Adrianne Pecotic, Executive Director of AFACT.  “We are disappointed at their lack of enthusiasm.”

“The graduated response AFACT is proposing isn’t about punishing customers – it’s about educating customers,” says Ms Pecotic. “It offers them the option to change their behaviour. Pirates are using technology to do something that’s wrong. We want to use the same technology to encourage behaviour that’s right.” 

According to AFACT, Australia is an overachiever when it comes to the online piracy tallyboard, with one of the highest per capita use of peer-to-peer file sharing systems in the world. It alleges that that has resulted in very high levels of infringement of copyright in big-name Hollywood movies and TV shows.

In an effort to back its claims, AFACT produced statistics from a “recent independent report” by LEK Consulting. The results allegedly indicate that movie piracy cost the Australian film industry $233million in potential revenue in 2005.

It further alleged that the illegal distribution of movies online rose from 4% of the legitimate movie market in 2000 to 10% by 2004. It claimed police seized more than double the number of pirated discs in 2004 compared to the previous year and seizures of imported pirated DVDs rose from 14,000 in 2003 to 40,000 in the following year.

Unfortunately, none of the statistics produced by AFACT were newer than 2005.

ANALYSIS

All we can say is there must be an election in the offing.

With the Australian Government wasting millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on internet filters that any half-decently educated teenager can defeat in about 30 minutes, the internet again comes in for stick this time from lobby group AFACT.

According to a press release dated August 14, 2007 from the AFACT website, the group claims 23% of Australians “were involved in some way in film piracy” in 2005. That’s nearly one in four of us! Well, that’s hardly surprising given our convict heritage, is it???? Seriously, the problem with statements such as this is that they’re as dangerous as they are vague. It’s almost as bad as the UK International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) claiming in June that CD piracy was funding terrorism .

AFACT can jump up and down on the spot all it likes but without government intervention, they’ve got as much chance of getting ISPs to support this proposal as Peter Costello has of being Prime Minister.

And with an election looming, no government or opposition is going to go around agreeing that 23% of the population (the voting population) are a bunch of crooks.

All that aside, just how they’re going to decide what constitutes an illegal movie download from a legal one given that most movies have been converted to XviD or another non-DVD codec technology is beyond me.

However, the ISPs may just select one-in-four out of their client list – that’s pretty close to 23% isn’t it?

UPDATE 28/8/2007: It's interesting AFACT says its proposal works well in the states. According to TorrentFreaks, the legislation hasn't entered the US House of Congress but may soon do so if this report is anything to go by. 

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