Torrentfreak: “Aussie Pirates Face Site Blocking, But No Disconnections” plus 1 more |
| Aussie Pirates Face Site Blocking, But No Disconnections Posted: 09 Dec 2014 01:38 AM PST
Leading the charge were rightsholders who tabled demands for ISPs to take greater responsibility for their subscribers, under weight of legislation if necessary. Once this liability had been clearly established, rightsholders argued that ISPs should be forced to send notices to their subscribers. These would warn customers that their connections were being used for piracy and that consequences, including the slowing down or disconnection of Internet services, would follow. Finally, copyright holders sought a formal ‘pirate’ site blocking mechanism. This would allow individual domains to be targeted by legal action in order to have them rendered inaccessible to Australians. After intense debate it appears that a watered-down version of the rightsholders wish-list will today be presented to the Australian Cabinet. According to Fairfax, Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull will present the reforms to colleagues during the final meeting of the year. According to the report, new punishments for Internet downloaders are not part of the proposals, meaning that calls for connection throttling and account suspensions are off the table. Downloaders won’t get a completely free ride though. The ministers’ proposals envision ISPs and rightsholders working together on a voluntary code aimed at educating consumers who persist in sharing files without permission. Administered by telecoms regulator the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the code would see entertainment companies monitoring and gathering information on Internet users who share copyrighted material using BitTorrent. That information would be sent to ISPs who would then be required to forward written notices to subscribers informing them they are breaching copyright. Of course, entertainment companies and ISPs have been here several times before, with negotiations on this very topic breaking down time and again on various issues, including who will pay to implement the scheme. This time, however, the government is threatening to legislate if agreement can’t be reached and if that happens ISPs might find themselves less well off. While they are likely to negotiate hard, it may be in ISPs interests to reach some kind of agreement. The proposals for “extended authorization liability” – holding ISPs responsible for users’ piracy – appear to be off the table, at least for now, and the last thing they need is for that to rear its head again. But whatever happens on those fronts, ISPs will still find themselves in the spotlight on another matter – the controversial issue of site blocking. Today, Brandis and Turnbull will ask the Cabinet to approve the development of a new legal mechanism which will allow rightsholders to obtain site blocking injunctions against ISPs. If approved, movie companies like Village Roadshow will be able to head off to court and have sites like The Pirate Bay blocked by all the major ISPs without too much difficulty. The news of these proposals to Cabinet comes a day after consumer group Choice published the results of a survey which found that 67% of Australians have never pirated movies or TV shows online. Of the 33% that do, half said their motivation was high prices, while 41% complained that content takes too long to arrive in Australia. The research found that 55% of consumers try to obtain content legally before turning to pirate sources. In common with other similar studies, Choice also found that regular pirates are also avid consumers of legitimate content. Of those who pirate at least once a month, 56% will pay to go to the movies, a figure that drops to 36% for the non-pirating group. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.    |
| UK Users Need 27 Services to Get Most Popular Films, Report Finds Posted: 08 Dec 2014 11:30 AM PST
Released by research company KPMG and commissioned by NBC Universal, the report was praised by the MPAA and other similarly interested parties. Supporters said that the study provided yet more proof that studios are fulfilling their part of the consumer bargain by making content widely available. Less than three months on and KPMG has just published the results of a second study into availability of content online. In common with the US-focused September report, ‘UK Availability of Film and TV Titles in the Digital Age’ was also commissioned by NBC Universal. The study examined UK availability of the most popular film and TV titles across legal digital streaming and download services and according to KPMG, things looked good. “This report found that the vast majority of the most popular and critically acclaimed film and television content is available from legal digital platforms,” the report begins. The study found that as of December 2013, almost nine out of 10 of the 756 films reviewed were indeed available from online video services, which does sound like a great start. When 2012′s box office hits were examined 100% were available online, dropping slightly to 98% for those released in 2011. All-time box office hits also had good exposure, with 96% available online. Even 2013′s top 100 hits fared well, with 77% available digitally. These stats are admittedly a fairly impressive read, but the details take off some the shine. Accessing content online should be a relatively painless affair, but UK film fans are going to need quite a lot of patience if they want the broadest possible choice. In fact, in order to access content at the levels detailed above, users will need to use to more than two dozen services, 27 to be precise. “As at December 2013, 86% of the 756 unique films reviewed were When the researchers required that titles must be found on 5 out of 27 services, overall availability drops to 73%, meaning that more than a quarter of popular content is missing, even for consumers with five separate online movie accounts. In the US version of the KPMG report, notable was the poor availability of content on services such as Netflix. The findings showed that just 16% of the films studied were available through on-demand subscription services (SVOD). The UK does quite a bit better. “A relatively lower proportion of the most popular and critically acclaimed films were offered under the SVOD model (39%),” KPMG found.  The UK online subscription market has grown quickly over the past couple of years fueled largely by Netflix. Ofcom's Communications Market Report 2014 revealed that revenue for online subscriptions for audio-visual content reached £111.7m in 2013, up from £63.5m in the previous 12 months. Moving forward, Netflix’s growth faces similar challenges to that of its US-based service. According to KPMG, six out of 10 times consumers will not find the popular content they are looking for, meaning that additional payments to other services will be required. The other issues relate to reducing piracy. While having content around 60% of the time is better than nothing, most pirated titles are recent releases that simply aren’t available on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon or other similar services. And as far as Joe Public signing up to as many as 27 services in order to access most popular content, that isn’t going to happen in a hurry. An almost fully-comprehensive Spotify for movies might be a while off, but bringing one to market would simplify matters no end. The report can be downloaded here. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   |
For many years Australia has been struggling with a reputation for being a nation of file-sharing pirates and throughout the summer the most serious debate thus far consumed the nation.
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