CANBERRA: The telecommunications industry’ has designed a “three strikes” scheme to catch illegal downloaders of movies, music and TV shows will pave the way for Australian internet users to be hit with “extortionate” fines.
Copyright owners have been lobbying the federal government to introduce tough new laws that would crack down on telcos and their customers to stop the illicit downloading of movies.
The code will be lodged with the Australian Communications and Media Authority on Wednesday and will be independently evaluated 18 months after it begins.
The telco industry’s lobby group, Communications Alliance, submitted the final version of its Copyright Notice Scheme Code 2015 to the Australian Communications and Media Authority for approval on Wednesday afternoon – less than 24 hours after iiNet and M2 Group were forced to hand over the personal details of 4736 customers to Voltage Pictures, which owns the copyright to Hollywood film Dallas Buyers Club.
Under the new system, copyright owners would create lists of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that belong to alleged illicit downloaders. This will be cross-checked against the IP addresses of all Australian internet providers and warning letters will be sent to users by the relevant telco.
iiNet and M2 Group were forced to hand over the personal details of 4736 customers to Voltage Pictures, which owns the copyright to Hollywood film “Dallas Buyers Club”.
iiNet and M2 Group were forced to hand over the personal details of 4736 customers to Voltage Pictures, which owns the copyright to Hollywood film Dallas Buyers Club.
If a user gets three warning letters, or “strikes”, in a 12-month period, telcos will help copyright owners identify them for potential legal action after a hearing in a prescribed court. Up to 200,000 notices can be processed and sent each year.
But users can ask for a review of the finding, which will be conducted by an independent adjudication panel.
“The scheme contains strong safeguards against any threat to the privacy of internet users,” Communications Alliance, which is the telco industry body responsible for the new code, said. “[It] has a strong emphasis on public education and does not contain explicit sanctions against internet users.
“The operation of the code and the notice scheme are not affected in any way by the recent Federal Court decision on preliminary discovery in the Dallas Buyers Club case.”
Internet service providers are hoping the introduction of this scheme will prevent the federal government creating new laws that will make telcos responsible for unauthorised downloading by their customers.
But Choice campaigns manager Erin Turner said the consumer body would prefer Parliament come up with new laws because there would be more public scrutiny in the process.
“This code is not a gentle education scheme, it’s actually a pathway to legal action,” she said. “We’re quite worried that if anyone was taken to court for piracy, given that most people are uploading and downloading, they’d see quite large penalties.
