Good article.

I wonder if/when the 'old guard' of media companies will move with the times.. The cat is out of the bag!

Surely they would do better to look at what the other revenue-raising options are than trying to get laws changed / going after individuals etc?

It would appear the media barons and content owners have learned nothing.

More than a decade ago on-line sharing and copy right infringement of music via downloads was rife. Why? Because for years the music publishers and record companies had gouged the public for the right to purchase hard copy. Suddenly the internet made it possible to change that. Did the right's owners embrace this technology as a new medium of distribution? No, they sought to protect their monopoly revenues and tried to lock content behind leaky walls. Pirate music was rife because the price was too high in both dollar terms and inconvenience for legitmate digital access.

Along came Apple and itunes and the price for legitimate access droppped significantly and the convenience factor improved dramatically. These legitimate modes of access thrived. Nowlegitimate on-line music is the norm. It proved that consumers will willingly pay fair prices for legitimate access, leaving piracy at the fringe.

The same will, and is, happening with video content. They should stop trying to tie up access from other countries and making on-line access outrageously expensive and inconvenient in a patheic effort to shore up revenuws from dinosaur dvd technology and embrace legitimate on-line access for a fair fee supported by good quality and backup (as itunes does for example).

This will make piracy unattractive. A foolishly unenforceable punitive approach just won't work, and hasn't worked.

When content providers can make it so difficult and needlessly expensve to purchase content in Australia, it's little wonder that some consumers turn to piracy.

I recently heard an album on Spotify (a free, legal way to consume music, and an absolute revelation - more on this later), and I wanted to purchase said album for my ever growing CD collection. The album was released in Europe, so I thought that it would be simple enough for me to source the CD and buy it from somewhere like Amazon.de. No. Not possible, as the album was released only as a digital download. Amazon.de has the digital download, but they refuse to sell it to me as they don't have the right to sell digital download music to people outside of Germany (possibly the EU?).

As such, I had no alternative but to make a copy of it from Spotify, and therefore commit piracy. Whilst using Spotify is better than piracy, it's still an adjunct to my music consumption rather than a complete source. I like being able to hold a CD in my hand, I like being able to compensate the artist properly (after all, $0.50 to the artist for a CD sale is better than $0.0001 from a play on Spotify).

Rights holders really need to lose the antiquated notion that restricting free trade of their products between different parts of the world is maximising their revenue; if anything, it's harming their potential revenue as it's needlessly penalising consumers that want to do the right thing.

I certainly agree that new laws are not the answer, but I'm wondering if reverting copyright laws back to something that more closely reflects their original implementation was considered here - basically rolling back to a much shorter copyright term?

The current laws - with their extremely long terms brought about by lobbying by copyright owners - do not seem to capture the original spirit or intent of the original copyright laws.

I have never understood how the various Internet service providers have escaped some responsibility for the marketing of massive download/upload capacities (multi hundred Gigabytes) to all and sundry.
What do they think that private citizens are using such high capacities for?

Photographs, emails, bloggs, personal documents etc require only a tiny part of that large capacity. Even heavy users of YouTube, Iview or other video streaming resources use no more that 2-3 Gb per day ( equivalent to approx 100Gb per month).

My suggestion is that onus of responsibility for management of royalties etc associated with subscribers download of copyrighted material be put back on the corporate entities who are directly profiting from the sale of the download capacity; they in turn should liaise with the various title/torrent search engine providers to gather the statistical data to identify sources of downloaded material for distribution of royalty payments.
To make this system work, a royalty levy should be part of all retailed download capacity provided (with exemptions for professional/business/industrial users). These funds to be held in trust for distribution by an entertainment industry royalty management cooperative body.

Practically, the download facility search/service providers are the only entities that have the equipment/capability to collect/gather/process the necessary enormous amount of statistical data required to allocate distribution of royalty funds. Download content owners/providers may register their titles with the 'royalty fund cooperative' to ensure they gain their share of the royalty distribution fund.

A system similar to above would enable everyday private down-loaders to operate legally, and put the responsibility back where it rightly belongs - on the business profit makers to promote their content/service and run an equitable royalty distribution service.

Chasing petty illegal down-loaders is ridiculous - instead provide a service that the general public can economically, easily and legally access and the problem will be beaten.

Here's an idea. How about we legislate against Australia being a 'premium market', so we don't get charged though the nose for all forms of media?

Better yet, let's cut out all the studios and middle men that extort money form artists. As a musician I can either sell CDs via a record label and make around .1c each. Or I can offer it up for free on my web page and allow people to pay if they like. So far, my band has made far more money offering our music this way than we ever would on a 'professional' label. The same goes for all multimedia. Louie CK proved through a kickstarter fund that artists are getting ripped off by labels and studios that they do not need.

Illegal downloads only matter to mega-corporations who extort artists and the paying public. Independent game, music and film makers are all making far more money per unit by cutting out studios all together.