Published: Friday November 26, 2010 MYT 4:27:00 PM
New law to end illegal downloading of music and movies
By STEVEN PATRICK
KUALA LUMPUR: The free-and-easy days of illegal downloading of music and movies may soon be over. A proposed new law will enable Internet Service Providers (ISP) to suspend or terminate the Internet accounts of P2P (peer-to-peer) users.
This new law called the ISP Liability act, will be tabled in Parliament next month, according to Recording Industry Association of Malaysia (RIM) chairman Norman Halim.
RIM has been lobbying the Government for an ISP Liability act for the past 5 years as illegal online downloads have been cannibalising the legitimate sales of music, worldwide.
“The act makes the ISPs responsible for curbing online piracy. The ISPs will be fined if they don’t take action against illegal downloaders. The ISPs have the technology to track P2P users,” said Norman.
However, he said that the fine amount had yet to be determined.
ISPs will send two warning letters to illegal downloaders. Should the downloaders still persist, the Internet access will be suspended or even terminated.
“Other countries that have such an act have seen their respective music industries recover. One good example would be South Korea,” he said.
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/11/26/nation/20101126163537&sec=nation
Malaysia may soon be joining a growing list of countries with a “three strikes” law. It is quite disappointing that we have come to this, but hardly surprising given how eager the government wants to be seen as business-friendly and attract foreign investments. I wonder how much, if any at all, public consultation went into writing the proposed law, and very much doubt there will be much debate on it in the parliament. Perhaps it’s time we have our own Pirate Party.
They call it graduated response. ISPs are allowed (or required) to disconnect an account after being accused of illegal file-sharing three times, hence “three strikes”. The law is meant to help protect the rights of copyright holders and reduce internet piracy. It’s sold as a means to protect the livelihood of artists and musicians, but really the main beneficiaries are big record companies.
Proponents of the law believe that it will discourage illegal file-sharing and thereby allow poor sales of CDs and DVDs to recover. When enforced, the proposed ISP Liability Act may well provide some measure of deterrent against illegal file-sharing. It may or may not have any visible effect on sales of CDs and DVDs, but I have some concerns about the implementation.
It seems that RIM expects to pass at least some of the burden of enforcing copyright protection to ISPs. I don’t think our local ISPs, or any ISP for that matter, have the resources to do it. In any case, that additional responsibility—and costs—may mean higher charges to consumers.
A common complaint about the three strikes law is that it is a form of collective punishment. A family usually shares one internet connection. Just because one person in the household has been downloading copyrighted materials, the whole family will be punished. That means the parents will not be able to access work email and pay bills, and the children will not be able to go online and do their homework. You can say that parents should take greater responsibility for the actions of their children, but the problem is more serious to cafés and public libraries that offer free internet access on their premises. I guess we can soon kiss the free Wi-Fi hotspots goodbye.
Other questions include how much information ISPs will be required to pass along to the record companies, and how can consumers challenge a violation notice and suspension or termination of their account. It is interesting to know how our ISPs are reacting to this development.
Ultimately, I believe any attempts at policing the internet is futile. Short of becoming totally draconian, the law simply will not be able to keep up to the rapid development in technology. The newspaper article above seems to refer specifically to P2P, but P2P is not the only way files are shared. For that matter copyrighted materials are not the only things illegally shared via P2P. There are also cyberlockers, for example.
Perhaps more importantly, we have no idea how this little law will be abused in the future.
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LINK:
Six Ways File-Sharers Will Neutralize 3 Strikes
I would agree with this law if the industry manage to provide other ways of getting tunes and movies that buying from brick-and-mortar shops. Example we still cannot get iTunes/Netflix here.
ReplyDeleteP2P ability to serve long tail market is also overlook here. RIM probably just crying over unpaid royalties for local artists but I'm sure artists outside of RIM will be happy just to get their work out through P2P. Even with this law it is unlikely that members of RIM to get more money.