Greens Senate member Scott Ludlam believes dividing Foxtel’s grasp on popular television programming represents the most effective way to combat Australia’s online piracy.
Ludlam joined ISP iiNet in slamming the Attorney General’s Department ‘three strikes’ proposal aimed at forcing service providers to police users participating in the downloading and sharing of copyrighted music, movies and television.
Senator Ludlam’s would like to see Foxtel’s monopoly on popular TV programming disintergrated, including the hugely popular Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and Walking Dead series, citing Australia’s willingness to pay for fair content distribution.
“I think the ACCC should actually have a strong role to play,” Ludlam told ZDNet. “I don’t want a Foxtel subscription, quite frankly. I respect other people’s willingness to pay money for that. A lot of people are seeing that there is a content distribution bottleneck.”
“I think the smartest thing the Australian government could do if it really cared about file sharing would be to open up that monopoly and allow other channels, so Australian users can access that material,” he continued, referring specifically to Game of Thrones, shown on Foxtel’s Showcase channel subscription package featuring HBO content costing roughly $72 a month.
“If you create legal, convenient channels for people to access content, Australians have shown they will pay for it and the piracy issue retreats to the margin.”
Ludlam also praised ISPs such as iiNet for standing against Attorney-General George Brandis and the proposed crackdown on pirates which would see providers acting in the interests of major film and music studios, effectively rising the cost of internet rates courtesy of the extra workload such a task would create.
“(The) demand on behalf of the Attorney General’s Department to lock internet service providers and the (copyright) rights holders, the intermediaries in other words, not artists and performers and not users and consumers, but people in the middle to try organise a deal,” he said. “And fortunately for us, we have some quite progressive internet service providers, people like Mike Malone (iiNet), who for sound business reasons but also with a strong public interest, have said ‘I don’t want to become your surveillance force. Why don’t you open up legitimate channels for people to access content?’ and this problem goes away.”
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