ISP as Copyright Cop: Aussie ISP Kills All User Multimedia Files Nightly
Eric Bangeman writes on ARS Technica:
Envision a world where your ISP does the copyright policing at the behest of the movie studios, television networks, and music labels, where no copyrighted content stays up on a user's account for more than 24 hours. It sounds like a dream for Big Content, but it's also a nightmare for customers of Australian ISP Exetel.More here.
An Exetel support page which features the top ten support questions from the previous month. A frequently asked question from customers is why their multimedia files keep disappearing from their accounts. Exetel says that it takes a "hard approach to copyright issues," and since April 2005 the ISP has run a script that deletes all multimedia content with common extensions including .avi, .mp3, .wmv, and .mov.
That would certainly have the effect of removing any copyrighted content that shouldn't be there, but it also makes it hard for customers to share their own slideshows, home movies, and music, because, as Boing Boing notes, Exetel will automatically delete content that isn't infringing. "Sorry you can't watch the clips of Junior's footy match, mum. My ISP nuked it last night."
posted by Fergie @ 6/27/2007 08:39:00 AM
1 Comments:
Exetel is my ISP and this is just one of their many failings, zero customer support being #1. On the upside their plans are resonably priced for very heavy users. I really don't see that much of an issue with them deleting multimedia content off their servers, if people don't like it how hard is it to find free web hosting elsewhere these days?
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