Village Roadshow threat to sue pirates and block downloading websites

HAVE you even illegally downloaded a movie? Australian film distribution company Village Roadshow wants to sue you.

Chief executive Graham Burke has revealed that the company intends to sue whoever they find to have downloaded one of its movies and it also plans to block pirating websites.

“It’s wrong. [Pirates] have been warned, notices issued that they have been doing the wrong thing. Yes, we will sue people,” Mr Burke told.

When questioned about whether he was worried about his company’s reputation when it takes on everyday Australians, who may struggle to pay the fines, he said he couldn’t care less.

He said piracy was theft and those who engaged in it should be dealt with, regardless of whether they could pay up.

On top of suing, the distribution company of Hollywood blockbusters such as Mad Max: Fury Road and The Lego Movie wants to lead a push to have piracy sites, such as The Pirate Bay, blocked through new anti-piracy legislation.

We are absolutely in the process of implementing action to block illegal sites,” Mr Burke told The Australian.

“We are going through the legal preparation at this stage and will be ready in October to go to the courts and ask them to block sites.”

Tom Godfrey, of consumer advocacy group Choice, told news.com.au that blocking sites would almost be useless in the fight against piracy.

“Anyone who has access to Google will be able to get around Australia’s internet filter,” he said. “This whole exercise has purely been about some very, very big players trying to prop up their business models and take out competitors.”

He also believes that blocking sites would hurt competition international companies have stimulated, rather than actually stop pirates.

“Fair enough if they want to wipe out The Pirate Bay and the like, but they’re using the pirating issue to also limit Australians access to international competition,” Mr Godfrey said.

“The reason behind piracy in Australia has been clear for a long time and it’s cost, timeliness and accessibility.

“Actually give people what they want, when they want and most would stop pirating.”

Streaming services, such as Netflix and Presto, have begun to stem the tide of piracy by finally giving consumers what they want: complete seasons of shows on demand at the same time at elsewhere in the world for an affordable price.

However, some content owners continue to try to protect their old business models, locking up content and charging a premium.

“For a long time the market has been under-served by the content industry,” Mr Godfrey said.

“That’s why there was such a huge appetite for Netflix. Finally you have a company who gets what people want.”

If it goes ahead with blocking, Village Roadshow would be the second major company to express its desire to have pirating sites such as The Pirate Bay blocked using the new legislation, after Foxtel said it was preparing for action earlier this month.

A Foxtel spokesman told news.com.au: “The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill does nothing more than give copyright holders similar rights in relation to foreign websites, which steal their content, to those they would have if the sites were based in Australia.

“Because these pirate sites do not exist in Australia, rights holders are not able to take direct legal action against them.

“Similar laws exist in Europe, the UK, Singapore and many other jurisdictions.

“Foxtel and other rights holders are currently assessing what action can and should be taken to give effect to the legislation.”

While it might seem as simple as presenting the Federal Court with links to illegal content, rights holders have to meet strict criteria to prove that the website’s main purpose is to host copyrighted content.

This includes testing whether people would be impacted significantly by blocking the site and blocking the site was in the public interest.

Successful court action would force internet providers such as Telstra and iiNet to block access to those sites from Australia.

However, similar systems have been used overseas in countries including the UK, with little success. Some of the most popular torrenting sites in the world, including The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents have all been blocked, but locals have continued to find ways to download content.

Typically, within hours of an internet provider blocking a site, hundreds of mirror sites that offer the same content pop up. When the first wave of mirror sites are taken down or blocked, more sites crop up to replace them. It’s a never-ending circle.

However, The Pirate Bay, the world’s biggest torrenting site, now stops most internet service providers from blocking it. It works by hiding identifying information about The Pirate Bay from internet providers, making it harder for it to be blocked.

Village Roadshow and Graham Burke haven’t hid their disdain of pirates in the past, even going as far as comparing them to terrorists and paedophiles.

“The problem is urgent as piracy is spreading like a highly infectious disease and as bad habits become entrenched, they become harder to eradicate. Also of course high speed broadband is just around the corner,” the company wrote in its submission to the government’s copyright consultation last year.

“The dangers posed by piracy are so great, the goal should be total eradication or zero tolerance. Just as there is no place on the internet for terrorism or paedophilia, there should be no place for theft that will impact the livelihoods of the 900,000 people, whose security is protected by legitimate copyright.”

Last night, Mr Burke compared pirates to drunk drivers during his interview on The Feed.

“It’s no different to the highways of Australia, where we are pretty damn safe because drunken driving and high-speed driving is kept somewhat under control. If there were no [anti-piracy] laws, if there were no regulations, we wouldn’t be safe out there,” he said.

Mr Godfrey told news.com.au that the fear campaign and the demonising pirates was all part of the plan.

“The industry wants people to be afraid, but [Graham Burke] is actually going up against the people who are funding his business. It’s the same people going into cinemas that are the ones that are downloading,” he said.

“They need to acknowledge that they need to evolve their business models. And the answer for that is giving people content affordably, easily and on time.”