Full Spectrum: piracy talk stalemate

Talks between rights holders and internet service providers (ISPs), on how best to reduce online copyright infringement, appear to have reached a stalemate.

At least, that's how iiNet's chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby sees it. Content lobby groups like the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) aren't interested in making content available quicker, easier and cheaper, he said, they just want the government to change the law. So while the government is still holding meetings between the groups, hoping for a voluntary industry policy, Dalby said that AFACT won't budge and the ISPs aren't interested in meeting content owner's demands.

In the meantime, although AFACT's managing director Neil Gane reportedly described the new season of Game of Thrones as having a "mere eight-day delay" from airing in the US to commercial availability in Australia, it will still go down as the most-infringed TV show this year, if not all time.

If eight days is close enough, does this lend weight to Gane's theory that — unlike the bottled water industry before it — content owners can't compete with free?

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