Internet piracy: a white elephant in a sea of static

Wayne Swan boasted that, under the NBN, customers could download HD movies in 30 seconds. I am amazed that people can so naively ignore the potential disaster such a system could lead to. Sure, many people will legally buy movies, but many more will undoubtedly abuse the system as they currently do with music.

Of course, the illegal “sharing” of expensive games and software packages is only going to increase with internet speeds. The potential damage of piracy to the music, film and entertainment industries need hardly be stated. The numbers are already striking, and they get worse and worse by the day. In a society where piracy is not seriously considered as “wrong”, the only remaining limiting factors are how easy it is, which ultimately comes down to speed.

The Labor government have argued that fibre-optic cables should run to every urban household, and yet their repeated justifications for this expenditure are based around school, business and community uses. Whether they be Telemedicine, innovative learning techniques within schools or new ways to run business, these applications will in general require fast connections to hospitals, schools and workplaces. They surely do not require a connection to every single urban Australian household to operate effectively.

Such connectivity to individual households, at speeds of up to 1000Gbps, will undoubtedly improve quality of life through new forms of entertainment and communication. But as far as delivering essential services or ensuring Australian companies have the technological edge, such connectivity, to individual households, and at such a price, is perhaps a bit of an overkill.

And of course the only guaranteed effect of increasing internet speeds is an increase in the quantity of pirated material. We have little moral conscience on this issue, and the increase in speeds to individual households is only going to make the situation worse. Australia needs faster internet, but not at the expense of our proudest industries or our children’s morality. At the very least, the issue of piracy should actually figure in the debate.