Legal Group Says Unlimited Broadband Promotes Piracy 247
bennyboy64 writes "Unlimited broadband plans are all too familiar in many countries; in Australia they're scarce. One ISP offering such a plan between the hours of 8pm and 8am, AAPT, is being looked at as a matter of high interest by a legal group representing the interests of the global film industry, AFACT (the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft). It said AAPT was encouraging users to download copyrighted material. AAPT's advertising states: 'If you want unlimited music, unlimited games and unlimited movies — get unlimited off-peak broadband downloads from AAPT.' AFACT executive director Adrianne Pecotic said: 'In the context of the AAPT promotion, we have a concern that it could be misconstrued to promote illegal downloads and that's something that we'd like clarified.' AFACT is currently involved in what will be a landmark court case with Australian ISP iiNet. It recently claimed in court proceedings that there was a link between iiNet upgrading the service plans of heavy Internet users and the proliferation of film piracy."
I just use (Score:5, Funny)
aapt-get.
aapt-get remove afact
aapt-get install mapiratinboots
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Oh, just piracy? (Score:5, Funny)
Also commerce and terrorism and scientific research and banking and hacking and collective processing and ....
Frivolous lawsuit filer should pay defendant costs (Score:5, Funny)
First shoot all the lawyers.
Then shoot all the lawyers AGAIN!
Re:Frivolous lawsuit filer should pay defendant co (Score:5, Funny)
Do what you want, âcause a lawyer is free,
YOU ARE A LAWYER!
Re:Frivolous lawsuit filer should pay defendant co (Score:5, Funny)
And fill the hole up.
With more lawyers? I can see it now...
"It's lawyers, all the way down."
In other words, welcome to Hell.
Re:Oh, just piracy? (Score:5, Informative)
What about Interstate Highways? (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously they were made to promote such illegal activities...
(yes, that's sarcasm, and so is this...)
>^_^<
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Cars are not broadband, what about trucks? A series of them, maybe?
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Upstream bound and crypted, loaded up and pingin',
We're gonna send what they say can't be sent,
We've got a lotta bits to move and a short relay window.
I'm bandwidth bound, just watch
Ol' "Pirate" run.
Keep your bits hard on the NIC. Son, never mind them fiters.
Let it all stream out 'cause we got law to break.
Downloaders are thirsty in Atlanta and there's a proxy in Texarcana.
And we'll bring 'em flicks no matter what it takes.
Upstream bound and c
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First let me say that I agree with you. Second, it looks like their beef was with how the isp advertised it. The implication being that any licensing charges associated with music, games and video would make it effectively impossible to make use of all that the isp was offering *legally*. But it is like you said, they *could* use it for those purposes but that doesn't mean that the risk outweighs everything else the internet user could do with the bandwidth.
Re:What about Interstate Highways? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about Interstate Highways? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also an increasing number of bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead who have legally released their own material for free online.
And the sky didn't fall in [techdirt.com].
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And the Grateful Dead, who got the idea from old bluegrass musicians. Free music has been around a lot longer than the internet. The internet just makes it so much better.
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And the Grateful Dead, who got the idea from old bluegrass musicians. Free music has been around a lot longer than the internet. The internet just makes it so much better.
Haha, it's funny when people say "nuh, not only can piracy walk down this street, so also can free or independently produced content!"
All the while Big Media execs are going "tomaytoe, tomahtoe.."
Re:What about Interstate Highways? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's largely what I came in here to say. It may be true that really fast unlimited Internet access makes it easier and more convenient to engage in certain kinds of illegitimate behavior, but it also makes it easier to engage in lots of legitimate and useful behavior.
In this case, it may be true that unlimited broadband will hurt media companies by making piracy easier, but it could also help their businesses by opening up all kinds of new business opportunities. The problem they're having seems to be that they're dragging their feet on new business opportunities.
My big question is, who's paying this "legal group"? Is it the record companies who are trying to keep their old business models? Or is it the ISPs who are looking for an excuse to not provide good service?
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Re:What about Interstate Highways? (Score:5, Insightful)
In Britain, a pretty large proportion of bandwidth is used for iPlayer downloads, which are legal. Youtube is also very popular, and is mostly legal - they have a royalty agreement with the MCPS.
Most people who don't read slashdot find it very difficult to use peer to peer software and to find reliable downloads that actually are what they say they are without any trojans added.
Re:What about Interstate Highways? (Score:5, Interesting)
Take torrents, people use them for sharing data. Now probably 90% of the traffic is illegal in some way.
Now take the roads on my way to work. 90% of the people are doing something illegal on the roads. Usually that is speeding, of course some people are transporting drugs etc.
So 90% of the population breaks the law when using the road. 90% of people break the law when using torrents.
Does that mean we should get rid of roads?
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An interesting observation of my own about human behaviour has come to mind - if your average law abiding citizen (think they) can get away with it, they will break "soft" laws. Soft here meaning "I'm not harming anyone or stealing" laws, which is a rather common excuse for torrents ("I'll buy it later... if it's good") and speeding. Regardless of what we do about these things (speed cameras or taking down the pirate bay), normal, every day, generall
Re:What about Interstate Highways? (Score:4, Interesting)
It says that human beings make at least a basic calculation of risk and harm. Soft "crimes" are perceived as being low risk, low harm. Otherwise, normal people probably wouldn't be engaging in them as much.
Re:What about Interstate Highways? (Score:4, Insightful)
What that says about human nature [...]
It says much more about the laws than the people.
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Not really. It's well proven that people will break any limit a little as long as the risk/benefit is in their favor, and won't back down until you're way over the limit. Speeding is a very good example, I think everybody agree you need speed limits and can't have people going 100 km/h through a residential area that should have 35 km/h. So you make the limit 30 km/h, most people drive 35 km/h but you can hit those going 40 km/h+ hard because they're like "way over". Those that go 35 km/h aren't practically
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The stats don't show that that its helping but you in Victoria you can (and will) get a ticket for going 103.1 in a 100 km range. The road between Melbourne and Sydney has cameras that take photos of registration (licenses) plates about 8 times along the 6 hr trip and if you are more than 3% over, they send you a ticket in the mail.
Note that the Australia Design Regulations for vehicles state a speedometre only needs to be accurate to +/-10%, so you should be able to challenge any speeding ticket that fal
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The thing is, we're rapidly approaching the point where legal downloads are outlasting illegal ones. This month alone I've gotten three games of xbox live which probably totaled 8-10GB of data, not to mention probably 15-20 hours of legal streaming video off netflix, hulu, etc. But hey, lock me up for being a criminal. Hey Australia, 2001 called and they're jealous of your awesome internet!
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No, it means we should get rid of the law in question.
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They make it much easier, faster, and cheaper to smuggle goods and other illegal activities across state lines. Obviously they were made to promote such illegal activities...
Well, both the Interstate system (originally known as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) and the Internet (which grew out of ARPANET) were both originally conceived at least in part with government/military interests in mind.
You just can't trust civilians with these things...
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Neither is bandwidth.
Thus proving ... (Score:2)
"Unlimited broadband" doesn't mean you can have a car of gigantic or unlimited size, which would be like unlimited bandwidth. Instead, picture a large car on a highway with an extremely high speed limit. You can saturate your allotted bandwidth (fill your somewhat large car to capacity) and drive the length of that highway repeatedly a
No different than Hard Drive advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
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Which is exactly the point. Look at the value you get for your new $100 HDD! You'll never fill that! ;)
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Consumers don't understand what a terrabyte is.
Yep. Looks like you're a bit confused, too.
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But it's not "Australia" that has a problem with it, just an overly loud special interest group that wants to fuck over the other 99.9% of the population to their insane demands and with the $$$ and lawyers for it too.
Forget about tarring and feathering tax collectors, these groups are even worse and that punishment would be too kind!
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even though most people don't legally have a terrabyte of music.
I see you've never had a conversation with an audiophile. "MP3? Don't even talk to me if you're using MP3. FLAC? FLAC is for suckers man. I use a terrabyte per CD man. I know CD is only 44.1kHz and 44,100 samples per second but unless you're ripping your wave files at 320kHz and 440,000 samples per milli-second you're missing the forth golden harmonic. Don't forget to use pure gold cables otherwise it degrades and you won't hear the difference
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That really isn't a fair comparison. This is about using and abusing the many ways to understand "unlimited", just like many ISPs used it to limit bandwidth and claim it was still unlimited because you were connected 24/7. In this case, specifically that unlimited can be interpreted to mean "any song" and not "as much as you want". If they had said "Downlaod the latest Hollywood blockbusters with our new Unlimited Internet" then it'd quite clearly be foul play because it doesn't actually provide that. One o
Piracy was lower (Score:2, Funny)
When there was no such thing as records, cassettes, VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, CD-Rs, no such thing as microphones, MP3 players, Radios, iPods, iTunes, online music stores, etc.
Ban all these things!
Of course it is (Score:4, Insightful)
People want to pirate. Get over it. It's not going to stop.
If you're a dick about it, you might convince people who would otherwise pay you some of the time to pay you none of the time. That's it.
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There have been some cases such as the release of The Man From Earth where online piracy led to wide spread sales of the film.
The director himself posted on several scene release sites and setup a paypal account where people who liked his movie could either donate a small amount or pre-order the dvd.
Cases like this are far from common but I can see where this might be the future of entertainment.
Surely if I like something enough and someone makes it easy for me to throw a few dollars to the people actually
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There have been some cases such as the release of The Man From Earth where online piracy led to wide spread sales of the film.
Sure. I'll quite happily send $12 (the price of a movie ticket) straight to a director for the download of a new movie. Food at home is much cheaper than popcorn in a cinema, and I'm not paying for public transport, either. So he still gets full (concession for me, am on a pension) ticket price, which I have no problem with, and I financially come out ahead of what I'd spend on a trip to the movies right now. Everyone wins.
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The first honest comment in this whole section.
I am a pirate. And I think it is very improbable that all the people ranting about how they dare to call you pirates really never pirate anything.
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If people want to take things without paying, is this also "something people should get over. It's not going to stop."?
Content isn't free to produce, and unauthorized copying/pirateing, while not theft, does often deprive content creators of money they would have gotten otherwise. I don't know how to solve it, but I don't think "giving up" is the answer here - just as in other issues with big problems and no immediate path to success.
And FTR: I don't like DRM (so much so, that I'm not buying many kin
Jesus, he's right. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Jesus, he's right. (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of a time way back when 14.4k was common (yes, it was a relative eon ago). A certain ISP I happened to bump into viewed that 9600 bps or higher actually encouraged warez transfers. So, this ISP didn't just just limit modem speed to 2400bps, but threatened to remove the account of any user who asked why it was done, because "normal, law abiding" people checking E-mail or using Netscape using Trumpet Winsock and Eudora never needed any more than that. They even viewed that the artifical limits on bps also discouraged hackers from war-dialing their modem bank.
This stuff is SSDD, except that the technology has moved from dialup to broadband.
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Heh. And that stopped just about zero people from pirating I'm sure. People pirated with 300 baud; 1200 baud; 2400 baud; 9600 baud; 14.4k; 28.8k; and 56K. It's not the bitrate. It's the business model.
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This reminds me of a time way back when 14.4k was common (yes, it was a relative eon ago). A certain ISP I happened to bump into viewed that 9600 bps or higher actually encouraged warez transfers.
That's funny. It's exactly why I bought my 14.4 at the tender age of 15. I suppose your ISP was right! ;)
Well, that and for porn, of course.
Allergy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Too bad the "unlimited" plans don't give the telecomms any incentive to upgrade. It would be different if the more bandwisth they provided meant more revenue but in the current system it is more profitable to cap bandwidth use on "unlimited" plans (fraud) and throttle heavy users. The high bandwidth users pay the same as anyone else so as long as the telecomms can hold their local monopolies and insist on their current business model there is no incentive what so ever to change things. If we really wante
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RTFA: the AAPT isn't making the claim, AFACT (the Australian MPAA/RIAA) is.
secondly, AAPT offer unlimited data overnight, and it was their marketing of this that got them into trouble.
Thirdly, Conroy has promised that the new FTTH network will be built, although I do realise that this isn't a hugely significant promise, especially given its source.
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Why does America, Canda, Australia, and England not want to keep wup with modern high speed broadband as defined by Japan?
In the Australian case, depending on who your suppliers are, it costs $300/megabit to haul data across the pacific ocean, then an extra $100/megabit if you are on the monopoly telco's (Tel$tra) DSL hardware, so the data limit is understandable..
Luckily in recent years ISPs have started to break the incumbent telco monopoly, lowering costs to around $200/megabit across the pacific, then
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I like to think of Australian telcos as a cartel.
Telstra set the bar at a max and no body is going to rock the boat with the new connections to the USA.
If the Australian telco community can fool most people into thinking packets are still golden, why change.
A few gimmicks and PR stunts.
Australian unlimited business plans show they cam do unlimited, but like to keep the end losers on a per gb drip.
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I'm actually a fan of usage-based charges. ISPs shouldn't be able to advertise unlimited plans, and then cut people off for using them in an unlimited fashion.
Right now provider A and provider B both advertise unlimited plans with the same bandwidth and cost - so which should I choose? Instead, suppose provider A indicates that their plan is limited to 20GB per month and provider B limits at 60GB per month. Now I know which one I want. I might even sacrifice a little speed in favor of a higher total cap
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The article is about AFACT - the copyright mob in Australia - trying to stop the caps. Not the ISPs (they have their own issues with bandwidth that are not at all related to copyright). In Australia, I think we're actually better off than, say, people in the USA - because our limits are clearly defined and well published. Unlike in the US where you have these 'unlimited' plans getting advertised and then you get randomly cut off when you use too much data.
AFACT trying to limit our downloads is, imo, worse t
This thread is so full of win (Score:2)
I dont know who to mod UP? Fuck, well I guess I'll just post and save the mod points for something that I actually have some chance in hell of influencing. Fuck you all Corporate Trans-National Business Bending to Like minded Office managemant fucktards. (caps = FACT BLO)
Time for dialup (Score:2)
It seems to me that the argument is shades of the tax on CDRs. Obviously, they argue, this service (unlimited broadband) is primarily used for committing IP infractions. Well, sure, but like CDRs, there's a lot of legitimate uses for broadband, too. I'd think that the push all over for schools to get broadband and computers would sort of make that clear. At least, I didn't think it's getting installed to hep people get w
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
They didn't say 'unlimited PIRATED movies, music a (Score:4, Insightful)
I think some people forget that there is an endless amount of freely playable, listenable and viewable content on the web....
And one doesn't have to violate copyright to enjoy it.
Re:They didn't say 'unlimited PIRATED movies, musi (Score:4, Interesting)
"I think some people forget that there is an endless amount of freely playable, listenable and viewable content on the web...."
I think they are well aware of it, and want to nip it in the bud by effectively outlawing it and restoring their position as the only distributors of content. While they might be genuinely concerned about piracy, I think they also realise that this is also a prime opportunity to make a land grab for all internet content.
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There isn't an "endless" number of movies. The number is finite, and if you limit yourself to freely viewable movies then that's a tiny fraction. So I think it's dodgy for the ISP to talk about "unlimited movie downloads".
Likewise for music, if you limit yourself to freely downloadable music then it's a tiny fraction of what's available.
Games? I don't know, but I bet that if we consider the total number of *bytes* of all free and non-free games that you can download, then the non-free games take up more tha
So does breathing (Score:4, Funny)
Quick. Cut off all the oxygen. It's a known fact that all Internet Pirates. That's a documented 100% breathe oxygen. We must eliminate the oxygen NOW! Otherwise we encourage piracy. Don't even get me started on Water. Water has been linked not only to piracy but also to terrorism. We must cut off the supply at the taps!
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I dunno, I think you can get DHMO banned purely as an environmental pollutant.
Summary is wrong. AAPT are wankers. (Score:5, Informative)
8pm to 8am? I wish!
I am currently on AAPT's unlimited-offpeak plan. The article summary is wrong. The offpeak period in fact begins at 2am. You can actually see this in the fine print at the bottom of the linked Youtube video.
In passing, I'll moan about something related. Last month, we went over our onpeak limit of 20GB. Our broadband was cut off, and we had to content ourselves with dial-up speed for the rest of the month. We sighed, and thought, "oh well, at least the broadband will only be cut off from 8am till 2am. We're paying for unlimited traffic from 2am till 8am, so we'll still have that."
I had, of course, forgotten that it was AAPT we were dealing with -- that cesspit of incompetence, greed and malice. The wankers cut us off overnight too.
Since then, I have resolved to be careful during the day, and to download the Internet every frickin' night from 2am till 8am.
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Maybe someone got confused, sine AARNet give free unlimited quota from 8PM to 8AM, and free access to peers (including Internode and hence all their mirrors and all of .on.net; Google and YouTube, and a load of other domains) to at least some of their customers.
(Before anyone gets too excited/jealous, AARNet is the Australian Academic Research Network, and access is strictly limited, so no, you cannot get this at home.)
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I will have to content myself with Internode then, I know how much I am paying, what exactly I am getting AND I get a shit-ton of free stuff :)
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8pm - 8am is exactly what they are offering on the front page of their website [aapt.com.au].
Ah, I considered the possibility that the summary might be talking about a different deal from the one I have, but when I saw that the Youtube video also said 2am, I took that as confirmation. Anyway, the controversy over the encouragement of illegal download applies to both deals.
I see that the ad for the 8pm–8am deal mentions 5GB of peak traffic and says that if you go over it, you will be throttled both off and on peak. In my case, I did not respond to an ad. AAPT phoned me up and orally offered
Back to dial-up for you, bub! (Score:2)
Let's all go back to dial-up analog rates and service to satisfy the copyright czars that we have no practical means to steal their content, shall we? The good old days of sneakernet piracy were really so much more satisfying anyway, weren't they, since you actually got to know some of your fellow pirates?
Hmm (Score:2)
Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone had to pay for metered internet (ala Australia)?
Do you think that sites like Youtube would have ever taken off had it cost $277 to watch a single video (at a rate of 2 cents per kilobyte, which is what I pay for metered data on my cell phone right now)?
In a very real sense, the amazing innovation we've seen in the last decade or two has been the result of relatively cheap flat-rate internet.
America is still far behind other countries in bandwidth cost
Internet User says Legal Group Doesnt Know Shit! (Score:2)
"Liar whore, liar whore!... Fancy talk for a whore!"
This "Legal Group" doesnt know shit about how the internet works. The internet is not a one way delivery service designed to pipe corporate America's bullshit to consumers.
Instead, it is a network in which people are given power to contribute, communicate, and partake in the sharing of ideas and information.
Somewhere along the lines some people got it in our heads that mainstream media is the only entity allowed to transmit content and ideas to end users.
Unlimited broadband promotes lots of things (Score:2)
Like sand between their fingers (Score:2)
The music industry's monopoly on distributing a very important part of the human culture is slipping away like sand between their fingers.
The grip they held on our culture has been choking, and made them very rich. It was solely based on cost of distribution technology.
Their effort, legal and technical, will be no more successful than the scribes effort to forbid the printing press a few hundred years ago.
Great (Score:2)
Let's destroy the internet and go back to the stone age. Then surely there won't be any digital copying of copyrighted works...
As for piracy, I hear it's promoted more by a combination of ships and firearms - usually cannons or rocket launchers.
I have far more sinister proof (Score:4, Funny)
Do you know who is REALLY to blame for all those illegal downloads that help fund terrorism?
The movie industry. Without any regard to their fellow man and society they keep on producing movie after movie drawing their poor victims into a downwards spiral of constantly try to download the latest of their poison.
Why, I say that if we ban the movie industry (and really, only a communist could be against that) then the act of pirating movie will be wiped of the face of the earth and our youngsters will be saved from this destructive path the pinko's and homosexuals from hollywood have set them on.
Save a child, kill a hollywood producer.
I dare you to find a single flaw in my resoning. No movies, no piracy.
More a matter of income... (Score:2, Interesting)
Air promotes murder (Score:2)
before the internet, there was naked sneakernet (Score:2)
And I hope AAPT told... (Score:2)
AFACT to go fuck themselves and prove harm first instead of engaging in a smear campaign?
Youzing Lojicks (Score:2)
Unlimited broadband makes piracy possible, therefore it promotes it, so let's get rid of it.
OK, let's put that into a formula so we can reuse it lots of times, changing it enough each time so we don't have to call it a remake every time.
If A is a sufficient condition of B: then A is a causative factor of B, and not A is a sufficient condition of not B. OOOOh, I see Nicholas Cage reading that, you know the way he just saunters down the line until he gets to the main point where he suddenly RAISES-HIS-VOICE-A
I wonder what the illegal groups think about this? (Score:2)
What an Excellent Precedent (Score:2)
DRM (Score:2)
Sounds true to me (Score:2)
Though I'd exchange the word "enables" for "promotes". Downloading twenty feature films per month is possible because it's no more expensive to download twenty feature films than it is to use your account just for email. If the cost of net access were actually tied to bandwidth consumed, though perhaps not linearly, this would no longer be the case, and it would become cost prohibitive to download movies indiscriminately. IMHO this is the "right" way to handle issues such this, rather than ISPs attemptin
Service is good, ad is bad (Score:2)
>"If you want unlimited music, unlimited games and unlimited movies -- get unlimited off-peak broadband downloads from AAPT."
Sorry, with advertising like that, they should get at least a little legal attention. Nothing wrong with "unlimited" Internet, but they should be more careful with their ads...
Buy our gun- Unlimited killing and shooting in malls.
Buy our car- Super fast for unlimited speeding and running over children.
Buy our stereo- If you want unlimited power and volume for annoying your neighbor
Hands cause fistfights (Score:2)
Hands cause fistfights, Legs promote fleeing from police.
This just in!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Unlimited freedom promotes abuse of freedom!!!
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Religion, dictators, kings, and rest have tried for centuries to limit freedom, and they all eventually failed. RIAA/MPAA should get the idea already.
History repeats itself, what did you expect?
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Or you could use something closer to real piracy, get some clubs, beat the snot outta some other group, and take their stuff.
The only thing likable about the stone-age (Hollywood version) is the gorgeous busty leopard skin bikini wearing ladies. (At least if your male.)
>^_^<
Re:having computer promotes piracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Religion, Dictators, and Kings have power of live and death over you. That they "Eventually Failed" was small consolation to the millions they put to the Sword, the Guillotine, and the Gallows.
RIAA/MPAA are on a death march. Their own. They just don't realize it yet.
And they will take intellectual property with them. The backlash will be rather sever, when the sheeple wake up and realize that you can't have a fast computer because some one in a far off land wrote a song.
Eventually, it will be necessary for society to roll it all back. Copyrights, Patents, the whole nine yards.
Compose a song, sing a song, write a book: You have 4 years, then its public domain. Invent warp drive: Ok, 7 years. Sorry, we can't wait for you to die in order to use the product of your brain. We birthed you, we fed you, we educated you, you owe us.!!
Don't want to sing a song under that scenario? Fine. We will get someone else. People have been producing music far longer than they have been paid for it.
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While I agree that there is a case for the copyright and patent terms to be shorter than they are, it is scary that people can make a statement like this in apparently non-sarcastic way and get modded up for it in a forum of generally educated people. It is not some mickey mouse musician trade organizations that are moving us closer to a dictatorship, it is people like you.
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It is not some mickey mouse musician trade organizations that are moving us closer to a dictatorship, it is people like you.
...a dictatorship? As a result of Mickey Mouse or the Pirates of the Boston Tea Party? And that puts us at the mercy of a despotic autocracy ?
What a drama queen, scooby doo. Turn off your talk radio. This is sounding like a cartoon idiocracy.
Re:having computer promotes piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, you almost said something pointed there.
As a matter of fact, "having computer promotes piracy" is kinda right. I'll clean it up for you though:
having easy and regular access to copying machines makes copyright law seem evil and wrong, and ignoring it seems just.
There ya go.
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Actually, before the printing press was invented, "piracy" was the normal method of distribution, but it wasn't illegal at that time.
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Really? I bet that when a bunch of cavemen were sitting around a fire and cooking their catch, one of them told a story he'd heard from someone else without paying the original author! For that matter, I doubt the inventor of fire had been paid for the use of his method of generating heat by oxygenating plant matter.
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Ther
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"If you want unlimited legally purcha...—er, licensed DRM-protected music, unlimited legally licensed DRM-protected games and unlimited legally licensed DRM-protected movies -- get unlimited off-peak broadband downloads from AAPT. Do not under any circumstances use your AAPT broadband to illegally commandeer seafaring vessels. Also, do not use AnyDVD to bypass UOP [wikipedia.org] restrictions. Be sure to always read the FBI Warning, copyright notices, and watch anti-pir
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Beyond the advertising, there is the concern that the only "legal" ways to downl... er, "licence" video and audio content are streaming, requiring you to be physically present to see the ads.
AAPT's service, by only providing unmetered downloads in off-peak hours, encourages the last thing Big Media wants, and I mean ever. "time shifting" and local archival.
Remember, copyright isn't about whether or not you have paid for the content. Not at the core. Instead, it's all about control. Big Media will never sell