Telstra BigPond's MD, Justin Milne, speaks out on 'œonline piracy'

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 27 November 2008 09:39

IT Industry - Strategy

With a competing Australian ISP facing court action over copyright issues, Telstra Media Group and BigPond MD, Justin Milne, has posted a video chatting with Telstra’s Director of Media Communications, Andrew Maiden, on the topic of copyright and online piracy.

Telstra says that “the issue about illegal sharing of copyright material has come under the spotlight again with a group of copyright owners taking Federal Court action against an Australian ISP.”

Telstra Media Group Managing Director, Justin Milne, chats to nowwearetalking.com.au’s Andrew Maiden (Telstra’s Director of Media Communications) about the issue of illegal downloading and sharing of copyright material.

The post at nowwearetalking comes with a video posted up on YouTube, where “Justin also speaks about the business relationship Telstra has with music, movies and games publishers as an online retailer for their content”.

I’ve watched the video, and have quickly paraphrased most of what Justin had to say, although for the full and original version, please click the link above to watch the video for yourself.

The video says it is nearly 5 minutes long, but stops after around 4 minutes.

Maiden starts off by asking Milne if “Telstra has received any notices regarding copyright theft?”

Milne responds: “No... we havent' received any notices - we receive quite a lot of notices from police on ISP and telecommunications issues”. Milne sas “it's the police's job to prosecute criminals, and where we're require to comply with the law, we certainly do.”

Milne then says that “networks shouldn't be responsible for illegal use on their networks, like Australia Post isn't responsible for defamatory letters”, and that it is the “people who illegally download illegal content that should be held responsible”.

More of Justin Milne’s thoughts on page 2, please read on.