In a move which has left some of the tech talk radio panel quite bemused, five Australian ISP have taken it upon themselves to stop their customers from downloading copyrighted content from the internet. One has to ask, since when have companies who’s profit margins rely on the large consumption of bandwidth taken the stance of the moral high ground?

The proposal comes from discussions between ISPs, the federal government and rights holders in the movie, music, software, gaming and publishing industries. Telstra, Optus, iiNet, iPrimus, Internode, AAPT, and the Internet Industry Association were involved with the Communications Alliance on the development of the scheme.

According to a report in ZD Net, the proposed process involves sending "education" and warning notices to customers whose accounts have been undertaking activity that might infringe copyright. The scheme wouldn't terminate internet accounts, and allows customers to appeal notices,

if they think there is no illegal activity happening on the account.

Yes, you heard right, the scheme wouldn’t terminate accounts of users allegedly downloading copyrighted material. So what’s the point?

Within 14 days of a potential infringement being detected, the rights holder could send a copyright-infringement notice to an ISP under the scheme, stating the copyrighted work that was involved, the time it was infringed upon and the IP address involved. The ISP would then try to match that IP address to a customer, and within 14 days would either tell the rights holder that it couldn't match the IP address, or send an education notice to the customer.

The education notice would say that an infringement notice has been received, and that the account may be infringing on copyright by improperly accessing content. It would say where the user could find information about piracy and how to legally source content, and would warn that if the account continued to breach copyright, the rights holder could take further action.

The customer has 21 days to ponder the notice or appeal it to an Industry Copyright Panel. After that time, if another infringement notice comes through from the rights holder for the same IP address, the ISP would send a warning notice to the account holder. Again, there would be a grace period of 21 days after the account holder receives the notice before any further action could be taken.

Once three warning notices have been sent, if the rights holder sends through another infringement notice for the same IP address, the ISP would send a "discovery notice", saying that the account holder has received one education notice and three warning notices and hasn't stopped infringing, and that the ISP would tell the rights holder after a 21-day grace period.

The rights holder could then apply for access to the account holder's details by applying for a preliminary discovery or subpoena application so that the rights holder could take action, with which the ISP has to comply.

If an ISP receives no copyright notices for an IP address for 12 months, the process starts again from the beginning, with an education notice.

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