A Few Notes Of Caution

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday July 16, 2007

David Flynn

One internet service provider thinks the best form of defence is to erase your music and movie files. David Flynn reports.

One of the internet's best traits is that it connects people in much richer ways than the telephone. If you've ever received an email from a family member with photos of a new baby, you'll know exactly what we mean. As soon as the child begins to move - and we're talking serious locomotion, not just waving arms and kicking legs - then it's time to shoot off a quick home movie and fling that around the globe. Considering the size of those video clips, posting them onto a website is probably the better bet. That way anyone can view them online or download them at their leisure.

Well, unless your internet service provider is Exetel, in which case you may discover your home movie - along with any other multimedia files on your website - gets deleted in the long dark of night.

Reader Andrew Bradshaw alerted us to this when exactly this happened to a relative who relied on Exetel as her ISP and website host. "It seems that Exetel automatically deletes multimedia file from members' websites without even a warning," he wrote.

Troubleshooter did a bit of poking around and, sure enough, Exetel does keep a finger poised on the Delete button for video and music clips. Photos and documents are safe but post a home movie or any music - regardless of whether it's yours or otherwise has no copyright restrictions attached - and they risk being wiped.

It's no big catastrophe because you've still got the files on your PC. You just have to upload them (again) and hope your far-flung friends can be a bit quicker about downloading them at their end before the witching hour strikes.

What's the story behind this? Exetel says it's taken this step to help avoid any legal action if customers use their personal Exetel website to make available copyrighted materials such as movies, TV shows and MP3 copies of the latest albums. A notice on the company's website, which cites previous legal action against two other ISPs (People Telecom and ComCen), explains that "Exetel now believe there is a need to take more direct and pro-active action to monitor content stored on publicly accessible servers under its control".

Well, it seems to us their actions are less about "monitoring" than the outright nuking of any video or music files that Exetel identifies as targets by their extension such as AVI, WMV and MOV for video and MP3 and WMA for music (or other recordings such as lecture notes).

Exetel spokesman John Linton told Troubleshooter that "Exetel has no wish to infringe [on] any other entity's copyright, and determined that the easiest way of ensuring it complied with all aspects of copyright laws was to ensure no files likely to contain copyright material were ever made available from our website hosting service".

"Customers who create web space via this free facility are advised of the terms of usage very plainly including the procedure for validating the copyright of the material they will then place on the server. It's impossible to miss this condition." It is true Exetel provides a way for customers to escape the nightly purge - by emailing them with a request to be "excluded from the scan" and verify that the multimedia files on your page are not subject to copyright, that you own the files or that you have permission from the copyright holder. We'd suggest this might be done more easily, and with less impact on everyone concerned, if it was explicitly included in the "terms and conditions" that customers agree to when signing up with Exetel as their ISP.

If you're having trouble with technology and can't get any satisfaction from a supplier, let Troubleshooter know and we'll ask the hard questions on your behalf. Email troubleshooter@smh.com.au or see www.smh.com.au/troubleshooter.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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