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Major Copyright Judgement

lionking

In the Peanut Gallery
lionking
Joined
Jan 23, 2007
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Location
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In what has been termed a landmark decision (the first time a case like this has gone to judgment) the Australian Federal Court has decided that a major ISP, iinet, is not liable for it's members downloading movies and so on. It's significant in that all the major studios and a large Australian TV network brought the case to court.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology...rk-piracy-case-20100204-ndwr.html?autostart=1

The studios had hired an online investigator firm to intercept BitTorrent traffic over 59 weeks and record instances of iiNet users downloading pirated movies.
iiNet argued that it was not required by law to act on ‘‘mere allegations’’ of copyright infringement, that customers were innocent until proven guilty in court, and that the case was like suing the electricity company for things people do with their electricity.
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A significant precedent. Comments?
 
A victory for common sense. It would be very hard for an ISP to monitor what its customers do.

It means that if the admins here (or elsewhere) tell my ISP I have done something illegal then I need to be convicted in court of a criminal charge first before I need another ISP.
 
rjh01 said:
A victory for common sense. It would be very hard for an ISP to monitor what its customers do.

It means that if the admins here (or elsewhere) tell my ISP I have done something illegal then I need to be convicted in court of a criminal charge first before I need another ISP.
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Not if the ISP believes you have violated your terms of contract. They don't have to accept your custom and can revoke it at any time. What it means is that they don't want to play cop and watch for you downloading materials and then enforce action on it. The same happened over here and resulted in any infringements being reported to a committee that decides if a copyright offence has occured and then orders a cease and discest order. If that is ignored then the Committee can order the ISP to drop the customer.
 
If this ruling holds, copyright holders will have to take action against each downloader, a monumental task.
 
I have to admit that as a programmer and a wanna-be author, I am on the copyright holders' side on this one. How would you feel if hundreds of people around the world all felt they could help themselves to a $1 from your pay packet every week?
 
PhantomWolf said:
I have to admit that as a programmer and a wanna-be author, I am on the copyright holders' side on this one. How would you feel if hundreds of people around the world all felt they could help themselves to a $1 from your pay packet every week?
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Understood, but I doubt that Xerox was ever prosecuted when people copied books and articles.

Perhaps the answer is to estimate how much illegal downloading is happening per ISP (as the plaintifs did here) and for the government to levy a fee to each ISP (and therefore internet users) to be passed on to copyright holders. IIRC this happened with blank audio tapes.

I can't see piracy going away any time soon.
 
PhantomWolf said:
I have to admit that as a programmer and a wanna-be author, I am on the copyright holders' side on this one. How would you feel if hundreds of people around the world all felt they could help themselves to a $1 from your pay packet every week?
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I work in the recording industry. Welcome to the club.
 
lionking said:
Understood, but I doubt that Xerox was ever prosecuted when people copied books and articles.

Perhaps the answer is to estimate how much illegal downloading is happening per ISP (as the plaintifs did here) and for the government to levy a fee to each ISP (and therefore internet users) to be passed on to copyright holders. IIRC this happened with blank audio tapes.

I can't see piracy going away any time soon.
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ISPs can tell more about what a client is doing than Xerox could, they can monitor and see the datastream.

I can see that ISPs don't want to have to play cop though, and I'm not sure about forcing everyone to pay for other people's illegal downloads. I don't download illegally, why should I have to pay more for my internet to cover those that do? I already feel agrieved that I have to pay higher prices to buy genuine copies of games and movies because of piracy, now you are saying I should have to pay twice while the piraters get off scott free?
 
PhantomWolf said:
ISPs can tell more about what a client is doing than Xerox could, they can monitor and see the datastream.

I can see that ISPs don't want to have to play cop though, and I'm not sure about forcing everyone to pay for other people's illegal downloads. I don't download illegally, why should I have to pay more for my internet to cover those that do? I already feel agrieved that I have to pay higher prices to buy genuine copies of games and movies because of piracy, now you are saying I should have to pay twice while the piraters get off scott free?
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Possibly. Not everyone used blank audio tapes to copy music, but everyone had to pay the levy, again IIRC.
 
PhantomWolf said:
ISPs can tell more about what a client is doing than Xerox could, they can monitor and see the datastream.
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If they are, then they are in breach of the Federal Telecommunications Privacy act.

Each offence carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Dave Everett
 
PhantomWolf said:
ISPs can tell more about what a client is doing than Xerox could, they can monitor and see the datastream.

I can see that ISPs don't want to have to play cop though, and I'm not sure about forcing everyone to pay for other people's illegal downloads. I don't download illegally, why should I have to pay more for my internet to cover those that do? I already feel agrieved that I have to pay higher prices to buy genuine copies of games and movies because of piracy, now you are saying I should have to pay twice while the piraters get off scott free?
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Evidence?
 
deverett said:
If they are, then they are in breach of the Federal Telecommunications Privacy act.

Each offence carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Dave Everett
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Well since we are talking Australia, US Law doesn't cover it, you need the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (C'th) and Telecommunications Act 1997 (C'th), however both have exceptions that allow for ISPs to monitor data and even stored communications.

I would also note I used the word "can" not "do". In NZ they were looking at forcing ISPs to do just this, and then block anyone that was downloading copyright material. In the end it was dropped because the ISPs complained loudly about being made to play Cop. The fun thing to remember about laws... Governments make them and Governments can change them to do whatever they want.
 
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WildCat said:
Can they tell a legal torrent from an illegal one?
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Well Aust is wanting to bring in internet filtering and to do that effectively they'd likely have to figure it out, or people will simply slip under the filters with torrents.
 
PhantomWolf said:
I have to admit that as a programmer and a wanna-be author, I am on the copyright holders' side on this one. How would you feel if hundreds of people around the world all felt they could help themselves to a $1 from your pay packet every week?
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I would feel terrible.

How would this be in any way relevant though?
 
PhantomWolf said:
I have to admit that as a programmer and a wanna-be author, I am on the copyright holders' side on this one. How would you feel if hundreds of people around the world all felt they could help themselves to a $1 from your pay packet every week?
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Pretty bad. How would you feel if every time you uttered a word, somebody thought you owed them $1 for you saying it?
 
PhantomWolf said:
How would you feel if hundreds of people around the world all felt they could help themselves to a $1 from your pay packet every week?
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I'm not happy about it either. I'm also forced to take a dispassionate view of what is happening and why.

When a thing is easy to do, carries little or no risk, and rewards those who do it - it will be done. This includes the theft of intellectual property.

It might be worth looking for another way to get paid.
 
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