With the music and motion picture industry still scrambling to find some way of recovering the “billions” of dollars that they claim to lose each year due to piracy, all eyes in Australia are currently on the court case between internet service provider iiNet who are currently locked in a bitter court battle with AFACT – the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.
AFACT are representing a number of parties including Channel Seven and the major US movie studios in a bid to try and force ISP’s to police people using their networks. AFACT have charged iiNet with facilitating copyright breaches by not passing on “cease and decist” notices from AFACT (ie. doing nothing to deter people from illegally downloading) as well as basically profiting by offering services that are wanted by Peer-to-Peer downloaders.
We’ve seen some interesting things from this battle so far, and I’ll put a few links to articles at itnews.com.au which has been covering this battle extensively to show you some of the key points discussed. You can follow the entire case over at their site.
- Conroy Vows to tackle illegal file sharing…
“The Government recognises a public policy interest in the resolution of this issue,” the report said. “A number of submissions received during the consultation phase for the development of this paper argued that a role for Government exists in addressing the apparent popularity of peer-to-peer file sharing of music and movies, without the necessary permissions of the relevant copyright owners”.
Note: This report at the link above goes on to mention the “three strikes and your disconnected” rule that the motion picture and music industries have proposed. It also mentions that consumer privacy advocates are very much against the idea. (Heck most of the general public seems to think its a bit harsh!)
- AFACT claims 100K copyright breaches on iiNet…… the film industry’s lawyers said its investigators demonstrated 97,942 instances of unauthorised copies being made available by the ISP’s customers to other internet users over a 59-week period. Of those, just under one-third – 29,914 – related to a sample of 86 works named in the court proceedings.”By making those films available in those 29,914 instances, iiNet customers invited any and every user of the freely available BitTorrent software program to download any and every part of those infringing copies,” the industry’s lawyers said in opening remarks.”That represents 29,914 instances of free handouts of my clients’ copyright.”One would have to multiply by many times that figure of 29,914… to get any idea of the volume and frequency of films available from iiNet customers to others.”
Comment: So if someone gets 1 data block from you of a movie… they are claiming that you are not only responsible for the whole movie, but any copies that anyone else got via “your block”. Crazy… I guess this is how they end up with their ridiculous numbers. Idiots.
- iiNet showed that the studios had previous contracts with bittorrent…Users visiting the BitTorrent.com website and clicking to download the software client would see a box directly below the ‘download’ button containing logos for a number of major film studios.”Nowhere, despite BitTorrent being in a contractual relationship with these key studios, does the site say ‘By the way, try not to download anything owned by Paramount, Warner or Fox,” counsel alleged.Cobden alleged the film industry was “engaged wholeheartedly in the promotion of BitTorrent, the accused vehicle of all the infringements in this case.”
Note: These deals were found to have been terminated before the time of the trial’s start. But the argument was that iiNet didn’t promote Bittorrent as the studios were or had. And to me, just like this case where they are accusing iiNet of not doing anything or enough to stop piracy, one could say that they too did not do enough while they were involved with the very client that is causing most of their issues at the moment.
- The Studio bosses washed their hands of any illegal activities by investigators in this case, stating that they believed that they would operate in a legal manner at all times.The line of questioning came after AFACT’s executive director Neil Gane was forced to concede the federation’s investigative techniques – which allegedly included an investigator downloading all or part of a copyrighted film from the internet using BitTorrent – could itself be construed as an infringement of the film studio’s copyrights.
- iiNet stated that issuing notices from AFACT to clients may not have been legal under the Telecommunications Act and have been forwarding them to the police. The police have stated that it is a civil matter and could not deal with them.
- Film industry wants a court order to force iiNet to block The Pirate Bay to all users if it wins the case.Bannon responded: “We do seek blocking orders if we’re otherwise successful [in the case].”We will seek an order that iiNet be ordered to block access to certain sites and this is one of those sites (The Pirate Bay).
OK – first it’s Conroy and his “Filter to save the little kiddies”… and now the Film industry is wanting to force the iiNet (to begin with… mark my words… if they are successful this WILL extend to all ISP’s in this country at some point) to block access to all sites that IT deems to be unsuitable.
Don’t get me wrong, things like Kiddy porn make me mad and sick to the stomach and I am all for ensuring that no one gets access to these sites… but why are we blocking them instead of pouring that money into an International fight against these sick perverts. Get this crap off the internet AT ITS SOURCE. Make them too scared to use the internet for this crap rather than make us, the user, have to endure things like filters in order for us to access the web.
Let’s be honest… anyone in IT or anyone who has enough experience with a computer and the internet can find ways around these filters. They will NOT stop the people who REALLY want to see the stuff from seeing it. Same with filtering out certain websites… you can filter the site, but people can get around it with relative ease.
Ahh yes! But if someone then circumvents the block, it shows that they are nothing but an evil evil criminal who deserves to get arrested / charged / sued!!!!!!!! Sorry… think I was possessed by the spirit of a movie studio executive for a second there.
The film and music industry hasn’t managed to keep up with the technology explosion and the openness of the internet, and as such their response is to try and sue anyone they can. They’ve sued individuals in the past… and while at times that was successful, it drew very bad publicity for them and they seem to have now abandoned that avenue.
Laws around the world are what their main challenge is, as the internet has no boundaries yet laws do. The fact that The Pirate Bay is still operating even though the owners were found guilty of copyright infringements is a prime example of this. How can you stop something that can be shut down in one place, and put back up in another within hours?
One thing is for sure, this case will have ramifications far into the future no matter who wins, and file-sharing is back in the spotlight.
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