Aussie ISP Iinet getting sued by Hollywood studios
Mikey 6 comments
From our little corner of the world here in Perth Western Australia I have often blogged about the RIAA and other organisations suing individuals and companies over p2p and copyright theft. These actions have typically taken place in the USofA or in European countries where the very notion of such a law suite is laughable.
But our good friend and contributor The Movie Whore sends me news this morning that no less than 7 Hollywood studios are suing one of our (Australia's) largest ISP's - Iinet - accusing them of doing little to prevent or police their clients from sharing files on Torrent networks. In their own words, they are suing Iinet for:
"failing to take reasonable steps, including enforcing its own terms and conditions, to prevent known unauthorized use of copies of the companies’ films and TV programs by iiNet’s customers via its network."
The law suite is specifically being bought forward by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises and curiously the Seven Network, one of the major television broadcasters here.
Iinet CEO Michael Malone is not impressed.
"I think they genuinely believe that ISP's have a secret magic wand that we are hiding and if we bring it out we can make piracy disappear just by waving it."
Watching with interest.
I love the response form the ISP when the get the list of IP addresses. Do nothing and give the list to the cops. I don't know the law in Australia but I am going to take a stab and say that ISPs are not considered to be law enforcement nor are they recognized as a judicial body with the ability to legally determine guilt or innocence of a crime. Unfortunately there are many rich arrogant Americans that feel that money makes them right.
Jake Farr-Wharton
Friday 21st November 2008 | 09:24 AM...in response to this comment by The Movie Whore. My provider is really small and by all estimates is the clever entreprenurial way that a large firm has made their internet and telco a complete tax deduction, but these guys are very, very stringent on the rules. I went with them cause I was able to get ADSL2 at a fricking awesome speed, huge download at an itti bitty cost... they're frickin nazis though.
Rodney
Friday 21st November 2008 | 09:30 AMI have been involved in a similar case.
Working for a Western Australian University, I was the person who was responsible for IT decisions, etc for student accommodation, which is effectively a mini ISP. We got sued by both Mirimax and New Line Cinemas over basically the exact same complaint - not doing enough to stop students from sharing torrents. They also demanded the student's names and contact details, and planned to sue them personally. We provided neither.
Just like your Mum says about bullies, ignoring them made them go away.
What I am about to say is derived from my limited understanding of copyright law and my knowledge accumulated on the subject from reading many a TorrentFreak article.
Iinet are an ISP, they are not the police. If laws are being broken and it is bought to their attention, they will gladly assist the police. By as mentioned, they are NOT the police.
The movie studios would have to prove to the court that Iinet knowingly sold their internet services to people they know would be using it to download copyrighted materials.
Good luck with that.
Rodney
Friday 21st November 2008 | 12:34 PM...in response to this comment by Mikey. Also they'd have to prove torrent = piracy. Which it doesn't. For example, Linux (the OS which runs (at some estimates) 70% of the internet) is largely distributed by torrent. World of Warcraft updates by Torrent. Many other things do, too. This is like claiming everyone with pockets is a shop-lifter.
Jake Farr-Wharton
Friday 21st November 2008 | 08:35 AMFrom my understanding, if a movie torrent is provided by a source outside of Australia, it is legal for one in Australia to download it, or more specifically, we are not affected by copywrite laws in such a situation. Furthermore, it is also not a breach if the movie has not been released in Australia as yet, as is the case in all too many situations where an R5 torrent - high quality movie but not DVD quality - has been released onto the web after it has been out in the US or UK and is still months off Aus.
My ISP has knocked me off once when I downloaded one that they though was suspect (not that it was bad - Bear in the big blue house for my daughter). Luckily though, I had actually purchased it and after showing the receipt I was turned back onto full speed.
So the moral of the story is that ISPs can filter their traffic and pick up peer to peer downloads, at least by vetting the names of the initial torrent string files.