Thread: ISP Refuses to Admit Customers Are BitTorrent Pirates

Last year seven Hollywood studios teamed up to sue iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP. iiNet is accused of authorizing its customers to infringe copyright, but in court today it refused to accept that was the case. iiNet has yet to decide if it will admit that its customers engaged in copyright infringement using BitTorrent.

Several studios including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network (the top rated free-to-air broadcaster in Australia), announced last year that they were to sue Australian ISP iiNet for copyright infringement.
The studios stated that they were 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 studios had demanded that iiNet disconnect alleged infringers based on the evidence collected when they spied ofn iiNet's subscribers, but the ISP refused, hence the legal action.
The case, officially known as Roadshow Films Pty Ltd & Ors v iiNet Ltd (but commonly referred to as AFACT v iiNet Ltd) was filed on 20 November 2008 and the parties were in federal court today. During a previous hearing in February, iiNet vigorously denied it had ever authorized its subscribers to commit copyright infringement using BitTorrent, but had not yet come to a decision over whether it was prepared to admit its customers engaged in copyright infringement at all.

However, iiNet still refused to admit that its users engaged in illicit file-sharing, even in the face of evidence provided by Danish anti-piracy tracking company DtecNet. The studios say that the DtecNet evidence, when cross-referenced with the ISPs own logs, will prove infringement took place.

MP44 and R144 changed tactics last year. Their misguided pursuit of single mothers, senior citizens, naive teenagers, a dead person, and a variety of others from the estimated 17% of the US population who allegedly used the bittorent protocol, may have occasionally been successful, but it also had become a public relations nightmare. The ultimate insult, a case winning a 2.2 million dollar judgment against a woman who seeded a dozen songs long enough for investigators to download them a few times, set them squarely in opposition against the "average American," their members' biggest customer. They hired a new investigator, dt3cn3t*, headquartered in Sweden, but now with a large presence in the US based in Beverly Hills and changed tack. In the first round of what is sure to be an epic battle, the music and movie associations are actively suing the ISP's who host users instead of individual downloaders. But not here in the US, the first case was filed in Australian Federal Court.

In the first real test of the new tactics, the Australian anti-piracy group AF4CT sued a provider, iiNet, for not removing customers who AF4CT alleges were downloading bittorrents and openly violating copyrights. If AF4CT is successful, it sets a new legal precedent and sends a chilling message to all internet users everywhere. Internet service providers and even trunk line providers may be forced by the courts to monitor all transmissions for any suspected copyrighted content - and to disconnect any suspected culprits - without due process. It's unclear to many whether disconnecting a person from the internet rises to the level of a civil or criminal prosecution, and whether those persons should be afforded the same constitutional protections.

The trial, now in day 16, continues in Sydney, Austraia. CEO Michael Malone and chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby, the only two iiNet employees to testify for the defense, have maintained that it isn't their job to monitor their users' downloads or to act proactively as an arm of law-enforcement.

“Our position was that we should not be doing AF4CT’s work,” said Dalby. “If we had received authorization by way of court order, that would have changed our position.”

AF4CT alleges a long list of infractions by iiNet users and that iiNet did not forward notices of those infractions to the offending address or summarily disconnect them. Over and over, Dalby has testified that while an IP address may be allocated to a customer account, it doesn't identify which computer is being used on the account. He also told the court that iiNet had no intention of forwarding AF4CT’s copyright infringement notices to its customers purely on their allegations.

The new tactic and this case raise some ugly questions. Can your internet provider be forced by the precedent in this case, by the threat of economic ruin, to act as investigator, police, prosecutor, and jury? If the new tactic works, downloading a linux distro via bittorrent or a trial software program from Rapidshare may be enough to cause an over-eager ISP to disconnect one's internet and possibly have you "blacklisted" from the web forever, much the way a single lapse in airline etiquette can land one on the "no fly" list and banned from commercial air travel worldwide for the rest of your life.

The new nanny-state, the new "world order," is an ugly place.

*numbers inserted to thwart search

© SomeoneElse 2009 (LMFAO;-)

WEll. This incident will teach other ISPs to follow iinet.
Hopefully Inet keeps the clients in private.

i dont know anything about Australias laws, but this could be more of an influence thing. And other Isps in the world will learn.

Heh heh. Funny these articles about how bad we are.

sam_morgan

Good for them, but too bad that most ISPs will not follow their example

In the US you have to be found guilty by a jury of your peers beyond reasonable doubt. For instance .. today I had a trial for speeding. I did it, I forced the state to prove it. I won, they couldn't. Why is this different? Who says this ISP has to listen to other companies crying foul?

Thats like Playstation saying people are hacking the xbox and forcing Microsoft to go to everyones house and take their console. And when they dont to step in and assert their will on another company, which is capable of running themselves. Fucking Haters ! Thats ridiculous.