Thread: iinet wins appeal - win for the industry

The telco industry has applauded the Federal Court dismissing an appeal for the landmark copyright case brought against iiNet by copyright action group the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT).

Seems it was close with 2 judge's voting for dismissal and 1 against.
Industry welcomes iiNet appeal win - Communications - News

AFACT executive director Neil Gane said iiNet must take responsibility for copyright infringement on its network.

"This is a case where the ISP had admitted to tens of thousands of copyright infringements on its network, and it does not have to lift a finger to prevent them," Gane said.

"It cannot be right that in effect the ISP, who has the power to prevent copyright infringement online and has admitted they are taking place, does not share the responsibility to stop it."

After 2 years of abject failure they are still spouting the same shit that lost them the case.. so funny.

Wait till they get paid to enforce it, then im sure the ISP's will be right on it.

Hey... when'd we get like buttons????

facebook-underground :p

TBH I find this pretty funny. Studying business at uni atm and they're using examples like General Motors vs Toyota - one fighting regulation that enforces MPG limits and one adapting to the market with low MPG cars like the Prius. Guess who came out a winner and who went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the US government? I can see a lot of the current media companies going the same way. Seriously, Steam has already developed an excellent model in the PC games market, it's a matter of adapting this for TV and film. I know there have been some attempted startups using this model and iTunes the iVirus does something similar but I'd love to see a non-iWank company with real industry clout leading the way. Seriously, if I was an exec at Sony, Universal, Fox, etc, I'd crawl through barbed wire to talk to Valve about adapting their Steam software to other media. OTOH, after seeing some of the shows cancelled by Fox, they can go DIAF.

US studios avoided Telstra battle and went after iiNet instead in copyright case | The Australian

LEAKED documents from the US Embassy in Canberra reveal that Hollywood studios chose to go after third-largest internet provider iiNet, rather than Telstra, in a hard-fought online copyright case set to be heard for a third time by the High Court in Sydney.

The group of 34 companies, including Village Roadshow and the Seven Network, has this month been granted special leave to appeal a full bench Federal Court decision in February upholding Justice Dennis Cowdroy’s landmark 2010 ruling that Perth-based ISP iiNet had not authorised its customers to infringe copyright online.

Wikileak’s latest release of cables includes one dated November 30, 2008 – just 10 days after the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) filed legal action claiming iiNet had infringed copyright by not taking reasonable steps to prevent unauthorised use of films and TV programs by its customers.

And the cable, from US Ambassador Robert McCallum, shows the studios wanted to avoid a stoush with “the big guns” Telstra BigPond, which holds about half of the local market.

“We will monitor this case as it unfolds, for its intellectual property rights implications and also to see whether the ‘AFACT vs the local ISP’ featured attraction spawns a ‘giant American bullies vs little Aussie battlers’ sequel,” it says.

The cable also confirms AFACT filed the case on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its international affiliate, the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

“Despite the lead role of AFACT and the inclusion of Australian companies Roadshow and Seven, this is an MPAA/American studios production,” the cable says.

“Mike Ellis, the Singapore-based president for Asia-Pacific of the MPA, confirmed that AFACT is essentially MPAA’s Australian subcontractor, acting on behalf of the six American studios involved (Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Disney).”

The cable says MPAA prefers that its leading role not be made public.

“AFACT and MPAA worked hard to get Village Roadshow and the Seven Network to agree to be the public Australian faces on the case to make it clear there are Australian equities at stake, and this isn’t just Hollywood ‘bullying some poor little Australian ISP’,” it says.

The cable says it was clear Ellis did not want to “begin by tangling with Telstra, the still dominant player in telephony and internet, and a company with the financial resources and demonstrated willingness to fight hard and dirty, in court and out”.

The MPA boss claimed that iiNet users “had a particularly high copyright violation rate, and its management has been consistently unhelpful” in pursuing infringements.

“Ellis said AFACT delivered to iiNet every week for five weeks a telephone directory-sized list of violations complete with a DVD containing gigabytes of data on infringers using its network,” the cable says.

But when Federal Court Justice Dennis Cowdroy dismissed the Hollywood studios allegations in his February 2010 ruling, another cable sent from the US Embassy expressed disappointment.

“The hope for AFACT and the big studios was that a favourable decision would have established an international precedent that could have forced ISPs to tightly police the activities of their customers,” it says.

“The studios must now look for other ways to protect their commercial interests. AFACT will likely increase its lobbying of the Australian government for legislative changes.

“In the meantime, the problem will persist and probably worsen with the advent of the high-speed National Broadband Network, as the speeds at which copyright theft can take place will literally multiply.”

The High Court hearing of the case is set to start on September 9.

put some effort into decent digital distribution methods of your own instead of picking on our shit. fucking dickbags.

Dirty bastids.

Actual calbe if anyone wants to read.
Cable Viewer

iinet wins second and final appeal.

The High Court has thrown out an appeal by the some of the world's biggest media companies to stop internet piracy after it excused Australian service provider iiNet from policing unauthorised downloads.A group of 34 international and Australian companies, including industry heavyweights Warner Bros, Disney and the Seven Network, had alleged that iiNet had authorised the infringement of their copyright when its customers downloaded movies and television programs.

The movie companies had argued that iiNet had the power to prevent its customers from infringing copyright by issuing warnings and suspending or terminating customer accounts.However, the High Court found that iiNet had no direct technical power to prevent its customers from using the BitTorrent file-sharing system to infringe copyright.

iiNet wins landmark copyright case | News | Business Spectator