Movie studios appeal against iiNet piracy ruling

[panzerfaust]

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Oz)

Hollywood film studios today lodged an appeal against a landmark legal judgment which found an Australian Internet provider was not responsible for illegal movie downloads by its customers.

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), representing a consortium of 34 studios, said the Federal Court's ruling was out of step with well-established copyright law.

"The court found large scale copyright infringements (proven), that iiNet knew they were occurring, that iiNet had the contractual and technical capacity to stop them and iiNet did nothing about them," said Neil Gane, executive director of AFACT.

"In line with previous case law, this would have amounted to authorisation of copyright infringement."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/movie-studios-appeal-against--iinet-piracy-ruling-20100225-p4vx.html

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The original ruling against the studios was based, as I recall, on the finding that the third-party internet provider had no legal duty to enforce the movie studios copyright, nor even a duty to inform the government of a suspicion of such infringement.

Not that a government would undertake to defend a particular copyright - that being the responsibility of the copyright holder; though a government might well undertake to defend the rights of copyright in general. Or might, as in China, choose to ignore such rights.

Certainly the Australian government could, if it wished, and as it may, impose such duties - but these duties do not exist now, any more than the local library is required to make certain that patrons are not in violation of copyright law when making photocopies in the library.

Beyond question, the movie studios copyright was infringed, and, also beyond question, they have the legal right to pursue those who violated the copyright. Equally beyond question though is that this violation was not by the ISP, though the ISP clearly must have been aware of the copyrighted material passing through its servers.

[Downwinder]

1. If we connect by modem and exchange material, is the

telephone company liable?

[Ex Lurker]

2. the entertainment conglomerates would have you believe that....

heck, they'd try to shut down libraries if they coud get away with it.

[liberal N proud]

3. That makes no sense

So do you upload something back to the internet after you have downloaded it?

You usually return things to the library after reading/watching them.

I don't think the internet provider should be liable for its customers actions either but your analogy is a little off.

[Javaman]

4. I can't speak for Ex Lurker but what I think he was eluding to was...

people rent barrow movies from the library, copy them, then return the original back to the library.

Then upload the copy to the net.

[apnu]

8. Heck, people do that with Netflix too. (nt)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. If you leave it to them, every neutrino in the Universe will owe them graham's-number dollars.

And they'll want to collect.

[high density]

6. I wonder where the liability ends

The ISP doesn't know what file transfers are infringing and what isn't. It is completely unreasonable to expect them to police it. Are they also going to sue the hard drive manufacturer for allowing the person to store the materials? How about the power company?

[apnu]

9. For the MPAA racket it never ends until the rule the world through litigation.

They are trying to get Internet Service Providers to inspect all packets for content and allow/disallow based on that content. They also want ISPs to keep copies of these packets for legal production when the MPAA/RIAA chooses to sue the pants off 12 year olds.

But to do that kind of packet inspection and retention is impossible given the amount of data flowing on the whole Internet.

[high density]

10. Packet by packet it's simply not possible to know what's infringing

I don't why the MPAA, RIAA, et al cannot figure this out. Even if the ISP could magically have a record of the entire file that has been transmitted, there's no way for them to know if it's infringing or not. They have no idea who owns the content. And even if they somehow did know, they'd only be aware of the problem after the file transmission has already occurred. Add in encryption and then there's nothing useful to inspect.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. So if someone driving a Ford hits someone else....

or speeds
or runs a red light

it is Ford's problem?
the Highway Dept. problem?


Sound like the movie Corp. wants everyone to be their minions for them.

[liberal N proud]

7. Now if you were driving a Toyota...

Maybe it could be Toyota's fault if the car had sudden acceleration syndrome.