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.