Studios sue Australian ISP over video piracy

Australian telecommunications provider iiNet on Thursday was dragged into court as major film studios filed a case against the ISP for allegedly letting its users download pirated movies and television series.

According to the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, speaking on behalf of Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Disney Enterprises, and the Seven Network, thousands cases of pirated movies and television shows have passed through iiNet's network without iiNet doing anything about it.

AFACT Executive Director Adrianne Pecotic claimed that iiNet had ignored requests from the companies to discipline its customers for breaking copyright laws.

"We have provided in this instance, over a five-month period, the IP addresses of thousands of people who are iiNet customers who are using iiNet Internet access to infringe copyright. iiNet has several options within its power to prevent that. They have not done so," Pecotic told ZDNet Australia.

"This is not about iiNet policing its network. There's no suggestion that they have to police their network. What we're saying, and what the law says, is that when they know that copyright infringement is occurring, they have a legal obligation to prevent it," she continued.

Options the Internet service provider had, Pecotic said, were giving the customer notice, limiting download speeds, or suspending browsers or P2P protocols. She said 9 out of 10 people in the United States who were given notice did not pirate films again.

The companies want a court order forcing iiNet to prevent its customers from engaging in copyright infringement over its network. If the ruling goes their way, they will likely claim damages, but Pecotic would not name figures.

When asked if other ISPs were undertaking such measures when sent infringement notices, Pectotic made vague reference to unspecified agreements between ISPs and content providers in the U.S. and U.K. markets, saying only that she intended to focus on iiNet because it was the focus of the court case.

She would not say if any other ISP was also ignoring infringement notices, but when asked if there might be future court cases, she said, "We wouldn't rule out any future litigation, no."

On the choice of ISP, Pecotic said only that iiNet was the third-largest ISP in Australia, and as such, she didn't consider it to be small.

According to Pecotic, 50,000 people in Australia are employed in companies affected by the film industry, which all feel the brunt of pirating films and TV, and the faster broadband gets, the worse piracy gets.

The case will come back before the court on the December 17, and Pectotic considered that it would run for about 12 months.

iiNet did not reply to requests for comment in time for publication.

Suzanne Tindal of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

[infernalman7]

... Another step backwards for Australia on Internet!

[mmntech]

From what I've been reading lately, Australia is starting to take cues from it's northern neighbour China when it comes to dealing with the Internet. Trying to put the genie back in the bottle so to speak.

I think it's time we got a fully independent research firm to find the actual cost of piracy. So far, nobody has come up with that figure, which I would say is integral to these court cases.

[aka_tripleB]

Are they trying to enforce U.S. law in Australia? Unless the transfer at some point came to U.S. soil, the MPAA doesn't have much ground to stand on (I choose those words to specially make that pun). I don't know what the copyright laws in Australia are, but I do know that they do not have any obligation to follow U.S. copyright law. Anyone else think the MPAA and RIAA are going to start WWIII because they are blinded by greed?

[renGek]

"This is not about iiNet policing its network. There's no suggestion that they have to police their network. What we're saying, and what the law says, is that when they know that copyright infringement is occurring, they have a legal obligation to prevent it," she continued. "

So I wonder how they know this? Are australian ISPs examining packets?

[ms_vs_google]

What a surprise....not.

As usual we take another few steps back towards the dark ages because of this and previous governments pitiful to appease a few extremely wealthy and greedy companies.

If these greedy buggers put as much money into innovating delivery and availability of their content to make it cheaper and more accessible as they did towards attempts to sue ISPs and catch a few little users downloading content (that I'm sure has nowhere near the commercial impact they make out), this type of action wouldn't be necessary.