Australia's third largest ISP in
trouble
In a case which could have global repercussions, Australia's
third largest ISP is defending itself against movie industry claims that it was
responsible for its customers piracy.
The Movie industry is having a crack at
suing the ISP for not doing enough to stop its customers using P2P to download
movies. According to iinet it was like suing an electricity company because
its customers do something illegal with their power.
iiNet said that the
Copyright Act and Safe Harbour provisions introduced with the US free trade
agreement stipulated that ISPs were not liable for copyright infringement by customers.
Seven major movie studios and the Seven Network filed suit against
iiNet for allegedly allowing its users to download pirated movies and TV shows
using BitTorrent. If the movie industry loses the case, its planned
targetting of ISP plan will have failed and it will have to go after individual
file sharers. This plan cost it a lot of money and didn't deal with the
situation at all.
However if iiNet loses, all ISPs could be forced to
disconnect customers identified by the movie studios as illegal
downloaders. Lawyers for the movie studios said they provided iiNet with
evidence of its customers' copyright infringement yesterday. However the movie
industry has a history of having its technical evidence proven to be
bogus.
IiNet said it knew some of its customers were downloading illegally
but the case was going to decide how much it was liable for the actions of its
users. Also what evidence the movie studios should provide to prove it.