iiNet document request rejected, ordered to surrender customer information
- 16 June, 2009 12:16
- Comments 4
The Federal Court has tossed out Internet service provider (ISP), iiNet’s document discovery request in an ongoing copyright case against the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT). It also ordered the company to surrender a sample of 20 accounts.
Representing different movie studios, the industry body, AFACT, lodged a copyright infringement case against the ISP last November. It claimed the service provider allowed subscribers to pirate films through Bit Torrent and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
This new decision has levelled the playing field since iiNet laid claim to a small victory when AFACT was forced to drop a portion of their case last month.
At the last directions motion hearing, the Court rejected the company’s attempt to access documents from overseas jurisdictions in relation to anti-piracy actions against ISPs worldwide after objections from AFACT.
According to a press statement from AFACT, the Court deemed that only documents pertinent to the plaintiff and defendant’s activities with ISP’s in Australia, and iiNet’s subscribers’ information are required.
iiNet chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby, questioned the reason why AFACT continuously opposed the company’s requests and is suspicious the industry body has something to hide.
“They are suing us without giving us any detailed description of what we have done or haven’t done,” he said. “We wanted the information to drill down specifically what they think we should have done to prevent what they claim are illegal activities by our customers.
“Why don’t they want us to see what arrangements they have in place to prevent piracy in other parts of the world?”
The Court did, however, grant the ISP discovery request related to local cases and has ordered AFACT to collaborate with iiNet in relation to 21 categories of discovery and produce documents from a further 19.
The Court also compelled the ISP to hand over details of 20 accounts, drawn from certain IP addresses, specified by the plaintiff. Only details of Internet access will be provided and excludes personal information.
In a press statement, AFACT said this information will be more than sufficient to illustrate the infringing behaviour of the company’s client base.
The statement also said iiNet is required to pay the cost of iiNet’s application to withdraw certain admissions made previously in the case. Dalby accused AFACT of giving this incident a “surprising little twist” since the only admissions of piracy made involved two AFACT investigators who posed as customers.
An AFACT spokesperson was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.
The trial is set to commence in October.
Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email ARN
- Follow ARN on twitter
- Market Potential-Strategy Guide to the Active Archive Market
- Aberdeen Group: Building Business Resilience Through Active Archive
- In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution —Tape Delivers Significant TCO Advantage over Disk
- Spectra Logic and Australian National University Success Story - March 2012
- In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution —Tape Continues to Be a Major Player
-
World’s eyes on Aussie NBN: Conroy
-
iPhone 5 rumour rollup for the week ending May 27
-
PRODUCTS: Aranez announces K-Leather iPad 2 case
-
Italian mathematician prepares to challenge Google
-
Facebook could buy Nokia to build 'FacePhone', expert claims
Get exclusive access to ARN's news, research and invitation only events. 
Comments
Anonymous
Your title is very misleading.
See below:
19 out of the 21 discovery request documents by iinet were given the green light by the court.
20 out of the 300 data logs requested from AFACT were given the green light by the court.
Craig
I think you'll find, as reported - that the critical things iiNet were asking for (info from other countries) were flat out rejected.
The log requests fall under a single discovery, and still permitted with restrictions. So still 1/1 on that one.
As you'll see on another forum:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1173242&p=9
"20 is probably worse than 300. If one in 20 is illegally downloading, that makes 5% of iiNet customers illegal users. The judge must think illegal activity is quite high, if evidence is to be found using just 20 records."
Anonymous
AFACT get to chose the 20 customer records, and they were plants anyway. Seems to be a rather nifty way to alter what might otherwise be valid statistics in their favour.
VPN will soon stand for very popular networking
Anonymous
It's all pretty irrelevant anyway considering the whole thing is just an underhanded way of trying to stop businesses like iinet ending the telecommunications monopoly in this country. Well that's my paranoid and cynical take anyway.
Post new comment