Timeline: iiNet and AFACT court case
The Australian ISP community is holding its breath as the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and iiNet enter the Federal Court over a landmark copyright case that has transpired over the past year.
AFACT, on behalf of a host of movie studio heavyweights, has accused Australia’s third largest ISP of 'authorising' its users’ copyright breaches – through BitTorrent and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks – by turning a blind eye to these illicit activities.
iiNet claims it is not directly responsible for what individual customers do and investigating users would contravene the Telecommunications Act 1997, which prohibits the disclosure of customer information.
The case began at 10.15am on October 6 in the Federal Court of Australia, New South Wales Registry. It will run until mid-November with several days break in between including a two-week recess at the end of October. A verdict is not expected for several months.
If AFACT wins, a flood of claims could follow against other ISPs around the country. To the mark the beginning of proceedings, ARN has compiled a timeline of milestones in the iiNet vs AFACT court case.
November 2008 – AFACT - representing Roadshow Films Pty Ltd & Ors, various film studios and Channel 7- began legal action in the Federal Court against iiNet, claiming the ISP is complicit in the pirating of their copyrighted material. According to a statement of claim, iiNet “knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent [and P2P] file sharing technology”. iiNet vehemently denies these allegations.
November 2008 – The Internet industry rallies in support of iiNet with experts saying ISPs should not be forced to monitor network traffic for copyright material. It claims it is the responsibility of copyright enforcers, such as AFACT, to police infringements of intellectual property.
Comments
afact is a joke
All i say is this the judge had the time to waste in court, in the pointless action by afact, even though they show the burden of proof of the infringement happened though considering the investigator had open permission to access the content how pray-tell can it be considered illegal..
the way i see it seeking a injunction after the fact to request certain sample IP addresses which "supposedly" broke certain laws of obtaining in the 1st place, anything they wanted shouldn't be given freely..
given the afact lawyer was playing the same 20 questions asked multiple ways I'm surprised the idiot didn't get laughed out of court and slapped with court fine for wasting the court's time..
sadly there is a fact "AFACT" themselves as a company that acts for the interests of 3rd parties in fact is registered in the UK of all places, they shouldn't be fighting in the courts over here in the 1st place..
Telstra
Understand that telstra has alot more funding behind it to mount a defence being the primary ISP in australia. Claims against either telstra or optus would be harder to prove and far more expensive as they could drag the case on even longer and put up a better legal defence.
iiNet however is the third largest telco in this country which means it has less money (being a relativly newer player in the field) but is high profile enough to lend weight to the cause of afact should they win.
The chances are that if afact loses, they will only resubmit the claim again and go through the whole cycle again.
This is what the big media companies do with your hard earned money - they blow it on legal fights just so that they can get millions more dollars out of your pocket.
The biggest ISP by far and
The biggest ISP by far and away is Telstra Bigpond.
So why not take their case to court the biggest offender (by AFACT's definition of an offender) as the defendant?
New Customer
Guess what? I chew through 15gb a month - WITHOUT a single pirate. I use iTunes very heavily for music & TV.
In support of iiNet, I will be changing over to them next month.
Keep up the good work Michael & the team.
Vexatious Litigation
Surely the federal court must view this case as vexatious litigation. AFACT have picked out an easy target in iiNet to persecute in a show trial. There is no law in Australia that requires a general service provider to monitor its customers to ensure they are not engaging in illegal activities or cancel the customers account simply because a third party demanded it.
If AFACT want to stop piracy they should sue the individuals who are engaging in the copyright infringements, but it would be very expensive and time consuming to sue millions of individuals, so the cheaper option is a show trial.
AFACT probably do not care if they win or lose the case, they are persecuting iiNet in the hope that the publicity will reduce torrent use and/or force legislators to enact laws requiring ISPs to monitor P2P traffic.
You can not hold iinet
You can not hold iinet accountable on this simply for the reason that the isp is in compliance with the law as it exists today. You can not simply change the law on the isp and punish the isp in the process as it is complying with the law as it stands at present. If there are parts within the law that contradicts something it is not the fault of the isp either. This is somethinf that needs to be addressed and fixed by lawmakers obviously. Also you can not punish and single out one isp and let the rest go unnoticed as this is obviouslky an issue across many of them. If iinet gets punished because of this I have 100% lost my faith in the system. AFACt on the other hand has stepped out of line numerous times and acted with enormous hypocricy on a number of issues.
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