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Aussie Music Industry Sues ISP Over Filesharing
An anonymous reader writes "In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world, the Australian music industry has listed an Internet service provider (ISP) as a respondent in a court case involving music piracy. The ISP is being sued for 'profiting' (by hosting it) from a site which distributes copyright-infringing material."
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I have over 70 freaks, do you?
ARIA = Australian Recording Industry Association (or words to that effect)
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
You're missing the point of the parent post. If ISP X allows people to post copyrighted material through lax enforcement of its EULA, it will get a reputation as an infringement-friendly ISP, and thus will profit from other potential customers who don't want their warez sites shut down by the ISP.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
psst... DMCA is american.
We're talking about an australian ISP, not an american.
.sig: No such file or directory
Aust ISP in 'world first' music industry court case
By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia 21 October 2003
In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world, the Australian music industry has listed an Internet service provider (ISP) as a respondent in a court case involving alleged music piracy.
E-Talk Communications, trading as Comcen Internet Services found itself in Federal Court in front of Justice Brian Tamberlin in Sydney this afternoon charged with making money from the provision of copyright-infringing music files. This is the first time the music industry has accused an ISP of being directly involved in piracy by allowing its infrastructure to be used for file-trading activities, according to Michael Speck, the manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), who led the industry's investigation.
However, lawyers representing E-Talk Communications claimed in court today that the music industry, in acting against its subsidiary, Comcen, were pursuing the wrong entity. They argued the industry should be pursuing another entity associated with E-Talk Communications. In response, lawyers for the music industry applicants -- which include Universal Music Australia, EMI Music Australia, Sony Music Entertainment (Australia), Warner Music Australia, BMG Australia and Festival Records -- claimed they had the right entity, and would simply add the other entity to the proceedings.
The tactic marks an escalation in the simmering battle between the music industry and the ISPs over how much responsibility the latter should take for any copyright infringing behaviour of their subscribers. Around the world the music industry is attempting to force ISPs to hand over the details of specific customers, and the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) pulled out of negotiations with the Internet Industry Association (IIA) over differences on this issue.
"This case proves what the music industry has been saying about the Internet industry for many years, that music piracy is an integral part of the ISP business model," Speck told ZDNet Australia . He added that the evidence uncovered in this case proves that ISPs know how much illegal file sharing is happening on their networks, and they embrace it for the revenue.
"If things don't change we'll be going after more ISPs," said Speck.
The charge is the result of an 11-month investigation into the Web site http://www.mp3s4free.net, culminating in raids over Friday and Saturday last week. The registrant of the domain name, Australian Stephen Cooper, was also charged but failed to appear in court today, prompting an adjournment of proceedings until Tuesday 28 October.
"In my experience investigating the revenue structure of Web sites such as [mp3s4free.net] the ISP hosting the Web site, [Com-cen], stands to benefit economically from the increased consumption of bandwidth that would result from an increase in the flow of traffic to the Web site and an increase in the number of sound recordings downloaded by visitors to the Web site due to the large size of music files," Speck's affadavit.
"The Web site appears to me to be highly organised," said Speck. "It provides a whole user interface to encourage Internet users to find digital music files and to assist them in the download process."
Lawyers for the music industry claim the Web site received 7 million unique visitors from around the world over the past 12 months.
"In my experience investigating Internet piracy and other piracy, this Web site is one of the largest sites of its kind, providing thousands of infringing recordings and continuously providing very recent releases based on top local and international charts for free download, under a highly accessible domain name and using obvious metatags," read the affidavit.
Speck also noted the Web site had disguised some music files by relabelling them as jpg files, "so as to avoid detection by persons or organisations, such as MI
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
The American backlash against the filesharing suits seems to be gaining steam (Stop RIAA Lawsuits Coalition), I wonder if the same will start happening down under as they crack down.
At some point, there needs to be a global citizen response to a global entertainment industry. The corporations are using all the tactics they have available in each country and consumers should do the same. The laws they're trying to cram into the FTAA are on a new level.
"The draft intellectual property rights chapter in the FTAA Agreement vastly expands criminal procedures and penalties against intellectual property infringements throughout the Americas... One clause would require countries to send non-commercial infringers such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharers to prison. It is estimated that 60 million Americans use file-sharing software in the US alone." -From a new report by ipjustice.org.
I think Harlan Ellison did it first. Harlan sued AOL over posts of his copyrighted material to Usenet.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]