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Music Piracy Unit Raids ISP in BitTorrent Assault
renai42 writes "Australia's music industry piracy investigations unit has raided an Internet service provider in Perth, Australia in what it says is the first Australian assault on the use of BitTorrent technology for copyright infringement. Outgoing Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) general manager, Michael Speck, said the raid was launched this afternoon at the offices of Swiftel Communications."
It should be noted that the company that got raided, is now called 'People Telecom'. There former name was Swiftel.
Assuming that raid become common practice in the future of the internet, one may actually be surprised that P2P apps are trying to work their way out of having their owners IP addresses traced.
I was surprised (but really, should I be?) to see these kinds of projects. Check out the MUTE project here.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
here, which makes some mention of the law this was carried out under.
"The raids were conducted with rarely used search warrants known as Anton Piller orders which are used exclusively in civil proceedings. No police were involved, and the record industry sent its own investigators to carry out the search and seize evidence."
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
There's also a discussion on Whirlpool's and Swiftel/People Telcom's forums.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Anton Piller orders still have to be granted by the courts - companies cannot just raid their targets.
Also there has to be some proof provided by the raider to the court that there's a likelihood that evidence would be destroyed were the target to be informed in advance.
Sharman Networks (of Kazaa fame) is currently battling this in the Aussie courts as they were willingly handing documents over in the US court action (hence no risk of destruction). RIAA (or MPAA or whoever it was) may be in real trouble if it's found they willingly withheld this information in their application to the courts.
Many broadband ISP in Australia have uncounted content (does not coun't towards download quota) between users of the same state or where an ISP peers with an internet exchange (eg waix, pipe). This, in combination with often low download limits from ISPs, has lead to a situation where users of this ISP in question had setup bittorrent and direct connect facilities/servers for other users on their own computers (servers and the like are allowed on user connection in this ISP's respective AUP). This way they could exchange files without affecting their quota.
The people who raided the ISP in particular believed that the ISP had setup the P2P facilities for the users (which isn't the case).
Interestingly the hubs and groups who were using these facilities were pretty low key, you would be lucky to find two or three seeders per torrent (for example). I am amazed that they even botherd to do the raids, the people involved number in the dozens only. We aren't talking a Aussie suprnova or anything...
Posting anon for obvious reasons.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Australia doesn't have a bill of rights.
Correct
The government can do as it pleases.
Not correct. There is plenty of accountability. Australia is not an autocratic state lacking checks and balances by any means. If a government oversteps its mark, there are numerous avenues by which they can be constrained.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
If you are served with an Anton Piller order, you are being asked nicely to allow a solicitor for the plantiff to enter and remove documents relating to the order. If you refuse the order you will be held in contempt of court.
The difference is that the bearer of the order needs to ask for permission to access, if there is no-one present then they can't enter.
ZombieEngineer (IANAL)
Boiler Room had nothing to do with bookies - a boiler room is a dodgy stockbroking firm that tries to push dodgy stocks onto unsuspecting people.
"Oh no, an ISP that allows users to run Bittorrent on its service!?! Kill it quickly Michael!"
They went a bit farther than that; they were running a torrent site exclusively for their subscribers. This wasn't the case of some subscriber running a pirate torrent site unbeknownst to the ISP.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
The Swedish ISP "Banhof" was raided yesterday as well. The Stockholm "tingsrätt" (regional court) authorized a civil search of the premise, and using this warrant the organisation known as "Antipiratbyrån" ("anti-piracy bureau", like RIAA). Apparently Banhof was a colocation company as well, and one of their customers was serwing 7 terabytes of music and movies from a server in their facilities. As the offending server was located on the premises of Banhof, the anti piracy bureau used the civil search warrant and the local enforcement office to impound all computers at the ISPs main office. The internet connection is still working for the customers of Banhof, but the employees are prevented from working and their computers have been impounded. According to their warrant for a civil search of premisses, they were supposed to audit Banhof, and as the server serving the copyright infringing material, according to a press statement by Banhof, belonged to a customer renting a space in the colocation facility, it would seem that they have trespassed on the property of that customer as a civil warrant would not give them the right to search any computers but those owned by Banhof itself.
Mods, please start modding this argument down as the troll that it is rather than giving free insightfulness to anyone who writes it. THE REASON WE ARE OBBJECTING IS THE CHERRYOS GUY CLAIMED HE WROTE IT. HE *CLAIMED* *AUTHORSHIP* OF IT. WE HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH COPYING CHERRYOS. WE WOULD HAVE A PROBLEM IF THE FILESHARERS WERE CLAIMING THEY WERE SINGING THE SONGS THEY WERE SHARING. BUT THEY'RE NOT. THE TWO CASES ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. SO STOP CRYING HIPOCRISY. Apologies for shouting, but this needs to be pounded into some people's thick skulls because that's the only way they will take any notice. This bit is just filler because the lameness filter does not like me having yelled. So, staying vaguely on topic, www.last.fm is really good. Try it. It's a radio station that plays the kind of music you like. Takes a bit of "training" for it to become accurate, but it combines with audioscrobbler to get a profile from the music you already have. Discover the more of the kind of stuff people like you like.
I am trolling
An Anton Piller order is very serious, and is only handed out in extreme situations. It is used when you want to protect your IP (Intellectual Property), and when you can demonstrate that directly approaching the offending company/individual will most likely cause them to destroy the evidence.
For example, say you are a brand owner, and you find there is a company setup in a factory somewhere making counterfeit goods, if you approached then, they would disappear overnight, only to continue from a different location, with all evidence gone. An Anton Piller order allows you to 'bust' the operation, and seize basically whatever you want in order to stop the damage to your brand (typically the manufacture of counterfeit goods).
Cesare
Uhh no. It's a customer of the ISP running it for the benefit of their fellow customers.