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."

Comments

Company name

[Paska]

It should be noted that the company that got raided, is now called 'People Telecom'. There former name was Swiftel.

Re:Company name

[Atrax]

Who gave them the rights to conduct random raids as they please?

A little-used civil search law, apparently.

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. From the Sydney Morning Herald.

SMH Article

[Atrax]

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."

Discussions on Whirlpool

[The Qube]

There are more details on the case on Whirlpool (Australia's broadband discussion website).

There's also a discussion on Whirlpool's and Swiftel/People Telcom's forums.

The story

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:WTF

[Atrax]

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.