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Music Piracy Unit Raids ISP in BitTorrent Assault

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the blunder-down-under dept.

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."

8 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Company name by Paska · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am pretty sure they are civil, and the court order was obtained from a civil court.

    This is also not the first time this sort of attack has been carried out, a year or so ago a court order was taken out against the largest ISP in Australia, Telstra

    For anyone interested there is a lot more information about this People Telecom raid at http://whirlpool.net.au/

  2. Anton Piller order by Husgaard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    An Anton Piller order is a court order giving one party in an upcoming civil copyright/patent/trademark case the right to raid the other party without notice to look for evidence.

    Here is the Wikipedia explanation

    And here is how it is done in Australia

    It is considered the "atomic bomb" of IP rights enforcement, and is quite old. Because the defendent is not heard before the raid, it was removed from most laws until the new wave of harsh IP enforcement.

    In Denmark this was implemented a few years ago due to pressure from the United States. This is another reason I do not like the US government: Now anybody having copyright, patents or trademarks can raid my private home if they can prove that it is likely that their rights were infringed upon.

    1. Re:Anton Piller order by Atrax · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Thanks for the expansion.

      It's worrying to me that such laws exist in civil cases, but it hardly surprises me that ARIA would employ whatever tactics are available in their ongoing war on file sharing.

      The details of the case suggest that the raid was carried out because the domain names of some torrent hubs were registered to swiftel (rather than a user of swiftel) - or at least that's my interpretation - and if this is true then I'd see that as a pretty dumb move on the part of the ISP.

      --
      Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
  3. Make no mistake... by lendude · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This has bugger all to do with catching 'offending' P2P/BitTorrent end users, and everything to do with the MIPI ramping up the FUD so as to create an atmosphere of fear of litigation amongst ISP's, driving a push towards ISP's 'voluntarily' screwing down what end users do on the network. i.e. doing the MIPI's job for them. Fuck using current legislation which is wholly appropriate - too much trouble to tag individuals by due process: might as well scare the shit out of ISP's with litigious fear mongering and close-to-libelous PR (I'd love to see that tested in a court of law).

    And Music Industry 'Piracy' Investigations for a title? What about Music Industry Copyright Investigations as a more correct name - oops, too easy to take the MICI out of them.

    --
    "Get off the cross - we need the wood" - Tori Amos
  4. Re:"WTF, mate" by F13 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Of course that is after piracy = terrorism, which isn't far off I imagine...
    Yeah not far at all.
  5. Re:Company name by Atrax · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think it's pretty much the same here in Australia, as we've just signed a similar FTA with the US. There's been a lot of uproar about it, but the Howard government has shoehorned it through anyway.

    I'm right in the middle of a book about it, so not fully versed yet, but there are apparently some DMCA-like provisions in there which may do serious damage, quite aside from the economic concerns many sectors hold.

    --
    Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
  6. Re:Company name by RodgerDodger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The evidence isn't admissible, but it is sufficient to obtain a warrant in order to find admissible evidence.

    --
    "Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
  7. Re:What does bittorrent have to do with this? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I dunno, 3dgamers.com, a popular demos/patch/etc site uses it as their primary distribution method. I really have little intrest in illegally copying games or whatever with it, easier to just go buy them and they aren't that expensive. However I find that plenty of legit free stuff I want is either very slow without bittorrent, or simply won't allow me to have it at all without bittorrent.

    For that matter, when a patch for World of Warcraft comes out, their patcher fires up and starts, you guessed it, a bittorrent session. Good thinking too, as patch release days are always brutally slow, but it's hard to justify enough bandwidth full time since you don't need it that often. They'll give you the option to hot use it, but it goes quite slow.

    So seems to me that bittorrent has plenty of legit uses. It is just an intelligent extension of HTTP, after all.