Australian ISP Argues For BitTorrent Users

taucross writes "Australian ISP iiNet is making a very bold move. They are asking the court to accept that essentially, BitTorrent cannot be used to distribute pirated content because a packet does not represent a substantial portion of the infringing material. They are also hedging their bets purely on the strength of the movie studios' 'forensic' evidence. This ruling will go straight to the heart of Australia's copyright law. At last, an ISP willing to stand up for its customers! Let's hope we have a technically-informed judge."

Comments

Wow

[niner69]

An ISP grew a pair?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

What does slashdot have to do with shambleses?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, if I had moderation points I would assign one to you, plus one funny.

Re:Wow

[Tubal-Cain]

I think they may have come to the conclusion that the high bandwidth cost of file sharing is less expensive and time consuming than being responsible for their customers' copyright infringement.

Re:Wow

[Jurily]

I think they may have come to the conclusion that the high bandwidth cost of file sharing is less expensive and time consuming than being responsible for their customers' copyright infringement.

Or they see a niche market among those who are on the wrong end of the witch hunt.

"We protect our users" could be a pretty good slogan.

Re:Wow

[Dan541]

I will defiantly switch to iiNet when the opportunity arises.

Re:Wow

[CarpetShark]

Exactly. More ISPs need to do this. I would SO sign up with these guys, if I lived in Oz.

Re:Wow

[erikina]

Nope. It's just good business sense. Here (in Australia) we pay for our usage. I'm on a 20GB/month plan, while someone like my mum is on a 500MB/month plan.

The "heavier" the user, the better the customer. In other parts of world, you have the opposite problem when the "light" users are the most profitable customers.

Re:Wow

[grim-one]

In Australia we have quotas on our internet plans, users who download large volumes of data pay a premium for it (up to AU$140 for 140GB per month). iiNet is defending its interests and revenue stream - they don't want to see quota downgrades en-masse from people abandoning file-sharing.

Re:Wow

[Chris Missiles]

I know! If I ever live in Australia, this is my ISP for sure. A corporation actually working on behalf of its customers? What a revolutionary idea! Now if only we could get Comcast in on this as well...

Re:Wow

[cheater512]

Most Aussie ISPs share the same attitude.
Completely different situation to the US.

Re:Wow

[commodore64_love]

I don't know iiNet's motive, but I think their reasoning is falacious.

If I copy 1 page of a textbook today, 1 page the next day, and so on..... its true each "packet" could be considered fair use, but I eventually end-up with a whole book by the end of the year. So it IS copyright infringement. The same is true with torrents.

Re:Wow

[Frosty Piss]

Or they see a niche market among those who are on the wrong end of the witch hunt.

Extreamly unlikly. An ISP is not a non-profit social organization. And there is not "niche market" for a (legitimate) profit driven organiztion providing serviced to a market likly to be the target of an endless string of costly law suites.

What they are doing is just as other posters have suggested: Trying to avoid footing the bill of enforcing the **AA laws.

Re:Wow

[bemo56]

Most Aussie ISPs aren't large enough to either have a share in the large media companies, or for the media companies to care about them. It has its pluses and negatives

Re:Wow

[itschy]

A twisted pair I guess.

Re:Wow

[Jurily]

a market likly to be the target of an endless string of costly law suites.

You only have to set the precedence once. Or demonstrate your willingness to fight for your users.

It's like burglar-proof locks. They're not safer because they can't be opened, they're safer because the neighbor doesn't have one.

Terrible news!

[Anonymous Coward]

One packet per customer, sorry folks.

Re:Terrible news!

[SCPRedMage]

Wow, that's not even enough to get through DHCP...

Re:Terrible news!

[NoobixCube]

You can't get through Customs if you're carrying ANY packets!

SO if I

[geekoid]

Bought a book, and then started handing out copies I make of the book one page at a time It is not copyright infringement?

Yeah, that will fly~

Using it to counter this specific item i.e. forensic evidence, might.

Re:SO if I

[dgatwood]

No, but if you always handed out the first page, it might. You'd probably need to show some reasonable purpose for doing so, though, e.g. scholarly research and criticism. I don't think BitTorrent will pass even such a low bar. And the fact that you'd be handing out every page, merely handing out different ones to different people, makes this defense prima facie laughable, IMHO. Hope they have some more subtle arguments that I'm not seeing. Otherwise, that seems like a really weak defense to me.

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the argument that they're making here is that you're handing out single letters at a time, to follow the book analogy.

Except that you're not handing out an entire book (unless you're the original seed). You're handing out some of the letters, more or less randomly - just in a framework that they can all be put together in.

In all fairness, the argument is fairly sound. The individual seeds are only accessories to copyright infringement, and someone who only downloads and doesn't seed back is entirely innocent of it.

Re:SO if I

[master5o1]

Or what about this:

That 30 second preview on Wikipedia. Say there are websites that have this 30 second preview at different parts of the song...you find one at the beginning, one that is 30 seconds into the song, etc..until you have the entire song.

Remember, you've just been using the 30 second preview from various websites, absolutely `legal`...or is it? (oh yeah. 30 seconds was the time it took me to think of this crappy post)

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

Bought a book, and then started handing out copies I make of the book one page at a time It is not copyright infringement?

More like you bought a book, put it through a confetti shredder, then doled it out one flake at a time...

Re:SO if I

[Volda]

A better apology would be say 100 people bought the same book then each person copies a few pages and gives it to other people who are then able to form the full book after collecting the pieces from the other 100 people. I think what they are trying to prove is that a individual that uses bit torrent is only giving another person a part of the info they need to complete a file. For them to be able to prosecute they would have to prosecute everyone who is sharing the copies. All or none basically. I believe fair use laws are being used to somewhat protect bit torrent users in this case. It may work for a while but i have no doubt that the politicians will start to make new laws specifying that even a part of a file is equal to the whole file.

Re:SO if I

[cliffski]

well said, but enjoy the bullshit rationalisations you will get as repleis here, as people try desperately to find some way to justify copyright infringement...

Re:SO if I

[HTH NE1]

someone who only downloads and doesn't seed back is entirely innocent of [copyright infringement].

Well, except for that pesky little thing of being in receipt of infringing goods.

Re:SO if I

[langelgjm]

Well, except for that pesky little thing of being in receipt of infringing goods.

I'm not aware that this is actually against (U.S.) law. Obviously it could be considered evidence that you had participated in distribution or copying, which is illegal, but that's different.

Re:SO if I

[atari2600]

No if you bought a book and then handed out each word in the book, then it's not copyright infringement. Like if you print out this post and pass out each character of the English alphabet, as much as I will hate you, I cannot sue you *and* win.

Re:SO if I

[Skye16]

I think I had that quest in WoW

Re:SO if I

[iron-kurton]

My head just exploded because I can only think in terms of car analogies.

Re:SO if I

[cromar]

For real. I take it so far as to defend my piracy of programs I would never buy - the maker hasn't lost any money from my infringement, and so I have not hurt them or done anything wrong. On the other hand, this defense seems totally asinine. It's obvious that downloading a copyrighted work over BitTorrent is piracy. Just because you get parts of it from different seeders/peers doesn't mean you haven't pirated that movie, app, or whatever.

Re:SO if I

[Kjella]

I'm not aware that this is actually against (U.S.) law.

According to the grokster case, the uploader is violating the distribution right and the downloader the reproduction right by fixing the transitory data stream to a medium on his computer. Otherwise it wouldn't be illegal to film in a cinema, it could be against the cinema's rules but if filming it didn't involve any of the copyright holder's exclusive rights it couldn't be copyright infringement either.

Re:SO if I

[langelgjm]

According to the grokster case, the uploader is violating the distribution right and the downloader the reproduction right by fixing the transitory data stream to a medium on his computer.

Right, but that's different than "being in receipt of infringing goods" (which the OP seemed to liken to being in receipt of stolen goods). Downloading implies making a copy and fixing it in a tangible medium.

The better question would be what happens to the person who buys the knockoff cam from a street corner. The buyer is not reproducing the work in the way that a downloader is, but it's also not a stolen good.

Re:SO if I

[McGiraf]

apology accepted

Re:SO if I

[dotgain]

Rubbish - your parent poster had it and you're just being ridiculous. The 'flakes' you speak of carry no information that would allow reassebmly - it would be practically impossible. The pages (or packets), while only a fragment of the original, can be easily reassembled into the original because of the existence of extra information assisting that (page numbers).

Were bittorrent to work like your analogy, it would spew out random octects, in no particular order. Eventually the entire content might be sent, but no receiver would have any way of knowing it, let alone reordering them into the original publication.

tl;dr: don't be pathetic.

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

someone who only downloads and doesn't seed back is entirely innocent

except said someone is kind of a douchebag

Re:SO if I

[HTH NE1]

Well, except for that pesky little thing of being in receipt of infringing goods.

I'm not aware that this is actually against (U.S.) law.

Its usually only used against pawn shops that buy hot goods and don't finger(print) their customers, or against someone who buys something that "fell off the back of a truck". They don't tend to prosecute those duped into buying the merchandise (ignorance of the crime isn't ignorance of the law), but neither do they remunerate the duped for relinquishing the evidence either--that would be a civil matter between customer and illegal vendor.

Re:SO if I

[Tubal-Cain]

It's like taking a car apart down to each individual piece, fabricating new pieces, and handing those individual parts out to random people that ask for it.

Re:SO if I

[EdIII]

Well, except for that pesky little thing of being in receipt of infringing goods.

You can't be in receipt of infringing goods. Goods also cannot be infringed upon in the first place as they are physical. I know it's nitpicking, but it's important as you can never steal intellectual property. This is on the internet, so the distribution is digital over wires and not transferred on a physical medium which can be called a "good" and actually stolen.

The person sending the data infringes upon the copyrights by distributing without permission. The person receiving it only starts to infringe upon the copyrights when they first begin to use it without permission, or distribute it themselves in it's entirety.

The whole argument is weak bullshit of course. Bittorrent can be used for piracy just as much as it can be used to distribute free information. Where it is weak is claiming that only one piece at a time is sent, which is not infringing in of itself (The letter A is not copyrighted), but failing to recognize the ultimate purpose is to receive 100% of the data. Not 70, 80, or 90. 100%.

The only person that is not guilty of copyright violation at all, are the assholes that do not seed back with a 1:1 ratio. In that case, they never actually sent the entire file. However, Bittorrent would have failed a long time ago if that happened everywhere.

Ultimately, Bittorrent can result in the distribution of pirated data unless you interrupt the process to prevent it from reaching its intended, and designed goal.

The only way they could make that work is if you had A,B,C each having 33.3% of the data and participating in the torrent. They don't ever download more than what they have, and none of their recipients ever give back 100%. That is NOT the way Bittorrent works and I think the judge will understand that at least. It makes no sense.

Re:SO if I

[palesius]

Granted this would be computationally impractical, but what if rather than distributing the actual work, you distributed hashes of the work only. For example you take a 12 byte segment of the work and generate a MD5 hash of it. (We can substitute whatever value of 12 bytes would gaurantee no collisions The uploader sends the downloader a sequence of these hashes. The downloader then attempts to generate each possible 12 byte segment until it gets a match and then concatenates them.
They aren't actually sending you the contraband bytes, or something that can directly be turned into them.
This would be somewhat analogous to asking someone (about the book they are reading):
Is the 1st letter A?
Is the 1st letter B?
etc. until they say yes.
And continuing for each subsequent letter.
Horrendously inefficient, but are you copying it? revaling it?

Is telling someone the answer is 42 really the same as telling them the question is what do you get when you multiply 6 by nine? (Unless they have access to a planet sized computer.)

Re:SO if I

[CannonballHead]

Yes it is copyright infringement.

Assuming copyright infringement is illegal, then if your intent is to give me the full copy, does it really matter how you give it to me?

You may as well argue that printing something with an inkjet or laserjet printer can never infringe anything, becuase it prints it out one dot at a time. Just very quickly.

Or e-mailing files. Pft, how about a license key? There's nothing illegal about Microsoft requiring a license for using its software, right? So, if I give you my license one character at a type and you type it into a copy of XP one character at a time, it's not illegal?

This is, IMO, a ridiculous argument... sort of like Xenos famous logical argument that movement is impossible.

Re:SO if I

[CannonballHead]

Sorry, Zeno. :)

Re:SO if I

[drinkypoo]

It's like taking a car apart down to each individual piece, fabricating new pieces, and handing those individual parts out to random people that ask for it.

No, it really isn't, because doing this to a car is legal except where the reproduction of parts would violate a patent. You're fired!

Re:SO if I

[cibyr]

Several similarly silly schemes actually exist (see the OFF System, and lawyers tend to be unimpressed - they all amount to encrypting the communication and/or obfuscating what you're transferring. So if what you're transferring is copyrighted, you're still infringing on that copyright.

See What Colour are your bits?.

Re:SO if I

[againjj]

While I generally agree with your analysis, I must strongly disagree on this point:

The only person that is not guilty of copyright violation at all, are the assholes that do not seed back with a 1:1 ratio. In that case, they never actually sent the entire file.

Just because you don't send the entire file does not mean you are not infringing copyright. Any substantial portion will do.

Re:SO if I

[HTH NE1]

The better question would be what happens to the person who buys the knockoff cam from a street corner. The buyer is not reproducing the work in the way that a downloader is, but it's also not a stolen good.

The person who buys the knockoff cam is registering a demand in a market that cams movies to produce more product. He's not necessarily punished like someone who (I'm probably going to regret making this analogy) buys child pornography (because the crimes and consequences are disproportionally different) even though both have a similar effect on the production of new product, but the justification for prosecution is there.

(Oh, I don't like making this analogy at all. Please don't read anything inflammatory into it. I'm not intending to equate, inflate, excuse, or belittle any crime here. I acknowledge the disproportionality of this comparison, particularly in the victimology, but the point is apt.)

(My spell checker is flagging "disproportionality" and "victimology".)

Re:SO if I

[HTH NE1]

I know it's nitpicking, but it's important as you can never steal intellectual property.

Yes, that's why I was referencing the illegality aspect only and deliberately not using the words "steal", "stolen", or "theft". I did not want this to devolve into another tired argument over definitions and just acknowledge the illegality.

The whole argument is weak bullshit of course. Bittorrent can be used for piracy just as much as it can be used to distribute free information. Where it is weak is claiming that only one piece at a time is sent, which is not infringing in of itself (The letter A is not copyrighted), but failing to recognize the ultimate purpose is to receive 100% of the data. Not 70, 80, or 90. 100%.

Agreed. As I was intending to reply to posting #27363715 (but got distracted by my followups), the intent is still the same: to assist in making a copy, and if the rights aren't there, it's infringing. It becomes a conspiracy in aggregate to infringe the copyright.

But if even one of the people torrenting the file actually owns or has been assigned the right to copy it by the owner of the copyright, the whole swarm becomes immune to prosecution. But that's not hard for the prosecution to prove: they don't need to know everyone who has ever been in the swarm; they just need to have the relevant rights holders and assignees testify under oath that they weren't participating in the swarm. Then it's left to the defense to discredit the testimony to the satisfaction of the court/jury.

Re:SO if I

[nurb432]

Some of us really don't care either way and will continue to do as we please with the digital copy that in reality doesn't effect the original in any way.

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

No- but it means that photocopiers (i.e. the technology used to make the copy) wouldn't be illegal.

Re:SO if I

[bug1]

And the seeding ratio is not relevent in determining if its a "substantial portion", someone might be sending a small portion on a large scale.

Re:SO if I

[Dan541]

Who owns the patent on binary digits?

Re:SO if I

[Thinboy00]

I'm not sure that theater-camming is illegal -- just against the theater's rule. IANAL and I could be WRONG, don't try this at your theater

Oh, and I'm too lazy to s/theater/cinema/g my post, so I'll just submit it this way.

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

bought a book and started handing out copies at one word at a time is it copyright infringement?

Re:SO if I

[Thinboy00]

IANAL, but if you use BitThief (which uses a 0:1 ratio; i.e. it doesn't upload) you might be okay. Of course, BitThief ruins the swarm health if used en masse

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me, copyright overlords, for handing out pages from my book that I own. Please! I beg of thee.

Re:SO if I

[Thinboy00]

[snip]
But that's not hard for the prosecution to prove: they don't need to know everyone who has ever been in the swarm; they just need to have the relevant rights holders and assignees testify under oath that they weren't participating in the swarm. Then it's left to the defense to discredit the testimony to the satisfaction of the court/jury.

If they sold DRM'd software to tens of thousands of people I bet it would be hard to prove. What if customer #69,105 moved to, say, China (dumb move in terms of Human Rights, but smart move in terms of Intellectual Property) (WARNING:Don't move to China)

Re:SO if I

[Thinboy00]

If the song is a minute long, probably not. If it's seventeen minutes long, maybe, but IANAL. And no, that's not absolutely legal, although it might be short enough that the company doesn't bother suing. Again, IANAL, go ask NYCL if you care, but don't expect a lack of disclaimers. Or perhaps a lawyer whom you actually pay?

Re:SO if I

[Zerth]

Actually, for a while I ran a modded bittornado client that deliberately would never upload more than 10% of the torrent to any one IP for expressly this purpose. It also lied to the tracker about my ratio for additional deniability.

Not that I thought I'd get away with it, but I figured that if I was that screwed, it'd be amusing to have my lawyer whip out the client source in court showing that I couldn't have supplied anyone with a complete copy, that my actual transfer was substantially different than what the tracker showed, and thus any evidence they had could not show a complete infringement.

Then I got a real job.

Re:SO if I

[Thinboy00]

Thanks to the Bilski ruling, hopefully noone.

Re:SO if I

[rmerry72]

I'm not aware that this is actually against (U.S.) law.

Except this is in Australia so its a matter of Aussie law. Oh wait, no you're right. That Free Trade Agreement means the two are a lot closer now, save for the Aussie laws removing any possible pesky free speech, satire or first right of sale "rights" - I mean: defenses ... no: loopholes. If its against US law then the FTA means its against Aussie law.

Re:SO if I

[westlake]

You're handing out some of the letters, more or less randomly - just in a framework that they can all be put together in.

The same could be said of be said of any form of communication across the Internet.

The framework exists,

The pieces of the puzzle will come together.

The geek knows this perfectly well.

He is - after all - the guy who designs the systems and software that makes it happen.

So don't try peddling this bull shit to a judge.

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you keep going, if you step the parts back into their component metals, and give them away in volume's large enough to create the parts, you're ok.

Re:SO if I

[shellbeach]

Assuming copyright infringement is illegal, then if your intent is to give me the full copy, does it really matter how you give it to me?

I think the point here is that the intent of any single user is to not give the full copy. The fully copy is only obtained through many, many different users, not from a single source.

That said, I doubt that this argument is going to fly. And surely there's no way they can argue that the recipient of the full copy wasn't participating in copyright infringement! But iiNet are in serious difficulty: they either stop all p2p services -- in which case, they lose almost all of their customers; or else they fight it and get sued.

And the really scary aspect is that if they lose, then all file sharing in Australia is essentially dead. Once the precedent is set, every other ISP will fold like a house of cards. I'm not sure if there's a way out of this mess.

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

not true.

if you find somebody with a list of people on a street, each with boxes of puzzles they're giving away.

then if you make your way to the first,and find a person with a box of 1000 puzzle pieces, and they show you the box they come in, but tell you you can only make copies of up to three of them,

(I'm SURE that three pieces of a puzzle would constitute "fair use")

then you pick the first three, starting from the top left corner, and continue down the street, only to find another person, doing the same thing, telling you you can only pick three...

if you follow this, nobody has broken a law, yet as long as there's enough people whom which you can get the remaining pieces, you can complete a work that somebody else owns.

Re:SO if I

[skaet]

Just because you don't send the entire file does not mean you are not infringing copyright. Any substantial portion will do.

What counts as a "substantial portion?" 33%? >50%?
I may be able to seed an entire file but I can still get 1:1 ratio by only sending a certain block of data, which could be as little as 10% of the entirety. This is akin to the previously mentioned book analogy. Handing out a single letter (even groups of 3 or 4 letters) doesn't infringe on a full book and can in no way be considered a "substantial portion."

Re:SO if I

[dgatwood]

Handing out copies of pages from a book that you own. Let's be clear. If you were ripping the pages out of your legally-purchased copy of a book, no one would complain.

Re:SO if I

[JohnBailey]

Just because you don't send the entire file does not mean you are not infringing copyright. Any substantial portion will do.

So how much of a file is required for it to be infringing? And is there any case law anywhere that states this? Not trying to be funny or adversarial, just curious.

Re:SO if I

[tubapro12]

Quoted from Volda (1113105):

A better apology would be say 100 people bought the same car then each person fabricate a few parts and gives it to other people who are then able to form the full car after collecting the pieces from the other 100 people. I think what they are trying to prove is that a individual that uses bit torrent is only giving another person a part of the info they need to complete a file. For them to be able to prosecute they would have to prosecute everyone who is sharing the copies. All or none basically. I believe fair use laws are being used to somewhat protect bit torrent users in this case. It may work for a while but i have no doubt that the politicians will start to make new laws specifying that even a part of a file is equal to the whole file.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:SO if I

[skaet]

Is telling someone the answer is 42 really the same as telling them the question is what do you get when you multiply 6 by nine?

But 42 is 6 x 7...

Re:SO if I

[cjb658]

FTA:

They also claimed that, because files are broken up into tiny "packets" before being sent over BitTorrent, this may not be enough to suggest a "substantial portion" of a copyrighted file was distributed.

I think this is a valid point. Unless you can download enough of the file from one person to prove copyright infringement (in the U.S. you are allowed 6 seconds of video), the studios shouldn't have a case.

Re:SO if I

[taucross]

It unfortunately does seem very weak. But, at least they're not playing ball with the plantiffs. By not even admitting that their users download illegal content, they've made it quite clear they won't be co-operating with the studios.

Can't say I blame them. I'm of the belief that the "internet is imaginary" - I don't think anyone should be prosecuted for anything on it. Unpopular school of thought I know, you needn't inform me. :)

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't download a car analogy!

That better?

Re:SO if I

[sg_oneill]

thats absurd.

Surely the reproduction right refers to making a copy for others?

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

So don't try peddling this bull shit to a judge.

Actually they spent a lot of the start of the case just explaining technology in general to him.

Re:SO if I

[Chlorine Trifluoride]

That's because 18 USC 2315 only applys if you knowingly receive the stolen goods.

Re:SO if I

[Antique Geekmeister]

The argument is nonsense. It's like selling or shipping someone the components and assembly directions to violate a patent: they can choose to assemble them in a way that doesn't violate the patent, but by providing the instructions to assemble it in a specific order, Bittorrent provider is directly supporting the intellectual property vioalation.

I don't usually compare patent law to copyright law, but this one is obvious.

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

A better apology would be say 100 people bought the same book

This doesn't make any sense. Can you translate that into English for those of us that speak it?

Re:SO if I

[Tenebrousedge]

That was obviously a typo, your post obviously a joke, but it's rather ironic that the parent poster's use of the word 'apology' was not actually incorrect, merely archaic.

An apology is a defense or justification of something. Probably the most notable example would be Plato's Apology for Socrates.

Re:SO if I

[travellersside]

Try it in base 13...

Re:SO if I

[TaoPhoenix]

But wait a min here!
I have been aching to do a spin on this, based on maxxing out the First Sale.

If I buy books and rip them apart, and hand out/mail the *original pages*, you could serve part of the need beautifully legally.

Your webpage the moniors (to agreeable desired level of tracking vs. privacy etc.) which pages are available.

Re:SO if I

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a real job of filling sandbags, hauling them up into an tower, dump the sand back into the original pile and repeat it ad nausicium.

Re:SO if I

[earthforce_1]

It is now in Canada - they managed to buy themselves a law last year.

Re:SO if I

[JoeInnes]

If you bought a book, and started handing out copies of the book you make one page at a time, sure, it's copyright infringement. If you buy a book, make a load of copies in postcard format, and say post it a page at a time to a friend, then the mail company can't be expected to know that you're infringing copyright, even though they know what each individual item you send is.

I'm pretty sure this is the crux of the argument. Not that their customers weren't violating copyright, merely that they had no proof, no reason to believe, that this was the case.

Re:SO if I

[zobier]

So they should drop the ordering information from the pieces. If you gave me the parts to make a gun but without assembly instructions, I could make a gun. If you gave me the pieces to make a file and I knew the hash (in analogy to knowing how a gun works), I could work out the order.

Re:SO if I

[Techmeology]

I think it's an excellent school of thought. Information is naturally self duplicating. Think of the muffin analogy (I've seen the cartoon). The difference between copying a file, and stealing a a car (ever seen those annoying piracy adverts on genuine DVDs?) is this: muffins cannot be copied. Files can. In today's information age, it is not feasible to continue to make information a scarce commodity. I just wish I had a muffin duplicator...

Re:SO if I

[againjj]

Any fair use case brings it up. It is one of the four factors, and so can not be used in isolation.

Lets hope they win, but how is important too

[ancientt]

Cobden for iiNet - "You aren't the boss of me"
Bannon for Studios - "We told them to stop letting people do bad things, and they didn't do what we told them!"

Apparently there is speculation over whether iiNet will try to argue that packets of data are not a substantial portion of a work, or maybe that the one to one nature of bittorrent isn't the same as a public dissemination, but personally I hope that they establish first that the studios don't have a right to just shut people down by accusation and then argue the technicalities that might get them off. I think that the arguments that it isn't piracy are much weaker than the arguments that the Studio's lawyers do not representive a duely appointed government representative.

I did not killed him!

[godrik]

Taken independently, each of my blow was not enough to kill!

Re:I did not killed him!

[DrVxD]

How many times did you blow him?

Re:I did not killed him!

[godrik]

4.7 GigaBlow

Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws...

[quangdog]

Perhaps I'm misinformed, but is there any evidence to suggest that BitTorrent is used exclusively to distribute copyrighted materials? It seems to me that the argument against it is that it *may* be used to distribute copyrighted materials. If this is truly the case, then I guess we had better go ahead and unplug the whole internet. It was fun while it lasted, but it *may* be used for evil, so while I agr*#&$@@ NO CARRIER

Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws...

[arbiter1]

a lot of Linux distro's use bt. torrents were made to be used for legitimate transfer of files that ended up gettin used for illegal things. Kinda like guns, they were original made for things like hunting, but ppl use them them for illegal things so might well ban gun's complete all over the world.

Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws...

[arbiter1]

after i posted that last one i had a 2nd one, dvd burners and cd burners were ment for legit use but they get used all the time for making pirated movies, music cd's so lets ban them to while we are at it

Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws...

[mrsquid0]

The first guns were made for military use. The earliest recorded military use of a firearm (that I know of) is 1327. Hunting came much later when firearms became small enough, and reliable enough, that they did not need several people to use them, and to protect the shooter while he was using the gun.

Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws...

[whiledo]

Wikipedia puts the oldest surviving gun at 1288 in China. Oldest depiction go back to the 1100s (again, China). These were also all military weapons.

It really only makes sense that guns came from a military. Until fairly recently in history, guns have been quite unreliable. And I don't just mean they were likely to miss your target or not fire. I mean they were likely to do things like explode and blow your hand off. This really only make sense if the user of the weapon is somewhat expendable. But they were also likely to miss, so again they only make sense in terms of a number of gun users firing at a number of targets.

None of this in any way makes a gun very practical for typical hunting. I have no idea where the OP got that from.

Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws...

[turing_m]

The earliest recorded military use of a firearm (that I know of) is 1327. Hunting came much later...

When it was already 1337 after only ten years, it's hard to believe that progress on the firearm could have been all that slow.

Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws...

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I read it, the problem wasn't with bittorrent being allowed or not, but with iiNet receiving information from copyright holders about copyright infringements happening, and then doing nothing to stop it from happening (in turn condoning the actions of its customers).

The movies mob needs to prove it gave enough information and proof it was happening (and possibly show that iiNet was then allowing its customers to perform illegal actions), and iiNet has to prove that with the information given it was insufficient to determine there was a wrong doing.

The way in which iiNet are arguing their side is that even when presented with lists of people downloading packets of copyrighted material, there is no way they could know they are definitely making a copyright infringement as the packets do not constitute individually any illegal material.

In that case...

[JamJam]

Each packet is just a bunch of 1's and 0's - those are hardly copyrighted either... right?

Re:In that case...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but they are patented. :)

Objectivity

[Toonol]

Just because someone is arguing a side that most of us support, doesn't mean that their argument isn't ridiculous. We need to keep our intellectual honesty about us. Taking their reasoning, it could be argued the TCP/IP never violates copyright; that a file broken out on disk clusters never violates copyright; and so on.

If you're sharing a copyrighted file via torrent without permission, I think you indisputably are violating copyright law. Perhaps copyright law is poorly conceived... I certainly think it is. However, I don't think arguing through silly loopholes is going to help the core problem. The law needs reformed.

Re:Objectivity

[digitalunity]

Someone earlier analogized Bittorrent as pushing a work through a shredder and sending the pieces out 1 person at a time.

The mere fact that the shreds can be reassembled into a complete copyrighted work suggests then that at least the shredded works are a derivative work.

Re:Objectivity

[flaming error]

> If you're sharing a copyrighted file via torrent without permission, I think you indisputably are violating copyright law

I think the mafiaa, unexpectedly, claims a higher hurdle for themselves:

The movie studios' lawyers argued that this is irrelevant to their case as all they need to prove is that iiNet users illegally obtained the files and then made them available for others

That part about starting out with an illegal file seems to me to leave a pretty big door open.

Re:Objectivity

[Qzukk]

doesn't mean that their argument isn't ridiculous.

Gotta agree here. Even if you're trying to claim that individual packets can't be a significant portion of a copyrighted work, nobody joins a swarm and sends just one packet.

Re:Objectivity

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a big difference here that you are missing .....

They are not arguing for the individual users. They are arguing for Bittorrent.

As an analogy, you can use Xerox copy machines to photocopy an entire book. The RIAA, MPAA, and so forth have in effect been going after Xerox for copyright infringement. The single act of copying a single page does not constitute copyright infringement while copying an entire book does.

Thus the copyright infringement occurs through the actions of the user not the actions of the company who built the copy machine or the software used to transmit a file. Similarly, Ford, Chevy, Ferrari, Porsche, are not sued when someone speeds, crashes and hurts someone. The driver is at fault not the auto companies.

Re:Objectivity

[dotgain]

But the whole point of the shredder is to make it impossible (well, infeasible) to reassemble into the original form, wheres the point of all the metadata put in the packets is the opposite. Just like the GP says, just because you agree doesn't mean they're not being ridiculous - and the shredder analogy is.

Re:Objectivity

[magus_melchior]

The tinfoil hat part of me says that the ISP may be looking to have BitTorrent classified as unauthorized traffic by defending it in such a piss-poor manner...

Re:Objectivity

[bug1]

So is it the shredders fault, or the persons pushing its buttons fault...

Should shredders have to be registered, do we need a government agency to review everything before it goes into the shredder to make sure the user isnt doing something wrong ?

I think the whole point to the bit-torrent argument is that the music cartels are trying to place restrict on file sharing technology just because it might be used to break a law.

If society goes around banning things that might be used to break a law then eventually everything will be banned.

Re:Objectivity

[Anonymous Coward]

reformed? i think the word you mean is repealed

Re:Objectivity

[Repossessed]

While I partly agree, i would point out that nobody is suing to have TCP/IP shut down either, even though a significant portion of it is used for piracy. I'd rather not lose access to the vast body of public domain work i download and distribute over bit torrent, even if they do block me from the (mostly) non public domain movies.

Re:Objectivity

[hkmwbz]

nobody joins a swarm and sends just one packet

So how do you show how many packets they sent? Can you show that they sent the whole work?

Re:Objectivity

[Anonymous Coward]

Copying a page of any book that is copyrighted is still breaching copyright, full stop.

Interesting.

[Icegryphon]

I wish that I had the URL of the article, but China is the location of the most torrented movies.

Why? because movies have to be approved by the government and Hollywood see that as too much work.

So while hollywood has given up on china, china hasn't given up on them.

BTW, I think since our government is being so intrusive into private businesses lately maybe they

should do something actor pay and ticket prices, Also how much Network Exec's can make.

Conspiracy to Commit Copyright Infringement Then

[pavon]

I don't know about AU, but the US has long standing laws and precedent for how to deal with situations where people try and get around the law using silly technicalities like this. You don't think organized crime hasn't played these sort of games in the real world before?

Just be safe.

[Anonymous Coward]

And use encryption.

Re:Just be safe.

[LuxMaker]

When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will use encryption. This is the next step.

Won't work.

[Richard_at_work]

Courts hate people trying to be 'smart' infront of them with arguments, and this is exactly what iiNet is doing. Why limit this to Bittorrent? If breaking the item in question down into individual packets eliminates the copyright concern, then surely just transferring the file by any means digitally will do the same - I can't think of a single protocol which doesn't use packets to transfer a fractional payload of the total, including TCP.

iiNet are going to fall flat on their face with this argument.

Re:Won't work.

[42forty-two42]

It's hard to tell from the article, but perhaps this was just one of their defenses? I know that in some contexts, at least, lawyers will throw out every argument they can think of, just so they're not restricted from using those arguments later (whether they actually use those arguments is another matter...)

Re:Won't work.

[palesius]

I agree that this seems a bit silly, but there is a difference here.
Transferring a file over FTP, for example, you are sending all the pieces to one person.
With bittorrent, you are sending some of the pieces to one person, some to another. Unless you are the sole seeder, it is highly likely that anyone is getting the copy solely from you.
One could make a tortured analogy to illegal drug manufacture. While it might be illegal to sell some drug, the chemicals one could use to create it are not. Even if some are, the chemicals that in turn make those up may not be. If you go far enough down the chain you will eventually arrive at something which can legally be distributed.
So if you take these perfectly legal components, and distribute each one to a different person, are you culpable when they exchange these pieces amongst themselves and manufacture an illegal end product?

Yes, I know that you could then make an argument that you are conspiring with them to commit this illegal act. But IANAL and certainly IANAAL (Australian Lawyer), so I'll leave the technicalities of conspiracy to wiser heads.

Re:Won't work.

[Workaphobia]

I hope so. The summary lays it out as if this were a legitimate stand for consumer rights against evil corporations. If our best defense comes down to mincing semantics, then we're fucked, and rightfully so.

Re:Won't work.

[EdIII]

Your argument is weak since it ultimately comes down to intent.

If you have 10 chemical manufacturers you could reasonably argue that there is not a specific intent to allow illegal or dangerous combination of their chemicals to be made. That is reasonable, and as a judge or a member of the jury I would believe that Manufacturer A never intended or condoned any illegal activity with their products.

Bittorrent however, does intend that the various seeders cooperate together to deliver 100% of all the different pieces from 100 people to just one.

You are right. Under most circumstances it is entirely possible that you could seed back 5:1 on a particular torrent while never actually sending a particular group of the pieces to anyone at all, as well as never sending 100% of the pieces to anyone as well. However, your intent is clearly to effect a 100% distribution of data.

Let's create an entirely different method (say CTorrent), that is designed in such a way that nobody ever sends 100% of the pieces. Divide up the data into 26 pieces A through Z. The tracker assigns you into your letter group. As part of group K, you are banned by policy to send out any K pieces (you can of course receive K pieces from a non-K member). In order for a torrent to be 100% available there must be at least two members from different letter groups. Participants can still seed out 5:1, since it is still possible to send out 5 times as much data as you received.

Even with CTorrent, the intent is STILL to effect a 100% distribution of the data.

Judges can and do look at intent. The intended function of FTP and Bittorrent is exactly the same. Only their methods are different, and distribution methods alone can't be used to argue copyright law.

Re:Won't work.

[palesius]

I wasn't trying to make the case that there is no intent to distribute with bittorrent, but that rather than actually comitting the illegal act you are engaged in a conspiracy to commit it. My point was more that it is not a 1:1 comparison with transferring a file via FTP, not that it renders you law-proof. There is a fundamental difference between a distributed action and a unilateral action. They may be similar and have the same ends, but it isn't quite right to claim that uploading 100% of a file to 1 person is quite the same as uploading 1% of a file to 100 people.
You are acting as part of a crowd, which may make your culpability worse. I believe that in some cases conspiracy only requires planning to be charged, not necessarily action on your part. So you could begin downloading a torrent, and never successfully download (or upload) any pieces, and potentially still be guilty of conspiracy.

Re:Won't work.

[taucross]

I DO think it is a legitimate stand for consumer rights. iiNet has a decent track record of valuing their customers over the demands of corporate bullies.

I don't agree with "then we're fucked, and rightfully so". Many legal cases have hinged on the meaning or interpretation of a word or words. Not only that, but fighting against heavy handed execution of IP law is evolving every day due to the overwhelming body of what does/doesn't work in court. Fingers crossed the lawyers read Slashdot. :)

I'm willing to give iiNet a bit of credit for what they're doing, until I see what happens. Either way, the effect will be dramatic in Australia.

These are interesting times, indeed.

Re:Won't work.

[Workaphobia]

But the argument they're trying to make (having not RTFA) is atrocious, even if it has legal merit. The notion that copyright infringement online doesn't *exist*, because as a technical matter information is shared in an incremental and quantized way, offends common sense and reason. It's not even necessary to ennumerate the other kinds of bogus claims you'd be able to make if such a ruling were supported, to see the madness.

I'm not trying to say anything about iiNet or the scope of their fight, because I know nothing of it. I'm just saying that I hope that particular line of "reasoning" is never sustained.

Remind me of this...

[sarang2005]

Reminds me of this: http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Global/B/B4ADC8C2-A786-4C79-A721-BA1C1BF5E1D4/0/chp18014.jpg

OH GOD, NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is going to end up turning Torrents into the illegal part!

Torrents tell it where to look for and construct these "ownerless" packets!

This was exactly the reasoning beyond the OFF system!

Meh...

[mark-t]

By that exact same reasoning a raw IP packet "cannot be used to distribute pirated content because a packet does not represent a substantial portion of the infringing material". Yet every packet that gets sent on the internet is built on raw ip. Are they saying, therefore, that any piracy that is perceived to occur at anytime over the internet is actually a figment of somebody's imagination?

Re:Meh...

[rohan972]

By that exact same reasoning a raw IP packet "cannot be used to distribute pirated content because a packet does not represent a substantial portion of the infringing material".

From TFA: They also claimed that, because files are broken up into tiny "packets" before being sent over BitTorrent, this may not be enough to suggest a "substantial portion" of a copyrighted file was distributed.

I think the argument might not be that sending it by packets cannot be infringement but that logging a few packets is not enough evidence either to kick their customers or be held liable themselves.

iiNet have a contract with their customers, not with the media companies. Should they disconnect people only on the basis of an IP number and file name given to them by a third party? They ought to be wary of breaking those service contracts. Since the customers also do not go on an ISP blacklist or anything (yet) all their compliance would do is to send that customer to another ISP, their competition, as well as expose them to lawsuits from ex-customers who got disconnected. So they have quite rightly stated that they require a higher standard of evidence than media company accusations.

Sue the electricity companies too

[huwr]

It's important to consider that the studios are claiming that ISPs should be responsible for what their customers do with their service. That is, that "iiNet was responsible for customers downloading movies illegally and then burning them to DVD to sell or share with friends." To me, that's the much more interesting matter.

The studios should then sue the electricity companies for providing electricity to people's DVD burners.

Re:Sue the electricity companies too

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally think they should sue the DVD companies and the HDD makers I mean they are allowing people to store this information on their computers. Sue the internet there's a good place to start. Wait sue the cinemas making movies that get pirated. Problem solved!

Re:Sue the electricity companies too

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, why stop there? Go after every company who makes any kind of recordable media or even better get the employees of those companies. They helped make the products that were used. Why not just outlaw all everything that can store any kind of information? This could go on forever! It's a money machine and ultimately we will lose in one way or another.

Re:Sue the electricity companies too

[Anonymous Coward]

They should sue the studios as well; they provide the content that people are illegally copying.

Re:Sue the electricity companies too

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually what iiNet is arguing. They don't think they should be responsible for disconnecting users. Which they shouldn't be.

If the studio has an issue with John Citizen then the Studio needs to file a complaint against John C. not go to iiNet and say "jump or else".

From what I've read this is what iiNet is addressing not BitTorrent...

Re:Sue the electricity companies too

[Anonymous Coward]

then they have to sue themselves for creating content, that can be copied...
no content, no copy!

Someone tag this....

[thesymbolicfrog]

Zenosparadox

Honestly, this is the same type of argument :)
"...but yer honor, how could I have gotten all of these leet warez? Anytime I would have wished to download any one of them, I would have an individually, incredibly tiny packet. Furthermore, I would have downloaded only half of each packet in half the time, and a quarter of the packet in a quarter of the time. So you see, I could never have downloaded anything at all, and Dell must have put this Ukrainian copy of Left 4 Dead on my computer when it was shipped!"

Twisted Logic

[dave562]

Following that logic, the following would also be true. The internet can't serve up web pages, because all of the content doesn't fit in a single packet. VoIP can't be used to communication, because an entire conversation can't fit in a single packet. The list goes on and on. What kind of idiot comes up with these arguments?

Re:Twisted Logic

[Un pobre guey]

Dude, this is Slashdot. This is one of the holiest of holies: pretending that copyrighted material is free for the taking no matter what.

Re:Conspiracy to Commit Copyright Infringement The

[Anonymous Coward]

the US has long standing laws and precedent for how to deal with situations where people try and get around the law using silly technicalities like this. You don't think organized crime hasn't played these sort of games in the real world before?

True. The first 8 years of the new millennium demonstrated that the only 100% bullet-proof ways for criminals to get around US laws are i) presidential signing statements; and ii) justice department memos.

No great surprise here.

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie industry is fighting against the very laws that they helped create. There are five very interesting posts that I found in a couple of minutes on Whirlpool that discuss the situation the ISPs and the media companies are in. The short of it: the media companies lobbied for particular procedures that let them go after individual users; they got them; and when they found that they were unworkable, decided to go after the ISPs instead. Deja vu, anyone?

I hope they have better arguments in court

[msobkow]

The page-a-day analogy is a good one. It really shows how weak the argument/defense is, and I really hope they have something better for their day in court. Otherwise they're just opening up the BitTorrent community to a general attack at the ISP level.

Re:I hope they have better arguments in court

[Thinboy00]

Otherwise they're just deliberately(?) opening up the BitTorrent community to a general attack at the ISP level.

It's a trap!!!

Re:I hope they have better arguments in court

[msobkow]

I was thinking more along the lines of them arguing about the share ratios of BitTorrent users, and how you haven't even done so much as borrow a copy unless you're seeding back to more than a 1.0 share ratio. Just because your IP got caught in a sweep doesn't mean you were "really" seeding the torrent in question, or it just might be a "dead" torrent without a lot of downloaders so you can't get your share ratio up.

Informative indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP

Zeno

[CannonballHead]

So this is basically Zeno's argument applied to network communications.

Re:Zeno

[Un pobre guey]

Yes. By extension, if you go to a bookstore several times and rip out some of the pages of a book each time until you have stolen the entire book, then there's nothing wrong. The degree of deliberate self-delusion on this thread is mind boggling. Look at the repeated modding as off-topic of this post. It is off-topic to argue on a thread about copyright piracy that copyright piracy is illegal. No rational thought, not even a perfunctory nod to prevailing law. I want it, so it's OK to just take it without payment. Sad and amazing.

Re:Zeno

[rohan972]

Yes. By extension, if you go to a bookstore several times and rip out some of the pages of a book each time until you have stolen the entire book, then there's nothing wrong. The degree of deliberate self-delusion on this thread is mind boggling.

The summary is badly written. If I understand the article correctly "They also claimed that, because files are broken up into tiny "packets" before being sent over BitTorrent, this may not be enough to suggest a "substantial portion" of a copyrighted file was distributed." they are intending to argue that logging a few packets is not enough evidence for them to kick their customers off or for themselves to be held liable. I don't think they are trying to argue that files are not distributed this way. It's not an unreasonable position to take given the various frivolous lawsuits in the US based on the same type of evidence accompanying the demand to break their service contracts and force their customers to their competitors service.

Honesty ?

[bug1]

If we are going to be honest, let us all (RIAA, MPAA etc) admit that its people, not technology that violate copyrights.

If we are going to be honest, how about the Music cartels refund all the royalties they collect from the sale BLANK cd's and dvd's. (they arent all used to violate copyright)

If we are going to be honest, how about the RIAA, MPAA stop labeling copyright infringer's as thieves (copyright violation isnt theft, different law).

If we are going to be honest, how about the RIAA, MPAA confess all the dirty legal and technical methods they have used in their attempt to convict anyone they can (other than the sony hack we already know about)

Its a dirty fight, the other side isnt interested in honesty or fairness, i say we fight them any way we can.

Re:Honesty ?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Its a dirty fight, the other side isnt interested in honesty or fairness, i say we fight them any way we can.

And I say that stooping to their level is a great way to alienate supporters, especially those who enjoy the moral high ground.

There are also some prejudices associated with piracy (most of which I personally hold). For example, that pirates are selfish people, who are willing to screw artists to have extra entertainment. Another example: pirates are addicted to their free entertainment stream.*

What do you think that arguing petty loopholes would do to the already tarnished image of the average pirate? It makes you look desperate, which makes you look addicted and selfish. You'd best keep the moral high ground.

*Ever noticed how many "well why don't you just stop?" posts there are out there in piracy discussions?

Re:Honesty ?

[n3v3rmiss]

If we are going to be honest, let RIAA and MPAA and all others admit to ripping the customer off regarding CD pricing, who is going to pay $20 + for a CD. Artists coming to Australia admit the CD price is high and no wonder their is illegal downloading. Let us be honest, not everyone is willing to purchase online. Hence why I download illegal content, I am all for supporting the artist, but lets make sure the distribution is assessable to everyone and for the right price

fantasy land

[Un pobre guey]

People who violate copyrighted material are in a fantasy world. If someone creates something, music, software, video, whatever, they have a right to charge for it. You do not have a right to consume it in its totality (fair use exists for parts of it) if they do not explicitly allow you to by some kind of license. What part of that don't you understand? Who do you think you are to expect people to work at making things and accept that you can take whatever you want from them without permission and without compensation?

Morons think music should be free apparently because of the mere fact that they like to listen to it, usually accompanied by some sappy argument that music should be free because things of beauty should be free, and the human soul is free, blah blah blah. Another favorite is that since these days it is easy to copy, it can no longer be copyrighted and is thus free. I guess if you are skilled enough to enter people's homes at night and steal their silverware, it isn't really theirs to begin with, not to mention if it is really beautiful silverware and wants to be free. Truly arguments only a hopeless dumbshit could put forth.

If someone explicitly allows you to take something with GPL or a Creative Commons license, great! If they don't, you have to pay. It's someone's income, you idiot, regardless of whether the price is reasonable or controlled by a cartel or not. Grow the fuck up for Chrissake.

Re:fantasy land

[meringuoid]

You do not have a right to consume it in its totality (fair use exists for parts of it) if they do not explicitly allow you to by some kind of license. What part of that don't you understand?

Well, for a start, I don't understand what you mean by 'consume it in its totality'. Normally, once I've finished consuming something, it is destroyed. When I consume a litre of petrol in travelling, that's one litre less petrol in the world. When I consume a loaf of bread, again, one less loaf of bread. What is consumed when - entirely hypothetically of course - I copy a movie? Electricity, I suppose, and bandwidth, but I'm paying for both of those.

Re:fantasy land

[Un pobre guey]

Why do you insist on arguing something you know full well is irrelevant? Do you eat mp3 files or videos? Are they destroyed after you listen to or view them? You do understand that consuming music means listening to it and consuming video means watching it, right? Right?

JeeeZUS...

Re:fantasy land

[Anonymous Coward]

It is irrelevant that "intellectual property" is substantially different than real property?

Re:fantasy land

[meringuoid]

You do understand that consuming music means listening to it and consuming video means watching it, right?

I don't understand that at all. I don't consider either something you 'consume'. I listen to music. I watch videos. I don't consume either of them, any more than I consume a book when I read it, or consume a chair when I sit on it, or consume a table when I eat my dinner off it. To my mind, if you consume something, you use it and use it up entirely in doing so. You consume food, you consume fuel, you consume anything that is necessarily destroyed in the process of its usage. For nondestructive usage, we have all manner of perfectly cromulent verbs that we can use instead.

Re:fantasy land

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so I guess he should be paying for music when it's playing at a mall. The radio station that's playing it should pay for it, the mall should pay for it, the store should pay for it, and every single ear it touches should pay for it, right? Right?

There is another side to the coin, you know. You'd do well to not insist that others "grow up for Chrissakes" if they don't share your opinion. It makes you look like a child.

The other side is this: I bought the music. Why can't I do what I want with music that I own? If it's a rental and they want to control my actions with it, it should be sold as a rental and there should be a contract. If I'm profiting from it, I should be convicted of a crime.

If I'm advertising the music by letting people hear it for free, I should be paid. Let me reiterate this: I should be paid for it. You have to pay any other entity to get advertising. That's why you strive so much for word of mouth, because you don't have to pay for it and it nets you profit. You don't sue your advertisers into oblivion.

But I guess I live in a fantasy world, because I feel that the first sale doctrine had it right. There's a huge difference between subscription and purchase, chief, and music is not a subscription. Considering that I don't sign anything when I buy music, I'm not bound to whatever conditions the artist has.

Who do you think you are to expect artists to be able to control people without a contract?

Re:fantasy land

[Un pobre guey]

You are committing the mistake of over generalizing and trivializing the term "intellectual property." A recorded musical performance or the creation of a video is the direct distillation of labor, as is a patent on a new type of water pump or a new type of chemical to dye fabrics, for example. Your implicit claim that "intellectual property" lacks substance or is in some way not real or does not merit compensation for its use is indefensible.

Re:fantasy land

[Un pobre guey]

You are being deliberately childish or obtuse for the sake of argument and you know it full well. Are you claiming that there is nothing wrong with listening to a musical recording without compensating the individuals or organizations that created it even if they 1) have not authorized you to do so and 2) are explicitly requiring you to pay for purchasing a recording or a digital stream of the performance?

Re:fantasy land

[Ashriel]

Eh. Mostly, we don't care. With any luck, enough people will join in on the infringement bandwagon, and consolidated entertainment as we know it will crash and burn (not likely, but it's always good to have hope).

In other words, until it's free, we'll take it anyway. When it's free, it won't matter.

Re:fantasy land

[Un pobre guey]

Oh, so I guess he should be paying for music when it's playing at a mall. The radio station that's playing it should pay for it, the mall should pay for it, the store should pay for it, and every single ear it touches should pay for it, right? Right?

You are being deliberately childish and obtuse as well, and you know it. Those uses are legal in that the creators of the music have authorized this use. It is perfectly legal for you to listen to music in this manner. Stop making up bogus examples you know are irrelevant and deceitful.

There is another side to the coin, you know. You'd do well to not insist that others "grow up for Chrissakes" if they don't share your opinion. It makes you look like a child.

It is not an opinion. It is a fact. The music you listen to at the mall or on the radio is legally licensed. The music you pirate off a disk or download via file sharing without payment is not. You know this. There is no opinion here.

The other side is this: I bought the music. Why can't I do what I want with music that I own?

Again, you know perfectly well why. You did not buy "the music," you bought a recording of the music. There is a license associated with it as well as copyright law. You know this, and you can look on the packaging for the copyright indication or the Terms and Conditions set forth by the copyright owner. You can make any specious claims you want, but you know perfectly well that you are wrong and are simply making things up to justify your use of other peoples labor for free.

If I'm advertising the music by letting people hear it for free, I should be paid. Let me reiterate this: I should be paid for it. You have to pay any other entity to get advertising. That's why you strive so much for word of mouth, because you don't have to pay for it and it nets you profit. You don't sue your advertisers into oblivion.

Is your advertising work done for hire? Were you contracted do do it? Is it advertising or are you merely allowing others to obtain free copies? You are scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Word of mouth does not involve giving away copies of copyrighted work by non-owners. You know it. Stop making crap up. Nobody hired you to do any advertising.

But I guess I live in a fantasy world, because I feel that the first sale doctrine had it right. There's a huge difference between subscription and purchase, chief, and music is not a subscription. Considering that I don't sign anything when I buy music, I'm not bound to whatever conditions the artist has.

Wrong again. Good Lord, look at the fucking CD jewel case or the Terms and Conditions of the download site. Do you see the copyright indicator? You are bound by copyright law regardless of whether you made any additional contractual agreements. You are bound by any conditions the artist or distributor specify that are covered by copyright law. It is prevailing law and you are bound by it whether you like it or not, whether you understand it or not, and whether you are aware of it or not. This isn't rocket science. You can't just make shit up and expect the world to accept it. Ask a fucking lawyer. You definitely live in a fantasy world.

Re:fantasy land

[Un pobre guey]

In other words, until it's free, we'll take it anyway. When it's free, it won't matter.

Why would a professional musician or a crew making a movie want to do so for nothing? How would they pay their expenses? Why do you think you have some kind of right to take it for nothing? Should people who make music, or video, or legitimate inventions, etc. simply not expect to receive any income for them? Should you not expect any income for your labor and investment in resources and materials? What does "when it's free, it won't matter" mean? Who will be making it for free and what will be their motivation? Are you pointing out some attractive and scalable new paradigm for labor and its compensation, or are you just making pointless noise?

Re:fantasy land

[meringuoid]

Are you claiming that there is nothing wrong with listening to a musical recording without compensating the individuals or organizations that created it even if they 1) have not authorized you to do so and 2) are explicitly requiring you to pay for purchasing a recording or a digital stream of the performance?

Absolutely. There may or may not be something wrong with copying and distributing a musical recording without the permission of the creators or their authorised agents - it's certainly illegal, but that's not the same thing as wrong - but with _listening_ to it? Are you serious?

Re:fantasy land

[Ashriel]

Why would a professional musician or a crew making a movie want to do so for nothing? How would they pay their expenses?

Concerts, theaters, live performances in general. You know, the way they used to do it before TVs and CD players.

Why do you think you have some kind of right to take it for nothing?

Nope, no right - just the ability. Although if it weren't free to me, I wouldn't bother with it anyway, or if I just had to have it, I'd buy it used (for which the artist gets nothing). If anything I'm just giving the artists free proliferation.

Should you not expect any income for your labor and investment in resources and materials?

Do you think that if there were a way for me to copy my labor endlessly for free, that I'd bother to go to work in the first place? I'd create entire organizations that ran on my free labor. It's an apples and oranges comparison here, since I'm blue-collar. My labor is exactly that.

If it weren't, if I actually produced something that could be copyrighted or patented, then I'd take a bit from it (like everyone else) and then release it to the public in short order (unlike most). I am not a greedy person: my needs are modest.

Unless of course, I managed to come up with something that was so beneficial to the public that it demanded to be released freely. Some times you just have to give for no compensation other than gratitude.

What does "when it's free, it won't matter" mean? Who will be making it for free and what will be their motivation?

I really thought this was self-explanatory. Once people finally give up on preventing public dissemination of their works, this issue will be moot.

Are you pointing out some attractive and scalable new paradigm for labor and its compensation, or are you just making pointless noise?

Not new; old. There's simply no need for the huge profit machines that run on artificial scarcity. Artists shouldn't be in their field for fame or fortune. I don't really care if they are or not, but I certainly can't respect that position.

Re:fantasy land

[Un pobre guey]

Clearly you are just putting forth an arbitrary opinion with no regard to whether it can be sustainably practiced in the real world on a large scale. Taking things merely because you have the ability to do so, expecting that anything besides "concerts, theaters, live performances in general" or "the way they used to do it before TVs and CD players" (gramophones and LPs are over 100 years old, BTW) is subject to confiscation of property (piracy, by another name), the utterly non-generalizable "sometimes you just have to give for no compensation other than gratitude," and of course the bombastic and insulting "artists shouldn't be in their field for fame or fortune. I don't really care if they are or not, but I certainly can't respect that position." At least you saved the best one for last.

Do you think that if there were a way for me to copy my labor endlessly for free, that I'd bother to go to work in the first place? I'd create entire organizations that ran on my free labor. It's an apples and oranges comparison here, since I'm blue-collar. My labor is exactly that.

It is not apples and oranges at all. Labor is labor. The means by which the product of the labor is distributed certainly influences the market price, but it is simpleminded to expect that below a certain distribution cost or ease of reproduction the creators should expect little or no compensation. An expensive creation such as a motion picture depends on a large number of people viewing it in a theater or buying or renting the DVD at a low price. The fact that the DVD can be easily reproduced or that it is possible to sneak into the theater and view the movie for free does not justify the illegal behavior nor does it render it morally, socially, or economically acceptable. You are simply trying to invent shallow reasons to justify illegal behavior that in effect steals income from people and organizations. The fact that the RIAA and many of its backers are corrupt crooks doesn't justify the behavior either.

I guess you can't see beyond the end of your nose far enough to see the corrosive consequences on the economy, on the value of labor, and on the support of intellectual property creation and distribution of condoning, generalizing, and scaling up piracy of copyrighted material and breach of licencing. You have to be told by adults wiser and more responsible than you, but of course you insist on not paying attention.

Re:fantasy land

[taucross]

Kohlberg's fourth stage of moral development.

Re:fantasy land

[Anonymous Coward]

They would get another job instead and only people who like making music for music's sake would continue to do so.
Oh no.. how terrible a place the world would become /sarcasm

Re:fantasy land

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but consumption isn't destructive! You may eat food, and it may never become that food again, but it certainly comes out of you at some point and continues the cycle that produces more of that food for you!

Wrong defense

[sashang]

That's a daft argument. You could extend that to say an ethernet frame and say 'oh because ethernet frames are broken up they can't be used to distribute copyrighted data'. Similar argument for reading writing blocks to disk etc... It's pretty obvious bittorent can be used to transmit information copyrighted or not. Their defense should focus on the accuracy identifying weather the information transmitted is copyrighted or not, since people do use bittorrent for legitimate reasons. ISP's probably want to win this case because they are aware of the enormous amount of traffic bittorrent generates, most of it being movies, mp3s etc... Forcing them to curtail this will hurt their revenue. The other side of the coin is that people that create music, movies, software are entitled to license it however they want. If they give it away for free good for you but if they copyright it and require payment for it then that doesn't mean you can just take it from them.

Re:Wrong defense

[Arkem Beta]

The argument is that a few BT packets do not constitute proof of copyright infringement. The individual packets do not breach copyright so the ISP or copyright holder would require a record of a whole session before you could start reasonably making copyright infringement assertions.

nope, that wont work

[Anonymous Coward]

as you still end up with with an unauthorized copy of the data at the receivers end, the result is still a breach of copyright. The transport of the material is not the real issue, it's the fact that a person ends up with an unauthorized copy, either by small chunks, packets, 360k floppies, bar codes, or whatever. theft is theft

Re:nope, that wont work

[Arancaytar]

theft is theft

And murder is murder. And copyright violation is copyright violation, and is the same as murder about as much as it is the same as theft.

Re:nope, that wont work

[Un pobre guey]

And murder is murder. And copyright violation is copyright violation, and is the same as murder about as much as it is the same as theft

Am I the only one astonished at the number of people on this thread who can't grasp something so clear and simple as copyright violation being a crime in the same way that theft, murder, fraud, perjury, breach of contract, etc. etc. are crimes? What's their to understand? How is copyright violation not a crime in the same way as theft is a crime?

Re:nope, that wont work

[meringuoid]

How is copyright violation not a crime in the same way as theft is a crime?

Because - at least in most of the jurisdictions derived from English law - it's usually not a crime, but a civil offence?

Re:nope, that wont work

[rohan972]

Am I the only one astonished at the number of people on this thread who can't grasp something so clear and simple as copyright violation being a crime in the same way that theft, murder, fraud, perjury, breach of contract, etc. etc. are crimes? What's their to understand? How is copyright violation not a crime in the same way as theft is a crime?

If that were so, the media industries would call the police and report it, not sue for damages. Nevertheless, even if, as you assert, it was "a crime in the same way that theft, murder, fraud, perjury, breach of contract, etc. etc. are crimes", (breach of contract isn't a crime either, btw) then why do people assert that "copyright infringement is theft" instead of "copyright infringement is murder" or "copyright infringement is rape" or "copyright infringement is drunk driving"? Since the principle's the same, according to you.

Re:nope, that wont work

[shark72]

"Because - at least in most of the jurisdictions derived from English law - it's usually not a crime, but a civil offence?"

It's all too easy to cross that line. In the USA, the threshold is $1,000 of value in 180 days. Distribute just a few copies of PhotoShop or a similar app and you're in criminal territory. If, like many Slashdotters, you have a substantial music collection in your share directory and you run BitTorrent overnight, that $1,000 point can race up really fast.

In practical reality, the US government tends to reserve criminal charges for folks who run the counterfeit CD/DVD operations or who leak a pre-release movie (506(a)(1)(C)), or who otherwise engage in blatant, highly visible piracy. So, most Slashdotters who commit piracy solely via BitTorrent, even if they share a lot of stuff, should reasonably expect only civil penalties. But it's important to understand that the low monetary threshold combined with fast transfer speeds makes lots of us criminals.

Re:nope, that wont work

[shark72]

"If that were so, the media industries would call the police and report it, not sue for damages."

Oh, they do. Microsoft works with law enforcement quite a bit. The music industry calls the cops from time to time as well:

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/guilty-verdict.html

It's a safe bet that most busts for criminal copyright infringement are the result of a tip-off from a copyright holder.

Re:nope, that wont work

[rohan972]

From the article you linked to:
This is no mere file sharing case, so if you share the odd file now and again, you don't need to worry about facing charges like this.

... which is exactly my point, and the point relevant to this article.

Why are these considered a "good" to begin with?

[Hertne]

Just a quick thought,

Copyrights can only be applied to goods, I believe, right? If this is the case, then why is IP of this nature even copyrighted to begin with?

It would, in my eyes, seem to be more of a service than anything. By purchasing a legal copy of a movie online to download, I'm receiving nothing physical for what I payed for. It's not a good.
  I am, however, being provided with the service of entertainment.

Can services be copyrighted?

If I were to go down the street, find a street performer and start to copy him (See: Eurotrip, silver "robot"), and other people were to start paying me, would that be considered copyright infringement? Can he copyright his "act" to begin with?

Maybe I misunderstand something, but this seems messed up to begin with...

Wait a second.

[Lord Kano]

I am all for ISPs standing up for the rights of their users, but I call bullshit on this one.

Bittorrent CAN be used for copyright infringement, just like a photocopier. Just because it CAN be used for illicit purposes doesn't mean that it always is. I have downloaded several Linux distributions using Bittorrent.

It's one thing to say "No, we're not giving you any information about our subscribers without proof." It's quite another to pretend that it's not possible to do something that we all know is.

LK

Re:PHEW!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you America.

I smell a technical loophole in this...

[jonaskoelker]

the downloader [is violating] the reproduction right by fixing the transitory data stream to a medium on his computer.

Allow me to conjecture wildly, and see where that takes me.

• If someone streams music to me, it's illegal for me to use mplayer -dumpstream.
• OTOH, I'm allowed to listen to the stream, which means I'm allowed to buffer the stream in memory.
• Say the default mplayer.conf says "buffer EVERYTHING first, then play it back". I'm allowed to buffer the whole file for purposes of playing it back (you can't expect me to know the technical details of how my program works).
• So if I buy a fuckton of RAM and a UPS unit, I could torrent everything to a RAM disk and play it from there: it's not the case that I fix the "stream" to a medium in a way that I don't do when I stream audio which I'm allowed to do.

From the {RI,MP}AA's point of view, there are two steps missing: "???" and "Lost profit!"

It would be interesting to see how this plays out in court. Maybe that's a way to be a law-abiding citizen while still getting Free Shit (tm)... otherwise, there's always Jamendo :D

Re:I smell a technical loophole in this...

[mdmkolbe]

Just putting it in RAM is considered fixing it in a medium.

Re:I smell a technical loophole in this...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because if you keep everything in RAM and keep it powered up for ages, specifically to defeat the machine's internal memory management (which would replace the cached data in the course of normal operations), then what you would be doing would cease to be a copy of transitory duration.

Keeping it in RAM doesn't make it magically off limits, it just means that if it's only in RAM, and it was kept there only for the purpose of allowing the computer to operate, it doesn't rise to the level of infringement.

Typical Slashdot ignorance.

Re:I smell a technical loophole in this...

[ameyer17]

Not necessarily.
According to 17 USC 101,

"Copies" are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term "copies" includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed.

and

A work is "fixed" in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration. A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is "fixed" for purposes of this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with its transmission.

In the case of copying to a RAM disk to try to circumvent copyright law, I'm thinking that would be considered "fixed" since the period would be more than transitory duration.
DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A LAWYER

Re:I smell a technical loophole in this...

[Kjella]

If you're listening to a legal stream, you can do anything with it that is fair use. Among them is time shifting, so there's nothing wrong with say recording a radio broadcast and putting it on your iPod. However, all of that is an exemption to copyright law that normally only gives the right to produce copies to the copyright holder. That means that you can't record Metallica off the radio and start selling Metallica CDs on the street - they're fair use copies, not copyright holder authorized copies.

Now, why does this not apply to P2P? There's a real and appropriate analogy to stolen goods here, even though copyright infringement and theft is not the same. Even if you buy stolen goods fair and square from someone they're still stolen goods, and you are legally liable for it. Likewise, any copy made from illegal distribution is also illegal - no right of fair use applies, and like with stolen goods saying "I didn't know" is not a sufficient defense. So yes, if you're listening to an illegally distributed stream using "mplayer -dumpstream" is illegal.

For the lsat part, you're thinking like a computer scientist not a judge. The determination will be made from the point of the copy, not from the point of the hardware. After all, even your HDDs or CDs or DVDs aren't "permanent", meaning they'll degrade and die sooner or later. "buffer EVERYTHING first, then play it back" is fine, but once you're keeping the whole thing in memory but have no instructions to ever send it to the speakers you're talking timeshifting not a transitory copy. Then you're over in a disussion whether it's fair use or not.

Re:I smell a technical loophole in this...

[srussia]

. According to 17 USC 101,

"Copies" are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term "copies" includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed.

Sounds like a brain, or the ear-brain combination. I have actually *heard* music (not just recall it internally) in places with strong white noise (like the beach). I would hear a song faintly but quite distinctly and think that it's just a radio playing out in the distance. But sometimes, after a while, I realize that the song just won't end! I notice this happens when I don't know the full arrangement of the original recording. My hypothesis is that my brain selectively perceives actual sound waves in the white noise, filtering out everything that does not correspond to the piece of music I am "hearing".

Re:Why are these considered a "good" to begin with

[Un pobre guey]

It would, in my eyes, seem to be more of a service than anything. By purchasing a legal copy of a movie online to download, I'm receiving nothing physical for what I payed for. It's not a good.

What do you mean "nothing physical"? Is it spiritual? Is it in some magical dimension? You don't think magnetic marks on a disk or voltage spikes on a wire are physical? Are you so obtuse that you can't distinguish between A) the service of providing you a medium with digital data of some kind, and 2) the actual digital data itself and the labor and investment that went into creating it? Can digital data spontaneously form into a movie or a song in such a way that all that is needed is the service to allow you to obtain a copy?

Perhaps we need to dispense with copyright law

[Anonymous Coward]

It was established to benefit the public by making it possible to establish an artificial "scarce resource" business model. The idea was that it was the only/best/simplest way to promote the sharing of information.

Is that valid, any more? If we killed copyright, would the modern world come to a halt? Would business become impossible? Or would everyone just figure out a way to make money in a world where information was free?

Only a packet at a time to examine defence

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point here is the ISP only ever has in their possession a single packet/block to examine. Examining the content of that packet/block will never be enough to qualify as copyright infringement of a substantial work.
Its only in aggregate that you can detect copyright (identify the work, the portion of the work being shared by the specific customer, etc)
Keeping aggregate stats for every customer, for every work accessed, then determining the copyright status of the work being accessed (think every web page, every image, every youtube, every forum comment downloaded - since all these things are eligible for copyright protections) is an un-imaginable task.

Doing it in real-time is impossible.

Doing it after the fact is the job for the copyright owners or the police.

(speaking of which - I wonder if IINET are going to do the unlicenced investigator defence - every state in Australia has requirements that investigators be licensed. Reading the act for NSW
http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/viewtop/inforce/act+70+2004+FIRST+0+N/ Its pretty clear Dtecnet's investigators and activities fall under the act and are not on the list of exempt persons. Surprise - all your evidence is thrown out and the police have warrants for the arrest of the expert witnesses!! if DtecNet say they just provide the tools, then the person using the tools would have had to be a licensed inquery operator (or a lawyer as an exempt class of persons).

Off topic?

[overtly_demure]

Good example of censorship. Mod the guy off-topic because you just don't agree with him.

Sigh...

Re:Why are these considered a "good" to begin with

[Hertne]

In my mind, there are goods and there are services.

The movie/music industry is providing me with a service, entertainment. That is what I pay for after all, entertainment. I don't go to the theatre in the hopes of receiving something that I can take home and use or show off to others.

If anyone had RTFA...

[dotar]

... but this is /., I know.

Can we assume maybe that the only ISP to actually fight the movie studios in court is not being as stupid as the summary implies, and one of the largest ISPs in Australia have unstupid legal council for just one moment?

A bad summary? On my slashdot?

For a start, they are rumoured to be saying something along the lines of what the summary says.

Secondly, anything reported to have been said by iinet that seems absurd is probably some incredibly specific thing designed specifically to counter some incredibly specific piece of pseudo-legal bullshit put forth by the big evil companies, specifically.

People, have faith that the only ones fighting your fight are not stupid.

Re:Why are these considered a "good" to begin with

[DrVxD]

Just a quick thought,

Copyrights can only be applied to goods, I believe, right?

Wrong. Bring in the next case.

Background

[Skythe]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/film-pirates-put-iinet-in-the-dock/2008/11/20/1226770617457.html
From memory, the trial was due to be held around October 5th.

Common Carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't we have some sort of common carrier law that provides limited liability to carriers (Telephony, postal services, etc)? Why does iiNet have any responsibility to police their services?

Not as dumb as the summary makes out

[Arkem Beta]

From the article:

They also claimed that, because files are broken up into tiny "packets" before being sent over BitTorrent, this may not be enough to suggest a "substantial portion" of a copyrighted file was distributed.

iiNet are suggesting that observing a couple of bittorrent packets is not enough to infer a breach of copyright because each packet does not contain a substantial amount of the original work. Much more data would be required before you could assume a copyright breach.

Re:Complain

[TaoPhoenix]

Not quite correct.

They'd still complain, because complaining is fun and profitable. But it would be much flimsier complaining.

As posted above, it would be hysterical to have a centrally organized Ripped Page site/service.

Re:Analogy!

[TaoPhoenix]

You just found the beautiful phrase.

"There's a real and appropriate analogy to stolen goods here, even though copyright infringement and theft is not the same."

Gets past the lowest grade snarks who trumpet they the two are not identical, while keeping the discussion open to determine exactly what grade of "not-right" pure unauthorized downloading is.

Lets see it

[Anonymous Coward]

If a bit torrent .torrent file is in fact a 3 hour movie or someones song, then play the torrent file and lets watch that move, or hear that song. You shouldn't have to connect to the internet or anything to do it. Lets stick to the evidence at hand. Is the torrent file a movie? Is it a song? If it is, then it belongs to someone else. If it isn't, then it doesn't belong to them. A photograph of a work of art does not belong to the artist, it belongs to the photographer. A photograph of a boeing airplane does not belong to boeing unless boeing took it. Its not that hard.

Trademarks don't expire

[tepples]

I'd rather not lose access to the vast body of public domain work i download and distribute over bit torrent

Copyrights used to expire; trademarks don't. The former owner of copyright of many works still controls the trademarks on the works' titles.

Re:Trademarks don't expire

[Repossessed]

You can't, as far as I know, trademark purely artistic work, there has to be a business purpose to the trademark beyond enforcing IP.

Case in point: Anne of Green Gables

[tepples]

You can't, as far as I know, trademark purely artistic work, there has to be a business purpose to the trademark beyond enforcing IP.

In Canada, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES is trademarked.

Lawsuits in Australia?

[MrKneebone]

Are there many lawsuits getting around in Australia? Or are they simply trying to get ISP's to warn users off P2P? I haven't heard of any Australian lawsuits, but maybe i've just had my head in the ground...?