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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."
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.
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.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
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 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.