Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Taken independently, each of my blow was not enough to kill!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
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.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall