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Landmark Ruling Gives Australian ISPs Safe Harbor
omnibit writes "Today, the Federal Court of Australia handed down its ruling in favor of the country's third largest ISP, iiNet. The case was backed by some of the largest media companies, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. They accused iiNet of approving piracy by ignoring thousands of infringement notices. Justice Cowdroy said that the 'mere provision of access to internet is not the means to infringement' and 'copyright infringement occurred as result of use of BitTorrent, not the Internet... iiNet has no control over BitTorrent system and [is] not responsible for BitTorrent system.' Many Internet providers had been concerned that an adverse ruling would have forced themselves to police Internet traffic and comply with the demands of copyright owners without any legislative or judicial oversight."
What I liked about this ruling was just how much they won it.
The judge said that Safe Harbour provisions did apply to the ISP... but they weren't needed because they only applied if the ISP explicit approved that user activity (which they do not)... and any infringement notices from the studios didn't need to be sent to consumers due to the Privacy Act (iiNet sends all infringement notices to the police instead)... and in any case the sending of infringement notices and subsequent banning etc was not considered a valid copyright prevention mechanism.
So yeah, they wiped the floor with them.
we still have a proposed Internet Filter, no R18+ rating for video games, and a South Australian government that passed a law saying that every person commenting about the election online must provide their real name and postcode. We have a long way to go yet.
Australia doesn't _have_ a Supreme Court, they have a High Court.
We have eight (8) Supreme Courts actually. But yes, you are correct this is the first instance case before a single Judge in the Federal Court. Appeal would usually lie to the Full Court (of the FedCrt) and then to the High Court of Australia.
You can read the decision for yourself here.
I know you all speak English, but does 'Supreme' mean something different in Australia?
Each state and territory as a Supreme Crt, which is the highest court for that state and territory. The federal court system is separate and deals with federal law (eg. copyright law). The highest court in Australia is the High Court of Australia, to which one can appeal from the state Supreme Crts or from the Federal Crt.
Does that make it any clearer?
The High Court really only deals with interpretation of the constitution
While this is true of the German Bundesverfassungsgericht, it is completely false in regard to the High Court of Australia. And yes, IAAAL.
Any point of law, whether it arises out if the Constitution or not, can be decided by HCA.