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."

Comments

Re:sigh

[mabinogi]

The important part is what isn't said. The ruling didn't say that there was no obligation to police a certain part of the net for copyright violations, just that the ISP wasn't responsible for BitTorrent and thus wasn't obligated to police that part of the net.

so, "the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another" doesn't meet your definition of that?

Re:Users only infringe *once* per file

[masher_oz]

So it looks like merely making a file available isn't an infringement. This is congruent with the finding that

20. The law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another. The law only recognises a prohibition on the doing of copyright acts without the licence of the copyright owner or exclusive licensee, or the authorisation of those acts. In the circumstances outlined above and discussed in greater detail in my judgment, it is impossible to conclude that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement.

Just because you're able to copy my file doesn't make me responsible.

Re:Headline should read...

[blind monkey 3]

Sorry but I suspect the endgame is presented in this http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/04/2809856.htm
quote:
Outside court, Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft executive director Neil Gane said he was disappointed with the decision. He said the case was lodged to try to protect the livelihoods of the thousands of Australians who work in the television and film industries. Mr Gane said he was confident that the Federal Government would now review the laws surrounding copyright infringement.

as the saying goes, who needs judges and courts when you can afford politicians.