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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."
The salient quote from the judge - "the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another".
The Issue was decided by a single judge, which means the likelihood of appeal to the full bench of the Federal court and the high court after that is 100%. I think this is a good day for Australian ISPs. And despite the whinging from AFACT it does not protect pirates since the copyright holders have had the mechanism of going to the court for a court order to name an ISP subscriber for years. They just elected not to use it and tried to bully subscribers with infringement notices. And any ISP that didnt pass on these notices were run over the coals by AFACT as this case has demonstrated. But what this case demonstrates is that AFACT is not above the law. However I can see the Government tightening the legislation at the end of this case making any decision by the high court moot when it gets reversed by the incompetent Conroy and his band of merry men
And additional important ruling (taken from the summary):
This appears to be saying that when someone torrents, they only infringe copyright once. Which would make it economically unviable to go after people for casual copyright infringement via the internet, since damages would be severly limited.
You missed something else we still have. The separation of the administrative/legislative and the judicial arms of government.
The judicial arm is effectively separate, but the separation of the executive (administrative) and legislative arms of government isn't necessarily a good idea; look to America for some solid examples why. Which isn't to say it doesn't have its benefits, but I don't think they outweigh the cons. In particular, I don't think it in anyway increases government accountability, but it certainly does decrease government effectiveness, and an ineffective government is bad no matter where you sit on the political spectrum, as it impedes a government mandated by the people to implement policy from being able to do so.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2010/24.html
It's almost like the judge-- reads? {mindreel}
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
- Heinlein, Life Line, 1939
UTF-8: There and Back Again
As a matter of fact, the Australian judge presiding over this case examined safe-harbour provisions and similar cases from US law and he mentions those examinations in the judgement document.
This is common sense really, as ISP's are a carrier and not liable for the content that passes through their networks.
Unfortunately what will happen is Conroy, the Minister for Communications, who has already identified himself as being strongly pro-copyright, will now attempt to enact harsh laws to force ISPs to surrender private information to AFACT companies and allow direct attacks on the Australian population. Conroy is the same minister who was voted Internet Villain of the Year last year for his ongoing attempts to enact a hidden, government controlled blacklist censorship system to "protect the children" (although really it just blocks political, anti-abortion and euthanasia websites and a few local Australian businesses thrown in at random).
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
The case was backed by some of the largest media companies, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.
Irresponsible behavior (some would say - criminal) and total lack of respect for our internet from these last century media company behemoths really does make it that much easier to justify going out of our way to never ever pay them a penny - on moral grounds. Oh they will still get paid, and paid very well for doing nothing, what with our taxes going right to their pockets. What a convenient business model! However a serious correction in market capitalization is obviously in order for these people - they apparently will not be content until they destroy the internet.
As an aside, in parts of Europe they released the Disney channel last year or so to free view on TDT. Previously it was cable TV subscriber only where the post-war economic crisis was causing their viewer ratings to seriously drop. A generation of little EU'lings growing up without crying for their "Micky Mouse" tee-shirts or wanting to go to "WarnerBros world" must have scared the absolute goofies out of them.