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BitTorrent Trial Makes Australia's High Court

Posted by timothy on from the which-is-totally-success dept.

daria42 writes "Australia's highest court has agreed to hear the long-running BitTorrent case between one of the country's largest ISPs, iiNet, and a group of film and TV studios represented by a copyright organization known as AFACT. The case has the potential to determine once and for all whether Australians who download content via BitTorrent can have their Internet connections disconnected upon the request of the studios. It's lawyers at ten paces!"

2 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. iiNet by liamoshan · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This is why I've been a a happy customer of iiNet for nearly a decade

    When AFACT wanted ISP's to pass on copyright infringement notices to their users, Telstra, Optus etc were happy to roll over and do as they were told. iiNet effectively said "If you have proof of a crime being commited, take it up with the police. We're not here to have our customers harassed just because you say so". AFACT took exception to this, hence this trial

  2. Re:Copyright Theft? FAIL! by Professr3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The copyright owner still has the right to distribute his material as he sees fit. You're merely obtaining the material through a side channel. Do you think the copyright owner wakes up one morning and says, "Gee, I'd really like to sell this material to you, but someone downloaded it on the internet. This means I no longer have rights to distribute my material, so I can't sell it to you. Sorry! Woe is me!"

    That doesn't mean "copyright infringement" is a good thing, but you're going to have to come up with a better argument than that.