Australian ISPs Must Hand Over Pirates' Info

wabrandsma sends this report from the BBC: An Australian court has ordered internet service providers to hand over details of customers accused of illegally downloading a U.S. movie. In a landmark move, the Federal Court told six firms to divulge names and addresses of those who downloaded The Dallas Buyers Club. ... The court said the data could only be used to secure "compensation for the infringements" of copyright. In the case, which was heard in February, the applicants said they had identified 4,726 unique IP addresses from which their film was shared online using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing network. They said this had been done without their permission. Once they received the names of account holders, the company would then have to prove copyright infringement had taken place.

Comments

BitTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

BitTorrent is a file synchronization protocol you insensitive clod. You assume slashdot readers need to be told what it is, and then you get it wrong by saying it's a file-sharing network.

Anonymous Overlay Networks

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it... you all know networks like I2P, Phantom, Freenet, GNUnet, Tor, MaidSafe, Retroshare, and even CJDNS exist and are effectively bulletproof and a final FUCK YOU to the MAFIAA..... but you refuse to use them. Did you know that some like Phantom, Tor with Onioncat and CJDNS can even support your favorite sharing/torrent apps directly over native and private IPV6? Did you know you can download both a full lossless raw DVD-9 VOB rip and a lossless FLAC CD rip per day?
Yet like idiots with their heads you STILL continue to insist on using clearnet and complaining when the MAFIAA comes for you.
What a bunch of moronic internet masses you all are.

Just in time for the collection of metadata

[elmer at web-axis]

I'm so glad to be living in Australia at this time.

Last week we get news that the government is forcing all ISP's to retain metadata information for all usage by all subscribers 'coz of terrorists'. Now we get news that the current data ISP's have, which is only supposed to be used for billing issues, is being used to identify and sue subscribers who had their IP in a torrent tracker 2 years ago!. No Movie studio my IP appearing in a tracker doesn't mean that I'm downloading or seeding your video. It just means someone possibly is using my IP to view who else is connected to that tracker. Or maybe the tracker randomly puts generated ips in the list to mess with you. Or maybe I allow my neighbors to use my internet or the public as they walk their dogs in a nearby park. Should I be held liable for them viewing publicly accessible information (the torrents tracker list)? Or should torrent tracker administrators be suing you for stealing their customer information? Couldn't this be considered hacking (accessing unauthorized information?)?

I hope this keeps up. Next week we will all be hearing about how to access the internet you must use your australia.gov login.

Just a Moment...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The applicants (plaintiffs?) claim to have identified 4,726 unique addresses from which a file was downloaded. So how does knowing the identities of the users of those addresses have *ANY* bearing on whether or not the plaintiffs can prove the crime? Surely the Court could and should have asked how this additional detail would change that proof? Then, *if* the plaintiff can prove, beyond the Court's threshold (does Australia use the "burden of proof" for criminal cases and "preponderance of the evidence" for civil ones?) it should be allowed to proceed with identification of the alleged participants.

2. This tactic has been attempted before, in the US Courts, with such a bad set of results that the RIAA and MPAA have actually backed away from the attempts. This seems to be because of the many instances where the plaintiff was able to link an IP address to a dwelling, but then discovered that multiple people occupied the dwelling, and were unable to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt [see above] which of those individuals committed the alleged crime.

I am sure that there are many other reasons for this anti-copyright activity to be happening in Australia right now [there is similar going on in the UK] - and for the record, copyright theft is a crime and should absolutely be punished - but there is a very real danger here that the tactics as described have already been proven to not work, to lead to miscarriage of justice, and to have been withdrawn in other jurisdictions. Is this a case of "venue shopping" - one in which the plaintiffs continue to try different venues for their case until they get a sympathetic Court system that delivers what they want?

Re:Just a Moment...

[GumphMaster]

I am sure that the plaintiff in this case would dearly love to engage in "speculative invoicing" and to do that they need somewhere to send a legal threat with a nice "make it go away for only $2000" clause. The judge has at least considered this, so the plaintiff must pass any correspondence destined for the parties revealed here through the court. That should at least control the extraction of money by threat of legal action with no intent to proceed to actual litigation. My guess is that the plaintiff will try to ID one or two endpoints that look like a business/individual with reasonable sized pockets and try to set a precedent with them.

This decision, and the recent data retention law that ensures these records exist for fishing expeditions, have essentially ensured that VPN providers will do well out of Aussies.

Re:Since when

[mjwx]

Since when is merely downloading something an offense? I think the article is most likely full of shit.

Sadly since the conservative government took power in late 2013 they've had a hard on for helping out big business in any way possible. As such we've gotten new draconian laws and signed secret treaties giving away any rights they couldn't take away. Its not like the Abbott government cares about being unpopular. In the mean time, I'm just going to get a seedbox and recommend other Aussies do the same.