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.

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.

Re:Just in time for the collection of metadata

[MrKaos]

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!.

I analysed the bill several weeks ago. I wrote to *all* the senators and tried to stop it and I tried to raise awareness, I was on a public forum answering questions and worked pretty much to 3am every night for 2 weeks trying to stop it from passing. I even tried submitting a slashdot story that it was about to pass. It was quite clear to see that it was going after downloaders otherwise why would the ACMA be referenced in the bill.

But it is worse than that, there is little doubt that these systems will be a blackhat's wet dream because the data will be in one place, IMHO a free for all for online fraud. I suspect that most Australians will be furious when they realise that they are being told to pay extra internet fees for a system, that will create new classes of fraud crime against them, is of limited use to police, by businesses who don't want them there to complicate infrastructure who will seek taxpayer assistance to fund and install them.

I tried pretty hard. I won't post the whole letter here, as it is four pages of analysis of an 80 page bill that is deeply flawed and now law. This extract is core to the problems with the bill:

As for the Bill, the criticisms I derive from part one follow:

The 'Implementation Plan' IP under the act is too loosely defined in terms of data encryption and access requirements. The government should implement MANDATORY public key encryption standards for business that promotes business and consumer confidence. The act should also refer to data access standards that produce an audit trail for the Privacy Commission PC so abuses can be tracked and prosecuted, if required.

Encrypted access for law enforcement with revocable keys controlled by the Privacy Commission (P.C) and also accessible by the member of the public who produced the data. Either the Telecommunications Ombudsman (T.O) or the P.C should have the power to review the audit trail of accesses to the data and revoke access based on their findings and satisfactory resolution of a complaint. A person's access to their own data should not be audit-able and a complaint mechanism should exist through both the P.C and the T.O who receive increased powers to prosecute abuses, which would serve to stimulate business and consumer confidence because of the protections offered.

No definition of what the "plan" (under the Bill) requires for access under a Communications Access Controller's CAC - implementing the technology requires 'requirements' and standardisation however the Bill offers none. The public should be able to access the data collected about themselves and have assurances that it has an expiry date.

Clarification and revision based of the Bills inevitable and chilling effects mean consumer and business confidence will be affected for years, policing will receive questionable, if any, benefit. The Bill however is good for centralising data collection techniques for foreign organised crime whose work will be greatly reduced subsequent to the passage of this Bill.

• Criticisms of specific sections in Part one:
• 187AA.3A,3B remove because it introduces the possibility that any e-commerce business that is not a telecommunications provider can be forced to retain data and bare the cost of limiting their business throughput and capacity for expansion. For business this represents a rising linear cost that increases with additional customers.
• 187B.2 Needs definition of who a CAC role answers to, which department, and limits to retention de

Re:Since when

[xlsior]

Since it's bittorrent, they aren't "merely downloading" because it is automatically sharing the (partial) download with others at the same time -- meaning that they're uploading as well. Since the average user doesn't have the right to (re)distribute the movie in question, they are violating the copyright of the owners.

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.

Re:Anonymous Overlay Networks

[SumDog]

You can't use BitTorrent with Tor. The protocol itself leaks information. The safest thing to do is have a seedbox in another country..and if you're super paranoid; pay for it with bitcoin.

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.

What I want to know is...

[jonwil]

Why all the stories I hear about mass-lawsuits over piracy seem to be for crappy films like Dallas Buyers Club and that Hurt Locker thing.

Why hasn't Warner Bros filed a mass-lawsuit over piracy of the new Hobbit film? Or what about a lawsuit from Universal over the latest Fast & Furious film.

I am sure there are films out there that have been pirated a LOT more than Dallas Buyers Club (a film I hadn't even heard of before the lawsuit showed up) so why aren't we seeing these kinds of mass lawsuits on those films? (or if those lawsuits do happen, how come they dont get as much attention as the ones we hear about like this Dallas Buyers Club film?)

Re:What I want to know is...

[Harlequin80]

Because Dallas Buyers Club made almost no money. In total it made $59 million and out of that had to come all the expenses.

In comparison Frozen grossed $1.219 Billion at the box office alone. Lets not even count the merchandising on that film. That is why you don't see Disney suing over Frozen. They made their money and know they will destroy a cash cow in the process.

Re:What I want to know is...

[GumphMaster]

The Voltage Pictures VP of Royalties was interviewed on the radio as I drove home today. He said that Voltage is doing this because a small producer they cannot cannot cross-subsidise from other parts of the business to cover the losses due to infringing copies of their movies (His argument was clearly based on the assumption that every infringing copy is a lost sale). The big players can afford to do this and see the negative press as more costly than the potential increase in revenue. He refused to be drawn on what they would be demanding from the alleged infringers. There were also some poor choices of words, assumption of guilt, and sense that they are the law.

Read (http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/stories/s4212674.htm) or listen (http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/daily/hack_wed_2015_4_8.mp3) to the show.

Re:What I want to know is...

[Dr_Barnowl]

made almost no money

Budget : $5M
Takings : $59M

While it's no Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (which apparently lost $167M after grossing $938M worldwide, on a $150M budget - go figure!), you'd think that was actually a respectable profit.

The whole of Hollywood is a scam.

Re:Anonymous Overlay Networks

[Anonymous Coward]

We fought them instead, using law, years ago, so we don't need to hide anymore in Denmark.

The danish pirate organisation fought the anti-pirate organisation, by organizing together, donating funds, and creating enough funding for us to hire a full-time lawyer, which incidentally also was an activist within the specific area of law. The additional funds was used to pay pirates fines, such that we could counter the economical devastation they sought to bring. Also education in law etc., such that all pirates could legally counter them, in all possible ways, recording, filming etc., for gathering proof against them. (Should they touch the keyboard without judges approval etc., that would immediately win our cases for example, because that is a breach of privacy)

In the end, the anti-pirate organisation went bankrupt. They did not achieve legislation, as the IT unions made 10.000+ people demonstrations against them. They did not get a footing at all.

We continued to make statistics, and we can see that the media business are making more money now than ever, even though we have unrestricted privacy now. As we said in the beginning :-)

Re:If I was Australia

[Buchenskjoll]

No man is an island... or a continent. Some men are incontinent, though.