Australian ISP Argues For BitTorrent Users 207
taucross writes "Australian ISP iiNet is making a very bold move. They are asking the court to accept that essentially, BitTorrent cannot be used to distribute pirated content because a packet does not represent a substantial portion of the infringing material. They are also hedging their bets purely on the strength of the movie studios' 'forensic' evidence. This ruling will go straight to the heart of Australia's copyright law. At last, an ISP willing to stand up for its customers! Let's hope we have a technically-informed judge."
Re:SO if I (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SO if I (Score:3, Informative)
someone who only downloads and doesn't seed back is entirely innocent of [copyright infringement].
Well, except for that pesky little thing of being in receipt of infringing goods.
Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws... (Score:5, Informative)
The first guns were made for military use. The earliest recorded military use of a firearm (that I know of) is 1327. Hunting came much later when firearms became small enough, and reliable enough, that they did not need several people to use them, and to protect the shooter while he was using the gun.
Re:SO if I (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not aware that this is actually against (U.S.) law.
According to the grokster case, the uploader is violating the distribution right and the downloader the reproduction right by fixing the transitory data stream to a medium on his computer. Otherwise it wouldn't be illegal to film in a cinema, it could be against the cinema's rules but if filming it didn't involve any of the copyright holder's exclusive rights it couldn't be copyright infringement either.
Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws... (Score:2, Informative)
Wikipedia puts the oldest surviving gun at 1288 in China. Oldest depiction go back to the 1100s (again, China). These were also all military weapons.
It really only makes sense that guns came from a military. Until fairly recently in history, guns have been quite unreliable. And I don't just mean they were likely to miss your target or not fire. I mean they were likely to do things like explode and blow your hand off. This really only make sense if the user of the weapon is somewhat expendable. But they were also likely to miss, so again they only make sense in terms of a number of gun users firing at a number of targets.
None of this in any way makes a gun very practical for typical hunting. I have no idea where the OP got that from.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. It's just good business sense. Here (in Australia) we pay for our usage. I'm on a 20GB/month plan, while someone like my mum is on a 500MB/month plan.
The "heavier" the user, the better the customer. In other parts of world, you have the opposite problem when the "light" users are the most profitable customers.
Re:Shut Down All Possible Ways To Break Laws... (Score:3, Informative)
As far as I read it, the problem wasn't with bittorrent being allowed or not, but with iiNet receiving information from copyright holders about copyright infringements happening, and then doing nothing to stop it from happening (in turn condoning the actions of its customers).
The movies mob needs to prove it gave enough information and proof it was happening (and possibly show that iiNet was then allowing its customers to perform illegal actions), and iiNet has to prove that with the information given it was insufficient to determine there was a wrong doing.
The way in which iiNet are arguing their side is that even when presented with lists of people downloading packets of copyrighted material, there is no way they could know they are definitely making a copyright infringement as the packets do not constitute individually any illegal material.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)