AU Legal Group Says ISP Allowed 100K Illegal Downloads 191
In Australia, a court wrapped up day one of what promises to be a 4-week trial of media interests against ISP iiNet. Reader bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports that Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft investigators claim to have recorded almost 100,000 instances of Australian internet service provider iiNet users making available online unauthorized copies of films and TV programs, lawyers for the film industry said in the Federal Court in Sydney today. The lawyers for the film industry claimed iiNet had done 'nothing' to discourage copyright infringement on its network. iTnews also has a background piece on the case, with a Flash-y graph."
Pax (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they did. So did I. But htere's a legal distinction between "allow" and "authorise", something AFACT appears to be doing its best to ignore.
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Yeah, and what's with the name: Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft?
Copyright Theft? Is that where I catburgle Universal HQ and make off with the copyright papers for the latest hit artist? How can a copyright be stolen?
Re:Pax (Score:5, Interesting)
Well in this case it is even more interesting, they are not just trying to claim copyright theft on their works but on the title of their works. They claimed 29,914, hmm, did they download and validate that those titles as listed where in fact the works they claim to have ownership or did they just look at the title and pretend it was evidence. Lets see 97,942 instances even music at three minutes a piece that is still 4,800 hours of works they claim to a checked and confirmed as their content.
So the Federation Against Copyright Theft claim that iiNet has not monitored and censored their users, well I should hope not, as that would be an illegal and criminal act and iiNet would rightfully be sued for attempting to do so by their users and, of course prosecuted under law. In Australia it is a criminal act for companies to monitor telecommunications for any reason other than strictly limited checking of quality of service, not to be recorded and, not to be censored.
There are even privacy laws in place to protect employees from excess invasions of privacy, let alone customers and of course non-customers, those people the customers are communicating with who have no connection with the company providing telecommunication services.
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In Australia it is a criminal act for companies to monitor telecommunications for any reason other than strictly limited checking of quality of service, not to be recorded and, not to be censored.
So, if the thing they're being accused of turns out actually to be a crime, iiNet are screwed (along with every other Australian ISP).
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Actually, they're being accused of NOT committing a crime. How dare they!
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As you may have worked out, it makes for a good abbreviation. It makes people think that they enforce a fact, rather than a legal fiction.
Re:Pax (Score:5, Insightful)
Holden repeatedly allows their vehicles to be used in drug running, armed robberies and abductions by failing to control what the vehicles are used for.
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Except that Holden could easily be presumed to have control over who uses the cars, whereas governments and phones don't easily control who uses the roads or phone lines.
In fact there was a case awhile ago in landlord tenant law where a property management company turned a blind eye to the ne'er-do-wellisms of the druggie tenants. The owner was lazy, unattentive, or otherwise unaware of the shenanigans the prop co was allowing...
Well, the government got wind of it and sued for asset forfeiture.
paraphrased
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and?
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Your first quote seems to support the AFACT lawyers claimed against iiNet. That they did nothing to discourage copyright infringement on its network. Thus the parallel to Holden and their inaction.
Your second quote supports The Pirate Bay and their fight against the IFPI and the MPAA and their claims of copyright infringement encouraged by the Pirate Bay.
Please clarify your position.
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In other news, the Australian government was found to have enabled thousands of crimes by providing roads for getaway cars.
NOT to mention that (Score:2)
Excerpts and in some cases the entirety of books were recently copied. They were written on (GasP) PAPER!
Paper should be more controlled so that it's future content does not violate copyright.
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Actual knowledge of a criminal offense usually makes you an accessory no matter what you allow or don't allow.
In theory this is ok, but in practice you can be imputed up the wazoo on the sayso of circumstantial evidence.
This forces you to be more diligent than you are normally required to be in order to stamp out piracy...unfortunately imputing yourself in more stuff.
OMG they did nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
that they weren't required to do!
Time for me to sue someone for not giving me money!
Saddle up, we're going to Australia!
Re:OMG they did nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Roads fascilitate the transport of untold amounts illegal and/or dangerous materials including : drugs, immigrants, weapons and WMD's.
Close the roads!
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Unless you're called as an eye witness, pretty much all other testifying will be expert witnesses in their field. Just because you could get any teenager to show you how it's done, doesn't meant you'd put that teenager on the stand to testify about torrent technology. That was a very weak attempt at a retort.
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You are presumably speaking as one expert to another..
Obligatory Car Analogy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a minute, you can actually prove tangible losses from people speeding. That would make this lawsuit a little more feasible than what AFACT wants.
Re:Obligatory Car Analogy... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can? In the UK it's what keeps local government afloat.
Re:Obligatory Car Analogy... (Score:4, Insightful)
I miss the days when Montana had no speed limit, except near the cities. We need more states like that. Interstates were designed for rapid travel (120 miles per hour). It seems silly to limit ourselves to only half that.
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Actually, the interstates were "designed" to keep traffic moving at about 80 mph, nationwide. A good driver can actually navigate just about all of the interstate system doing that speed - some mountain areas never made the grade, and probably never will. Oh, wow, this site disagrees with what I was taught - http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/programadmin/interstate.cfm [dot.gov] "Examples of design standards for the Interstate System include full control of access, design speeds of 50 to 70 miles per hour (depending on type
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>>>the interstates were "designed" to keep traffic moving at about 80 mph, nationwide
Not correct. If you read the original Act from Congress, it mandates that the roads must be able to safely sustain 120 MPH travel. This was done immediately after World War 2 and the goal was to provide a way to move the U.S. Army rapidly across the continent as quickly as possible, hence the 120mph design minimum.
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Half seems stupid. Yet at around 100km/h (a bit over 60 mph) the stopping distance of a typically loaded semi-trailer starts increasing exponentially. I'm happy that the limit is set at the limit of the largest vehicle generally seen, though it is stupid to put 4 tonne+ trucks and passenger cars on the same limit. No limit should be set outside of cities and towns where only vehicles are allowed except for trucks, buses and cars with caravans or trailers, who should stay below 100km/h (60mph). Funnily enoug
About Montana (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting you should make that observation.
The GP was wrong. Montana never had no speed limit (except, technically, for a short period of time between the court decision and legislative action referenced in the next paragraph). They simply said you could drive as fast as you wanted as long as you stayed "reasonable and prudent". In many jurisdictions, the traffic court judges interpreted that to mean "Don't even think about writing a ticket for anyone going less than a hundred." Nobody, however, would have batted at eye at writing up a semi-trailer for traveling at 90mph. It's not safe.
The Montana situation fell apart when an edge case [wikipedia.org] cropped up. A driver was ticketed for doing 90 mph, was convicted, and appealed. He prevailed at the state supreme court level because the court held that the a speed limit law that only specifed "reasonable and prudent" was simply too vague to be constitutional. The state responded by setting speed limits.
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That driver was stupid. Yes he got-out of his 90mph ticket, but now he's obliged to drive 75 or less. Before he had freedom to drive fast, and now he doesn't. ----- I've driven across North Dakota and Montana, and the 75mph speed limit struck me as silly. In the area where these too states join, there's quite literally nothing to hit so I don't see why this section of I-94 (near Glendive MT) needs a limit, anymore than the German Autobahns have limits.
Trivia -
Glendive is the smallest television marke
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You weren't stupid at all though in criticising somebody for appealing an unfair conviction. Of course it's his fault that the system responded in a typical overbearing manner. For fucks sake, just count yourself lucky that the higher courts found in his favour, and next time you're fined unfairly actually do something about it instead of belittling those who do.
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My point was that the driver's lawsuit, to quote Benjamin Franklin, "Penny wise and dollar foolish". The guy got out of his ~$100 fine which is good, but now that the limit has been dropped to 75, he's probably getting speeding tickets left and right, and racking-up a thousand or more in fines.
Obligatory phone analogy (Score:5, Funny)
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Nor do companies making telephones and fax machines for that matter. Then you have pen, pencil and paper makers together with the postal service.
Spray can manufacturers do nothing to prevent people from doing illegal graffitis!
Not even a warning not to do this on the can.
Sock manufacturers do nothing to keep people from kicking each other's asses!
Or together with shoes they can be used by people
Culpable Manufacturers (Score:5, Funny)
Or together with shoes they can be used by people meeting up to plan or commit a crime.
Nike has been abusing this knowledge for years to sell shoe/sock combinations that allow criminals to flee crime scenes at unprecedented speeds!
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>>>The telephone companies do nothing to prevent people from discussing crimes on the phone!
This is probably the strongest argument. I can both download and upload files over the telephone lines, but the company can not be sued. It is not responsible for how its phone lines are being used.
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Wait a minute, you can actually prove tangible losses from people speeding.
I can!
My bank statement is full of withdrawals to pay the fines.
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Analogy falls apart; the insurance company can't prevent drivers from driving. The ISP can certainly prevent anyone from downloading stuff through it.
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You completely misunderstood the analogy, the Insurance company equates to the music industry, not the ISP. The government equates to the ISP in the analogy, and it is the government that controls the licenses to drive a vehicle.
The analogy is actually just about perfect.
ISPs do not revoke the download rights of a person who has illegaly downloaded copyrighted media, at least not until they receive an order from the court to do so. Similarly, the government does not revoke the license of a driver who spee
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Even better they could just attach the GPS directly to our bodies. You speed - you get an instant ticket sent to your home. Walk on the grass? Instant fine. Break into a bank, store, or other private area, the police will be dispatched.
I think this is a reasonable proposal. We will, at last, know peace in our time.
Re: choking the engine if it's speeding (Score:2)
So you become aware of another vehicle coming your way, and quickly establish that a collision is inevitable, unless you increase your speed significantly, so as to avoid a nasty conclusion... but your engine automatically chokes and you crash... it's rather dark, but you can hear the other driver walking around looking for you, shotgun resting on his shoulder, 'cause he's not happy 'bout your reckless driving, because his ride is now totaled when it would've been easy for you to avoid him, ..., turns out t
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Actually they could, by installing some extra hardware in the car. Which you as the customer would end up paying for.
An ISP through which all traffic is routed can easily prevent most illegal traffic from going through it's system,
This costs the ISP more than simply routing the packets. Much bigger costs than involved with the car example. Since whilst a machine can work out the speed of a vehicle in can't tell the difference between
Er, well spotted. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Er, well spotted. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why go to BT and phones?
Just present examples of the exact same ISP letting people buy anything illegal by mail.
In a movie court, the handsome and manly lawyer would open a portable in front of the judge, connect to a "illegal dvd sale by postal mail" and order 100.000 movies.
How far does the liability go? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the argument here is that the ISP is liable for illegal content exchange. What about the router manufacturer? How about the OS manufacturer? If the traffic was all encrypted, is the ISP on the hook for man-in-the-middle attacks to decrypt and inspect the content, or will they then be liable for invasion of privacy? Is there such a thing as privacy down under?
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Well, Cisco has an adequate legal department, so routers are right out. OS goes without saying. Certificate authorities are again too big, but maybe some poor little ssh project?
Screw it, lets just sue random email users and claim victory.
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Screw it, lets just sue random email users and claim victory.
Nice idea. Hire a spambot for a few hours and send out demands for an "out of court settlement" to 100 million randomers. Some of them are bound to be filesharers with guilty consciences.
Oh wait, isn't that bascially what the RIAA has been doing?
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Oh wait, isn't that bascially what the RIAA has been doing?
With the help of the Pirate Bay, since the Pirate Bay likes to insert a sample of random ip addresses into its tracker/logs.
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http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tricks-anti-pirates-with-fake-peers-081020/ [torrentfreak.com]
Polluting the evidence works like this. When a client asks for a list of peers who are downloading the same torrent, the tracker software automatically inserts several âoerandom IP addressesâ that are not in the swarm. They are based on existing sub-nets, but might be from people who may not even be aware that BitTorrent exists.
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You don't have to decrypt anything to figure out the IP address of a peer offering a particular torrent file. The BitTorrent client wouldn't be able to work if it didn't have a list of peer IP addresses.
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True, but that list of IPs doesn't come from the torrent, it comes from the tracker. So either the ISP would have to listen to all your HTTP traffic trying to figure out when you're talking to a tracker, or it'd have to connect to the tracker itself. Both approaches can be trivially blocked with HTTPS and some very light authentication to deny them access. They could answer with MITM and it'd move to proper signed certificates outside the CA system. If the responsbility is put on the ISP's shoulders it'll c
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Ah, OK. I was thinking of the situation we had with MediaDefender [wikipedia.org], where they reported infringing users to the relevant ISP with a view to having them punished in some way (cut off, throttled, whatever). Not where the ISPs themselves police traffic.
I think you would have to decrypt it. (Score:2)
Actually you do have to decrypt the contents, otherwise you have no idea what it is.
If you took videos of your children playing in the backyard and labeled it "Star Wars" and put it on P2P, that's not infringing on George Lucas regardless of what you've called your video.
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section 4083:
(1) A person commits an offence if:
They network two computers via:
(a) copper; or
(b) fibre; or
(c) through the ether.
(2) A person commits an offence if they network a media operating device via sneakernet.
(i) An offence against subsection (1) or (2) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction, and will have the network removed from their possesion; or
(ii) in the case of subsection (2), the offender will have the limbs us
Re:How far does the liability go? (Score:5, Funny)
Is there such a thing as privacy down under?
Snigger...
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Snigger...
You dyslexic racist!
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14 March 2005, no. 37, 2004-05, ISSN 1449-8456
Ban their iTunes (Score:2, Insightful)
It's clearly the fault of the content producers. Without them there would be no infringement.
Anyway, there's an even better solution that the film industry should consider - banning the iTunes etc accounts associated with these IPs. I guess they prefer to damage other people's business though.
New Zealand faces similar problems :( (Score:5, Interesting)
What's more is there's a kiwi group of 10 thousand artists against NZFACT because they're sick of being misrepresented. here's their press release tearing into NZFacT [creativefreedom.org.nz].
Dear Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
The lawyers for the film industry claimed iiNet had done 'nothing' to discourage copyright infringement on its network.
I don't understand. Are your telecom providers forced to actively discourage illegal phone calls, such as bomb threats or sexual harassment? Are your book dealers forced to actively discourage photocopying of books? Are your radiostations forced to discourage people from turning on their radios in public locations without paying STIM? Are your pastry bakers forced to discourage people from throwing cakes at eachother? [youtube.com]
Australia, help us understand your line of thought.
Re:Dear Australia (Score:4, Informative)
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Conjob? He's a christian tool.
Re:Dear Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
For the record, iiNet doesn't support any breaches of the law, including copyright theft. On the contrary, iiNet has led the industry with legal content offerings through our Freezone, including agreements with iTunes, ABC iView, Xbox, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Cruizin', Macquarie Digital TV, Barclays Premier League Football, Super 14 Rugby, Drift Racing 2007 and classic highlights of golf's four Majors.
We don't believe we should take any action which could result in the disconnection of a customer's service, based on poorly supported allegations. AFACT are asking us to be the investigator, judge and executioner despite their failure to provide us with tangible evidence.
The approach that AFACT has taken is akin to arguing that if a person were to use Australia Post to deliver a pirated DVD, Australia Post has authorised the pirated content on the DVD by delivering it.
And it seems, iinet's line of thinking, is more along the lines of what sensible aussies are thinking.
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You Know... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is worse than that! (Score:2)
Knife makers enabled uncountable murders by stabbing, and other crimes such as robbery. Firearms makers enabled untold deaths, and other crimes such as robbery. Highways have allowed unimaginable death, injury and property loss. The phone system has been used for everything from death and bomb threats to obscene phone calls!!!
How can these be allowed any further?!
A happy customer. (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't the first time they've gone to court to protect the rights of its customers, and they are the only ISP down under who is (vocally) opposed to the government's "kiddy porn" filter.
This is precisely the reason why I have stuck with iiNet for over 10 years. They don't give a shit what I do with my bandwith, and use the money I pay them for it to invest in improving their network (and my service).
You would almost think that their job was moving bits around or something. The nerve!
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overheard at lunch (Score:2)
Synonymous? (Score:2)
Dowloads (Score:2)
AU Legal Group Says ISP Allowed 100K Illegal Dowloads
Nice to know we have such great editors like kdawson who always keep their eye on the ball.
The issue use to be iiNet's supposed caching [itnews.com.au] of said content. Possibly to do with this patent? [whirlpool.net.au]
Responsibility ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anthrax is sent through the post, we don't blame the Post Office.
Death threats are sent through the telephone, we don't blame the Telephone Company.
People commit suicide on the railway, we don't blame the Train Company.
While all these things are prevented, or avoided, where possible, it is not the responsibility of the company to decide what an individual does, nor to take the blame when they do it.
Now apply this logic to ISP and a user downloading something, possibly legal, possibly illegal. (If it's inside a passworded RAR file, who the hell knows which is which anyway).
You can't shoot the messenger because the message he delivers says something you don't like.
Media Industry want ISPs to be their police, because they can't find an effective way of doing it themselves. If policing doesn't work, hell let't just blame the police because
there are so many criminals.
What planet do these Media Industry people live on ?
Their sales model is dead, it is no longer an "Industry" as they don't need to make anything anymore. Just whack out the latest clone remake of some decent 70's / 80's movie, and offer DRM free downloads for $1 ...
"I'd buy that for a dollar !!!".
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You can't shoot the messenger because the message he delivers says something you don't like.
But THIS ... IS ... SPARTA!!
So I think you can.
What About Copper Mines? (Score:2)
The lawyers for the film industry claimed iiNet had done 'nothing' to discourage copyright infringement on its network.
That's all well and good, but what about the copper mines? Clearly the copper mines that extracted the copper used in the wires and traces of those infringers' computers did not lift a finger to prevent copyrighted patterns of ones and zeros from being sent as signals across their copper conductors. We simply cannot have unreasonable copyright enforcement until every company whose products
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Don't be a twerp. If you use a BitTorrrent client, you can find out the IP address of the peers offering a particular Torrent over the network. If those IP addresses belong to an iiNet customer, then you can record the time, torrent and IP address from the safety of your own home without having to do any further sneaky investigation. You personally wouldn't be able to tie up that IP address to a particular user but I'm pretty sure the ISP would have a log which could make that connection. If they didn't hav
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Wait a minute: the BitTorrent client gets a list of IPs from the tracker. But who says the list is entirely correct? Who says that from a certain computer/network behind each of the IPs the file in question has really been there/shared?
Furthermore: if for example you collect a list of IPs and bring them to some law enforcement agency, how do you prove (!) that you didn't make the list of IPs and times up?
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Furthermore: if for example you collect a list of IPs and bring them to some law enforcement agency, how do you prove (!) that you didn't make the list of IPs and times up?
If the ISP was willing to co-operate, they'd be able to confirm that the user on the IP address was actively torrenting at that time. Seems like iiNet really aren't willing to co-operate in this situation. Whether that's a good or bad thing is left as an exercise for the reader - I don't live in Australia so I don't give a flying one.
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iiNet forward all infringement notifications to the police.
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how do you prove (!) that you didn't make the list of IPs and times up?
How do you think they sue the dead and/or people who dont own computers. It's not though competent investigation.
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As we know 1 user equals 51,470 people.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/09/04/2148203/How-136-People-Became-7-Million-Illegal-File-Sharers?from=rss [slashdot.org]
So at most only 2 iiNet customers were recorded and even that's on dodgy unreliable evidence.
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I have an expectation of privacy that what I put in my rubbish bins goes directly to landfill/anonymous recycling. Were the collection company or any other agent for that matter sifting through my rubbish looking for evidence of illegal activity then I think I'd have a case against them for invasion of privacy; as far as I know in most of the western world such activity is considered very dodgy on the part of the investigator if not outright illegal without a warrant.
Yet you would seem to argue I am putting
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For those that do live in the US there is no expectation of privacy in regards to your rubbish. California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35
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For those that do live in the US there is no expectation of privacy in regards to your rubbish.
I'm pretty sure that's universal. It's not that his country protects his "rubbish" so much as that he has really silly expectations based on a lack of familiarity with laws.
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So you're telling me if you found someone routing through your bins you wouldn't call the police?
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Why in the world would I call the cops on someone who's taking things that I don't want??
Re:As an iiNet customer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I'd rather know as soon as possible so I could either refute the claims, take measures to avoid future detection or stop the behaviour that caused it..
By "stop the behaviour" you mean stand up and contest the corruption of your legal system which leads to these sort of lawsuits, right?
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By "stand up and contest the corruption of your legal system" you mean wait for out sane and not politically appointed judges to sort this one out then yes, I intend to do just that. What you dont know is that this is the first such case in Australia. What the alarmist reporting doesn't say is that AFACT has already withdrawn their primary claim against iinet (engaging in
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iiNet did what any good ISP should do. They forwarded each and every letter to the WA Police for proper consideration. They don't even need to do that.
AFACT already have helped put legislation in place (with the cooperation of the ISPs and the Federal government) to allow a magistrate to request that an ISP retain certain
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iiNet forwards infringement notices to the police.
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iiNet passes along ALL infringement notices directly to the police. The police then have the authority to follow them up, issuing a subpoena... or not.
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What's so hard to understand?
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It might be the dowloads. Maybe it's a new measurement unit from the stock market, one Dow Jones load or dowload for short. Actually, guessing what the claimed damages will be 100000 times the value of the companies on the Dow Jones index doesn't sound too unlikely ;)
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Well I initially thought it was about a group taking issue with internet users downloading illegal 100KB files... ;)
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- Bring on some form Anonymous End Point to BT
Yeah, let me know how that works out for ya (The BT client software needs to know the IP addresses of where to find the file parts).
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What you and I are saying is much less important than the fact that you and I are talking. Against traffic analysis, encryption is irrelevant.
- Bruce Schneier
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hmmm.
1. register the copyright on something of your own.
2. misname it to something currently popular.
3. "leak" it out onto the p2p nets
4. watch same nets for signs of illegal activity
5. SUE
6. profit!!!
OK, I know. Too many steps and I left out the all important: ??? but still...
all the best,
drew
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Yes, I know, but in some places you get a better payoff if it is registered...
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That was close, nearly did that twice in a row!
Parent lacks clue about Australia (Score:2)
Compared to the US legal and governmental system ours are a bastion of sane and rational thought.
What you dont know is that, 1. This is the first such case in Australia and 2. they've already withdrawn most of their charges against iinet.
The movie studio's are unable to sue individuals for copyright infringement, unlike in the US and if AFACT were to withdraw their case iinet is practically guaranteed a win in