Australian Court Gives Green Light To Disconnect Pirates 131
aesoteric writes "The Full Bench of Australia's Federal Court (three judges) has dismissed the film industry's appeal against a February 2010 judgment that found ISP iiNet had not authorised copyright infringement on its network. However, the ruling was a 2-1 majority and the judges have made several concessions to the Hollywood film studios. In particular, they set out a prescriptive path for the film industry to change the way it identifies alleged copyright infringers. The ruling says that if the film industry amends the format of its notices of infringement, pays the ISP to vet the notices and indemnifies the ISP against any fallout from disconnecting a customer, then disconnection is a reasonable step the ISPs should take to combat piracy. Essentially, the ruling gives internet service providers no absolute protection over the actions of their subscribers."
Re:Close one (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it interesting that they specified that the Movie Industry needed to pay the ISP to vet the claims. Which means that frivolous disconnect requests should be weeded out or not submitted. This also means that the industry better have real evidence rather than just circumstantial evidence against their proposed user. Hopefully it should cut down on some of the bullying... It could have been far worse.
Copyright thugs rejoice! Bottom lines improved! (Score:4, Insightful)
I say that if an ISP has to lose a customer over copyright infringement, then the organization requesting the disconnect needs to pay at least half of the "lost revenue" (the term so loved by the copyright organizations) for the entire duration of the disconnected customer. That way they can split financial responsibilities between them.
Re:Close one (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that scary, it makes the the person claiming copyright infringement fully liable for disconnecting the wrong person or having insufficient proof to justify that disconnection and they have to pay the ISP's cost. They will also have to pay for warnings (low onus off proof) and of course for disconnection (high onus of proof that the person who 'contracted' the service is actually infringing). So the more action they want from the ISP the more it costs them, with no cost recovery.
In Australia that often sides with the consumer. For example, having problems resolving issues with your incumbent Telecom, contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and that Telecom gets the bill for the time you spend with the ombudsman, you'll be surprised how quickly your problem get resolved.
Digital Capital Punishment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The full judgement (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting how I've seen this news on so many sites, and they all report it with overwhelmingly positive headlines ... except Slashdot. Slashdot is the only site I've seen that somehow seems to wrangle this into a NEGATIVE sounding headling. Is it just me or is /. turning into the grumpy old man that likes to complain about everything and is constantly trying to push their agenda onto other people...
It's because it's bad decision. It introduces new punishment: denial of communication. As someone already mentioned it: why not cut people's electric power or ban computer use at all?
Internet is so important today that you can't just disconnect people. Infringements should go to regular civil trials and money punishments.