AU Legal Group Says ISP Allowed 100K Illegal Downloads

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."

Re:How far does the liability go?

[ciderVisor]

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.

Re:How far does the liability go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there such a thing as privacy down under?

Yes, but they call it "Chazzwallaroo."

Re:Dear Australia

[Zeussy]

A lot of people reckon its partially pushed by Senator Conroy for getting back at iiNet for them publicly opposing his Net filter plans, see ye olde slashdot article here: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/11/1329222 [slashdot.org]

Re:Is it legal to record 100K other users' actions

[ImNotAtWork]

I'm assuming you don't reside in the U.S. lucky you in this case.
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

Re:As an iiNet customer...

[goonerw]

I think they're a great ISP but I can't really understand the policy of not passing infringement notices from AFACT to its customers even if they're not legally required to do so.

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 details of the infringement so that when the Police go to investigate the matter, the ISP has retained what they need to answer the Police.

The number of requests made to magistrates since this process was developed in consultation with ISPs and AFACT? Zero. And they're bleating about iiNet not doing enough when they have never followed the process they campaigned for.

Re:How far does the liability go?

[SJ2000]

Do Australians have a legal right to privacy? [aph.gov.au]
14 March 2005, no. 37, 2004-05, ISSN 1449-8456

Re:Is it legal to record 100K other users' actions

[frozentier]

AFAIK, it's totally legal in the United States for someone to go through your trash. Once you set it out on the curb/in the dumpster, there's nothing you can do about it, other than get someone for trespassing if it happens to be in your yard. The act of going through the trash is not a crime in itself.

Re:Obligatory Car Analogy...

[mpe]

once I buy a car from ford, they have no way of stopping me speeding.

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 "legal" and "illegal" data. Costs which will be passed on to customers.

or cut off and identify the users.

The other big costs will come when (not if) the ISP gets sued for breach of contract for cutting people off without cause.

Re:Obligatory Car Analogy...

[Runaway1956]

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 of terrain),"

I'm sure that if I were to google around some more, I could find Eisenhower's stated goal of 80 mph.

Yes, I've driven 120 and faster on the interstate, but that extra speed is just a benefit of open, flat lands.

Re:A happy customer.

[lordlod]

Not the only ISP, Internode and others have been vocal in their opposition. Internode had a staffer leak a pile of information on the filter which they neglected to punish him for.

About Montana

[BenEnglishAtHome]

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.

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.