Landmark Ruling Gives Australian ISPs Safe Harbor 252
omnibit writes "Today, the Federal Court of Australia handed down its ruling in favor of the country's third largest ISP, iiNet. The case was backed by some of the largest media companies, including 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. They accused iiNet of approving piracy by ignoring thousands of infringement notices. Justice Cowdroy said that the 'mere provision of access to internet is not the means to infringement' and 'copyright infringement occurred as result of use of BitTorrent, not the Internet... iiNet has no control over BitTorrent system and [is] not responsible for BitTorrent system.' Many Internet providers had been concerned that an adverse ruling would have forced themselves to police Internet traffic and comply with the demands of copyright owners without any legislative or judicial oversight."
Suck it, AFACT (Score:5, Funny)
Suck it long and hard.
Headline should read... (Score:5, Funny)
Landmark Legal Decision - Law and Common Sense Align
statement from the losing party (Score:5, Funny)
Translation:
1. Dey tuk er jeb! Won't someone think of the jeb?
2. Never should have allowed testimony about how the Internet works.
3. OK, fuck the courts, we'll just buy a few politicians. We'll tell 'em it's about protecting Australian jobs and about protecting de widdle chiwdwen.
4. Need to work out which politicians to buy.
Re:Sudden outbreak of... (Score:5, Funny)
No need to turn it over. It's Australia. It's already upside-down.
Statement in full from the losing party (Score:5, Funny)
Thirty-four film companies representing the Australian and US film industries today expressed their disappointment that the Federal Court found that iiNet was not using orbital mind control lasers [newstechnica.com] to encourage copyright infringements by its customers on its network.
Despite findings of copyright infringement by iiNet customers, pirate flags in their front yards and downloaded cars in their driveways, iiNet did not authorise the acts of its customers, merely sitting back and watching the tens of dollars rolling in to feather their own nests at the expense of the poor beleaguered major record companies and film studios.
Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft executive director, Neil Gane, said he was disappointed by the Court’s decision. "Today’s decision is a setback for the 50,000 Australians employed in the film industry, who work hard to send money to America as fast as possible. But we believe there's something not quoite roight about this ruling — it was based on a mere technical loophole centred on the court's interpretation of what the law technically says in actual words and original intention, rather than what it should say.
"We are confident that the government does not intend a policy outcome where zombie hordes of drooling open source copyright terrorists led by the evil genius Michael Malone are allowed to continue feasting upon the flesh of the living via the iiNet network.
"We will now take the time to review the decision before seeing if we can bribe enough federal politicians to get a law more to our liking."
Re:Prepare for the appeals! (Score:5, Funny)
Sure. Just like I have district and magistrates burgers which are obviously of lesser quality than supreme burgers.
And in France its called the Court Royale
Re:Wow (Score:3, Funny)
Justice Cowdroy, Neil.
Re:Prepare for the appeals! (Score:5, Funny)
The High Court really only deals with interpretation of the constitution
While this is true of the German Bundesverfassungsgericht, it is completely false in regard to the High Court of Australia.
You deserve to be modded up just for spelling Bundesverfassungsgericht correctly.
Now, some of you might conclude that the 3rd 'A' above stands for 'Australian'. Actually, because of issues too complex to explain (something to do with the International Date Line, the Doppler Effect and Special Relativity), Australian vowels simply last longer than North American or European vowels. If you were to pronounce that acronym out loud it would sound more like 'OIEAAAAAAAAOOOHHHHLLLL'.
A clause in the US/Australian Free Trade Agreement requires that Australian actors have their vowels surgically removed when they're being prepared for export.
Re:Prepare for the appeals! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Prepare for the appeals! (Score:3, Funny)
When did they move West Virginia to Australia?
When John Howard was elected in 1996.
How many bytes in a Megabyte? (Score:2, Funny)
63. As an aside, a ‘byte’ is a term that refers to a certain amount of data, namely 8 ‘bits’. A bit is either a zero or a one, given that computers compute by means of binary code. A ‘kilobyte’ is 1024 bytes, a ‘megabyte’ is 1024 kilobytes and a ‘gigabyte’ is 1024 megabytes.
Let the flamewar begin...