Judge: ISP Not Responsible for Illegal Downloads
A Federal Judge ruled than an ISP can't be held responsible for what subscribers download, nor can it stop the process.
In its fight to beat down piracy, major Hollywood studios have demanded that a Federal Court hold an Australian Internet Service Provider responsible for illegal content--namely pirated movies and TV shows--downloaded by its customers. Studios such as Paramount, Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox hoped that the case would open the door to an enforcement of copyright protection rights on an ISP level.
However, Justice Dennis Cowdroy didn't hold iiNet, Australia's third-largest ISP, accountable for the alleged copyright infringement. In fact, the judge ruled that iiNet did not authorize the downloads of the copyrighted material, nor did it have to power to stop the process. Although Cowdroy acknowledged the presence of widespread copyright violations, he did say that these violations were not the responsibility of iiNet.
According to the AFP, the case in question stems around "thousands" of downloads taking place on iiNet's Perth-based network. In a period of 59 weeks starting June 2008, nearly 90 films and TV episodes were downloaded using BitTorrent including "Heroes" and "Batman Begins." However the current ruling deems that iiNet isn't even partially to blame for the copyright infringement even though it provided the bandwidth "vessel" for downloaders.
"The evidence establishes that copyright infringement of the applicants' films is occurring on a large scale, and I infer that such infringements are occurring worldwide," he said. "However, such fact does not necessitate or compel... a finding of authorization, merely because it is felt that 'something must be done' to stop the infringements."
The AFP reports that, after the ruling, there was a lot of excitement from ISP's standing outside the courtroom. There were also some "very long faces from the studios."
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Yea sue Ford because I was drunk driving a ford car and hospitalized someone I hit. Yea. GREEDY IDIOTS!
This could be the start of a major game changer for the Industry. IF ISPs are ruled to not be responsible, then people could sue the ISP and industry if their internet is disconnected for "downloading" since the ISP cannot be held liable... Maybe my thought is incomplete, but I think it's a start to a good win.
Drug traffickers use public roads to move their goods. The Government must be sued!
Same concept.
I think it's time for the movie and music industry inovate to compete with illegal downloads and stop crying at their mothers everytime someone downloads something on Torrent. Time to ditch Cd's, Dvd's and move to digital distribution...
[quote]There were also some "very long faces from the studios."/quote]
That judge just made my week.
@pooflinger1
As I work for an ISP, I feel I can comment. While we (so far) cannot be held liable for for the actions our customers take with the bandwidth we sell them, our Terms of Service clearly say they cannot use it for illegal activity. Violation of our ToS is grounds for termination of service.
So basically: We don't *have* to provide you service... but we do like taking your money so long as you're not breaking the law.
Only 90 unique peices? In over a year? Must be the lowest per capita concentration of pirated movies and TV in the world. Unless 4 people live in the Perth area. Which I know isn't true.
Everyone else nailed it though. It's absolutely right not to hold the ISP responsible, IMO.
@pooflinger1As I work for an ISP, I feel I can comment. While we (so far) cannot be held liable for for the actions our customers take with the bandwidth we sell them, our Terms of Service clearly say they cannot use it for illegal activity. Violation of our ToS is grounds for termination of service.So basically: We don't *have* to provide you service... but we do like taking your money so long as you're not breaking the law.
And that gives me the question: what's the "legal right" / "legal wrong" ratio for customers? lol
My bet is that if ISPs actually start giving ToS's (terminations) when they had some way of knowing that accuratly, then they'd run out of business
Cheers! xD
Sue tesco because the kitchen knives it sells are used in numerous stabbings
A judge with common sense...
I'll be in my bunker.
Come get me after the world ends.
My ISP would be glad for the verdict.
in the last hour alone, I have downloaded 12.345 25gb bluray movies,
76.543 albums - 10.000 of them was the same shitty album from U2 - just to annoy them,
99.999 porn clips,
123.456 ebooks - all about Martha Stewart,
33.333 programs - here 30.000 of them was from Adobe,
1 file without name or filetype, but I found it interesting that is was the only one without copyright warnings,
I wonder what I might find in the next hour....
It's time to reform the whole copy right system.
ISP in canada have already included a hidden tax in GST for residential.
Why not add 1% more and make movies download legal and ISP pay movies companies from there.
I think it's the only think intelligent that can be done.
Drug traffickers use public roads to move their goods. The Government must be sued!Same concept.
Agree. the only people responsible for there actions is the ones that did it. Not the person providing the services.
A judge with common sense...I'll be in my bunker.Come get me after the world ends.
but if the world ends, whos gonin to get you.
ISPs, generally, want to keep customers as long as they don't use "too much" bandwidth. (Thus, if a user were to only download illegal files totaling 1 GB a month, the ISP would be happier with them than if they had downloaded 2 GB of legal content.)
This is why ISPs want to switch to/begin using tiered data "usage" plans instead of "connection speed" plans.
The problem, of course, is that most large scale illegal (non-business) downloaders & uploaders use the most bandwidth. (Stereotype: Jane's 8 hours of internet browsing takes much less bandwidth than John's 8 hours of bit-torrenting.) Thus, the ISP investigates, finds John is using the most bandwidth, realizes it is possibly illegal, then finds a way to ditch him since he is a "bad customer" when based upon their business model.
Jane's usage, even if all 8 hours of that is playing flash games, won't be anywhere close to John's usage.
Interesting that they sued an Australian ISP. I'm just wondering if this is actually setting a precedent or not, or whether this would have gone the same way in an American court. Another question is that since ISPs aren't technically liable, are they then going to be expected to monitor what is downloaded and report illegal use to the authorities? Being from Canada for the most part, from my understanding is that downloading itself is fine, but uploading copyrighted material is where you can get into trouble.
Well duh... Blaming an ISP for illegal activities is like suing the phone company for allowing people to plan robberies....
This is a judgment that fits the law instead of trying to make new law. I applaud this decision and can only hope that the rest of the world reacts as sanely.
Drug Dealers use automobiles to transport the drugs. So the DEA needs to go after the Automobile Manufacturers!
We should just close all the banks so there are no more bank robberies, right? I think the title says it all...
http://www.peermediatech.com/
http://baytsp.com/
If you are in the US I would be very careful about what you download, this is the future, those with the money can circumvent "evolve or die" and just enforce whatever they want on us.
This is great news... Could you imagine this in a different light... Imagine your local bank suing the City for providing the vessel (the road, the train, the city busses) for giving the robbers the ability to escape. What the Studios' (ie the banks in my example would want) is to have every one (every bit of data) checked and recheck along the road, train, bus) to make sure they aren't doing something wrong.
If they would have won this case and the ISP was responsible, I would have filed a suit against the city for providing vessel's for my wallet being stolen and for providing the robber access to streets to get away on...
If you think of it that way, you quickly see how crazy this case was in the first place
That's odd. I thought there were thousands of tv shows and movies out there. Were they offended that much of the media is terrible?
VINDICATION AWAITS! TO PERTH!
My ISP would be glad for the verdict.in the last hour alone, I have downloaded 12.345 25gb bluray movies,76.543 albums - 10.000 of them was the same shitty album from U2 - just to annoy them,99.999 porn clips,123.456 ebooks - all about Martha Stewart,33.333 programs - here 30.000 of them was from Adobe,1 file without name or filetype, but I found it interesting that is was the only one without copyright warnings,I wonder what I might find in the next hour....
That verdict won't stop the ISP from providing your download history to the MPAA and RIAA.
"...there was a lot of excitement from ISP's standing outside the courtroom."
Wow, there were whole ISPs standing outside of a courtroom? They must have rather large hallways.
As a customer of this ISP, I've been following this quite closely.
The situation was, roughly, AFACT employed a IT Consultant, that then became a customer of the ISP, for the sole purpose of using BitTorrent to share out Moves/TV shows on his PC (about 90 different ones).
He collected all the information on the people that downloaded from his torrents and reported it back to AFACT, who then used this information (minus the IT guys details) to show that people were downloading movies etc via the ISP's network, gave details of the IPs and demanded they be sent warnings or be disconnected.
They did this for almost a year, sending multiple reports to the ISP (who forwarded them to the local police) before springing the legal action claiming they weren't doing enough.
Basically, they set them up. Would this be entrapment in the U.S. ?
Here's the court findings.
www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2010/24.html
is Energex (the electricity company) responsible when I use their electricity to power my dooms day devices??
I suppose when someone is electrocuted by a heater falling into their bath, blame should be divvied up evenly between the electric and water company?
progress will be painfully slow until people start treating the internet like the utility it is.
Agree. the only people responsible for there actions is the ones that did it. Not the person providing the services.but if the world ends, whos gonin to get you. better have lots of food. jk
Haa
Only 90 unique peices? In over a year? Must be the lowest per capita concentration of pirated movies and TV in the world. Unless 4 people live in the Perth area. Which I know isn't true.Everyone else nailed it though. It's absolutely right not to hold the ISP responsible, IMO.
Those 90 films would be the ones the investigators were tracking. Obviously there are downloads of more than 90 films in reality.
Drug traffickers use public roads to move their goods. The Government must be sued!Same concept.
I see a lot of these types of analogies - but also consider:
In the United States, if a bartender (equivalent to the ISP) serves drinks (equivalent to packets from a know torrent site containing pirated material) endlessly to a person who gets drunk and then gets in an accident when driving (equivalent to using pirated material), then it is possible that both the business AND the individual can be sued.
So there are some cases where we say the provider of a service does have some liability. Another instance in the states would be the gun dealer who knowingly sells weapons without the required background check or filing the proper paper work.
As to piracy itself, I believe it occurs due to outdated business models. For example, regional licensing means the BBC can only provide certain shows for streaming to UK IPs. Does this mean signing up for a proxy service in another country means you are engaging in piracy - and does that change whether you are a foreign national or a UK citizen who is currently abroad?
There is also frustration and confusion with high-cost media, such as blu-ray or DVDs that now sell at a premium with a "digital copy". What do you own? Do you buy the physical disk, the right for you as an individual to watch the movie, or something else? If I buy a DVD, I can loan it to a friend - but if I buy a digital copy, it is tied to a specific machine and I can't even port it to another machine in another room of my own house!
Thus I think the discussion needs to shift its focus on who is liable for what (although that is still an important discussion) to what is a reasonable business model along with what is reasonable limits to intellectual property.
I see a lot of these types of analogies - but also consider:In the United States, if a bartender (equivalent to the ISP) serves drinks (equivalent to packets from a know torrent site containing pirated material) endlessly to a person who gets drunk and then gets in an accident when driving (equivalent to using pirated material), then it is possible that both the business AND the individual can be sued.So there are some cases where we say the provider of a service does have some liability. Another instance in the states would be the gun dealer who knowingly sells weapons without the required background check or filing the proper paper work.
The difference in both cases is the volume of "product" being moved between provider and customer, and the number of customers. Is it reasonable for a bartender to check the condition of each customer when there are thousands of customers concurrently waiting on their beer? Is it reasonable for a gun dealer to do a background check on thousands of their customers at the same time? No it's not, and that's what Hollywood wants done here.
Also, a better example of a similar business to an ISP is the post. They are a carriage service and don't have the resources to inspect every letter or parcel. If child pornography is acquired by post, is the post responsible for not checking first? Should they be forced by law to inspect every parcel and letter (breaching privacy laws unless those are also changed), thereby increasing the costs of providing their service by orders of magnitude?