Suggestions by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) that ISPs terminate users after a single copyright infringement warning would be unsustainable, iiNet’s legal team has told a Federal Court this week.
The Internet service provider’s legal representative, Richard Cobden, told a panel of three judges at the court that AFACT’s insistence on terminating users would become a burden on iiNet’s customer service resources and could jeopardise the legitimate Internet use of both those who allegedly infringe copyright as well as other users of the connection.
Cobden argued that RC-08, an alleged prolific pirate and core of AFACT’s initial case against iiNet, is believed to have used an insignificant amount of his monthly data quota on infringing copyright. He said it was unreasonable for iiNet to terminate his Internet connection, which may been used for legitimate things.
While AFACT had insisted iiNet terminate infringing users, Cobden told the court that the copyright group had not provided any specific guidance on how to go about it, or how to deal with repeat offenders.
He also said AFACT’s suggestions would strain the ISP’s customer service resources.
“In addition to having to setup a system to deal with responses from the public... what that does then is throw a burden onto iiNet as an organisation at the customer relations level on having to deal with a someone else’s businesses - that is the copyright holders - on matters that isn‘t the realm of iiNet,” he said.
Cobden’s refutation is the latest salvo in a battle between iiNet and AFACT that one of the judges hearing the appeal case, Justice Emmett, contended was largely a commercial issue that wouldn’t provide a strong precedence in future cases.
In questioning Cobden on the foundations of the case, Justice Emmett said the argument between AFACT and iiNet largely revolved around who would bear the brunt of tackling copyright infringement, and that a commercial decision between relevant parties would provide a better outcome than a legislative one.
During the appeal case, Cobden reiterated communication between various Internet service providers, AFACT and the Internet Industry Association (IIA) regarding the possibility of instituting a code of conduct around dealing with copyright infringement during 2007 and 2008. It is believed those discussions were progressing positively, before AFACT issued a notice to iiNet.
As the appeal case entered its third day, iiNet questioned the reliability of copyright infringement information collected by AFACT, and that following DtechNet’s lead in collating such information would potentially cause the service provider to infringe copyright itself.
13 Comments
Michael
1
I truly thank IINET for sticking up for the little guy. ie namely the users. Ask any ISP what there users spend 50GB's a month on and you all know what the answer will entail.
The issue is about how AFACT and its associated cohorts are losing money due to copyright and have found they cannot go after users so the next on the food chain is the ISP.
My suggestion would be to embrace technology like P2P and find different ways to commercialize new products. The world is changing so they need to as well.
Jason
2
Michael - iiNet isn't 'sticking up for the little guy'. They're trying to defend themselves against allegations which should instead be levelled at 'the little guy'.
Don't mistake the two.
Peter
3
Michael, if you look at the actual figures you will see that they arent loosing all that much in reality. Alot of their own published statistics are quite extravagant and really just to serve their own ideology of what looks to support their case the best. Infact each year they earn more than the last. They would have you believe they are going broke which is just an outragious lie. Business has never been better but the number monkeys think they could have even more by doing what they are doing. Ethics and morals don't come in to it. Its all about the bottom line. When you actually think about the amount of work alot of the people do in the film/music industry to what they get paid you'll see that the hard workers get nothing while the bosses sit around complaining that they should get more for sitting around complaining. Is there much difference between a record company and a pimp or a dealer?
Jeff
4
Lets say an ISP terminates an account for breach of copyright. What is to stop that person from using another ISP or a different person from the same household signing up to the ISP that terminated the account?
Sam
5
Hell, if it ever went through, it would be a neat and easy way of getting out of a contract with a crappy ISP.
Mark
6
I agree with you @Peter.
AFACT members speculate their losses based on an assumption that every time something is illegally downloaded it equals a lost sale worth the retail cost of that item. So its easy to fabricate enormous financial loss figures which wouldn't exist in reality. I'd guess most downloaders would never otherwise buy or rent the material they access.
It'd be different if this case was about the physical copies illegally sold for payment as in Asian flea markets. Most illegal downloading through an ISP would be just free sharing and nobody is directly making any money in place of the authorised distributors.
AFACT would be better finding a model to capitalise on that community sharing spirit such as using the circulating material to incorporate cinema trailers and paid advertising.
Bourkie
7
@Sam 'Hell, if it ever went through, it would be a neat and easy way of getting out of a contract with a crappy ISP.
'
No it wouldn't - if you break your contract (i.e. you violate copyright or otherwise break the law) then you have to pay out your contract - it's printed very clearly in the fine print!
James
8
The negotiations between AFACT and IIA weren't going well - see Steve Dalby's letter to Commsday for that.
gnome
9
@Bourkie: "if you violate copyright. . . you have to pay out your contract".
If the ISP has arbitrarily terminated your contract, why the hell would you then want to pay them anything further?
Jeff
10
I still cannot see how piracy will be prevented if an offender is booted from one ISP and permitted to sign up with others. Are AFACT suggesting an offender should be banished from the internet forever?
Jason
11
What's scary is that you can see how this would be used to silence critics in the same way that the proposed internet filter does.
They simply accuse you of pirating things and then cut your internet off.
Then if they have the filter they can also ban people from accessing any website/blog that you have.
Hey presto, person is silenced.
richconnor
12
Had not heard about this case. Now it makes sense that they would not do porn filtering without legislation. Lawyers, making a mess of everyones lives.
Jahm Mitt
13
The RIAA and MPAA even scam thir own.
AFACT - they are so crooked even their bogus PR campaign is a lie.
http://torrentfreak.com/tech-news-sites-tout-misleading-bittorrent-piracy-study-100724/ [torrentfreak.com]
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml [techdirt.com]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-disney-20100708,0,4051564.story [latimes.com]
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