CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Australia’ Category

Post from: TorrentFreak

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Movie Studios Sue ISP Over BitTorrent Piracy: “

Seven Hollywood studios including Paramount, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros and Disney have teamed up to sue iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP. iiNet is accused of doing little to stop its subscribers from sharing copyright works via BitTorrent. The ISP denies the accusations.

iiNet, one of Australia’s largest ISPs with over 1,400 staff, was the first company in the country to offer DSL speeds over 1.5 Mbit/s to the regular consumer market, and now offers speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s. These relatively healthy speeds have proven attractive to iiNet’s customers and in common with subscribers at other ISPs, many have been utilizing their bandwidth by sharing copyright works via BitTorrent. Seven Hollywood studios are so incensed they are now sueing iiNet.

Today, through an AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) press release, studios including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network (the top rated free-to-air broadcaster in Australia), announced that they are to sue iiNet for copyright infringement.

The companies state that they are suing iiNet for ‘failing to take reasonable steps, including enforcing its own terms and conditions, to prevent known unauthorized use of copies of the companies’ films and TV programs by iiNet’s customers via its network.’

Adrianne Pecotic, Executive Director of AFACT said that the studios were forced to sue, since iiNet failed to take action against its customers who the studios claim are committing copyright infringement. Chris Chard, Managing Director of Roadshow Entertainment, claims their titles Happy Feet, No Reservation and I am Legend had all been pirated by iiNet customers using BitTorrent.

The studios want iiNet to disconnect infringers, but up to now, iiNet has refused to do so. Mark White, chief operating officer at iiNet told APC that his company would consult with the Internet Industry Association (IIA) to formulate a response.

‘Our view is pretty straightforward. We don’t condone or support piracy in any form, and people who choose to pirate content should face the force of the law,’ he said. ‘This is an industry issue, and we’ve been talking with the IIA, and we’ll work with them in terms of handling it.’

iiNet’s CEO Michael Malone said that the company disputes AFACT’s claims that they refused to do anything about the problem, telling Computerworld, ‘They send us a list of IP addresses and say ‘this IP address was involved in a breach on this date’. We look at that say ‘well what do you want us to do with this? We can’t release the person’s details to you on the basis of an allegation and we can’t go and kick the customer off on the basis of an allegation from someone else’. So we say ‘you are alleging the person has broken the law; we’re passing it to the police. Let them deal with it’.’

Of course, it is not unusual for movie studios, copyright holders and commentators to skim over the details in claiming that it’s trivial to kill copyright infringement, it absolutely is not. Just this week, Mike Mulligan of Jupiter Research said in a piece entitled ‘Why Music Can’t ‘Just Be Free’’, that all P2P developers (and presumably ISPs in this case) have to do is ‘support their claims off innocence by embedding filtering mechanisms into their apps.’ TorrentFreak wrote to Mike offering to present precise details of his suggestions to Vuze, LimeWire, Shareaza and Morpheus but, unsurprisingly, there has been no response.

The problem is clearly not lost on Michael Malone: ‘I think they genuinely believe that ISPs have a secret magic wand that we are hiding and if we bring it out we can make piracy disappear just by waving it.’

The legal action against iiNet was filed in Australia’s Federal Court on November 20th (today), and the proceedings will continue December 20th 2008.

Australia ISPs Call Net Filtering Plan ‘Ridiculous’ - Largest ISP participates in trials just to prove it… - dslreports.com

02:17PM Friday Nov 14 2008 by Karl Bode

Over the last few years, Australian lawmakers have been enamored with the idea of Internet filters, spending almost a hundred million on filtering technology that a teenager was able to circumnavigate in just a few minutes. When Internet filters were voluntary and made available for download, the numbers showed that nobody used them. Undeterred, the Australian government is going forward with mandatory filters nobody can opt-out of. Michael Malone, boss of Australia’s largest ISP iiNet, says the carrier will be signing up for trials of Australia’s new mandatory Internet filtering system, though even Malone thinks it’s a bad idea:
Malone’s main purpose was to provide the Government with ‘hard numbers’ demonstrating ‘how stupid it is’ - specifically that the filtering system would not work, would be patently simple to bypass, would not filter peer-to-peer traffic and would significantly degrade network speeds. ‘They’re not listening to the experts, they’re not listening to the industry, they’re not listening to consumers, so perhaps some hard numbers will actually help,’ he said. ‘Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we’ll be publicising it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we’ll be publicising it.’
Malone goes on to opine that Australia’s Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, ‘is the worst Communications Minister we’ve had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed.’

So far similar efforts here in the States have either been simply too stupid to work or ruled unconstitutional. But as we mentioned last month, with child porn used as a rallying cry, there’s a growing push in the States to use Deep Packet Inspection to monitor each and every packet you send and receive for legality.

NEWS.com.au: Rudd Government’s internet filter to block up to 10,000 ‘unwanted’ sites

By Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson, November 13, 2008 10:44am

AUSTRALIA’S mandatory internet filter is being primed to block 10,000 websites as part of a blacklist of unspecified “unwanted content”, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy revealed in Federal Parliament.

The 10,000 blocked websites would include 1300 websites already blacklisted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Senator Conroy revealed details of the Rudd Government’s proposed web filter as he called for expressions of interest from internet service providers for a live trial of the technology.

As part of the trial, ISPs will test different methods of filtering the web with subscribers who volunteer. The trial is expected to last six weeks and will start before Christmas.

“The pilot will specifically test filtering against the ACMA blacklist of prohibited content, which is mostly child pornography, as well as filtering of other unwanted content,” Senator Conroy told Parliament.

(more…)

ISP boss pledges to undermine Great Aussie Firewall: “

Stupid plan is stupid

The Australian technology industry is starting to fight back against the government plan to force all ISPs to filter everyone’s internet access.…

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(Via The Register - Public Sector.)

Is the internet going down down under?: “

It’s the end of the net as we know it

The battle is now on for the soul of the Australian internet. The outcome could have enormous repercussions for the future of the internet in the UK.…

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(Via The Register - Public Sector.)

Why your boss should never be your Facebook friend: “How one Sydney worker’s claim of illness was undone by his Facebook update”

(Via Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.)

Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics - BizTech

Asher Moses, October 24, 2008

The Federal Government in Australia is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the internet, which experts say will break the internet while doing little to stop people from accessing illegal material such as child pornography.

Internet providers and the government’s own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent.

(more…)

Holocaust denial accused intended no offence, extradition hearing told: “Australian historian challenges validity of German-issued arrest warrant after being held at Heathrow”

(Via Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.)

Oz watchdogs howl over ‘Cyber-Safety’ net filter: “

Can you opt-out?

Aussie civil liberties watchdogs are warning the country’s ‘Cyber-Safety’ internet filter plan won’t actually let adults choose to opt-out from web censorship.…

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(Via The Register - Public Sector.)

AU - No opt-out of filtered Internet: “(Computerworld)
Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist. Under the government’s $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material. Pundits say consumers have been lulled into believing the opt-out proviso would remove content filtering altogether. The government will iron-out policy and implementation of the Internet content filtering software following an upcoming trial of the technology, according to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.”

(Via QuickLinks Update.)