Hollywood studios lose Australian download appeal

So they let (or just observed) their customers illegally exchange copyrighted material? For over 59 weeks? And not responsible? Wow.

I though this was China.

^ they didn't let OR observe. An ISP doesn't have the power to do either. They can block certain sites but would never do that until the government wants a certain site blocked. Which again would be hard to do without uproar from the people. Which is why taking ISP's to court is silly in the first place. If the entertainment industry wants change to happen they need to tackle it in the political realm.. which they are desperately trying to do. Remember SOPA? It failed cause people don't want their internet censored. Its an uphill 'losing' battle for hollywood and the likes.

Because the provider is not responsible, they should take the pirates to court, this is like taking the government to court because thieves used their public roads.

ps. as ISP have stated.. the best way for hollywood to win is to make more online content available through legal mediums. There will always be people that download it illegally though. They will never be able to stamp it out completely. So they may as well try and take their share of the cake.

The question is, should an internet provider be liable for monitoring all content and uploads/downloads, finding and judging what is an illegal use, and have the power to unilaterally terminate service after somebody complains, even without going through court to prove a crime was committed?

The answer is no. Who would ever want to be an ISP if that was the job and liability? What would customer fees need to be to support such huge policing/monitoring staff? Who monitors and checks THEM? What ISP, or any entity outside of the courts, can properly judge what is legal or illegal use? And we have zero expectation of privacy since ISPs are required to monitor all communications for "illegal content"? Sounds worse than what the TSA folks do. You can be sure it would not stop with movie piracy. Next would be protecting the children, and then decency, and then ?? And why should customers be terminated without due process, based on mere allegations from "content owners"?

Imagine what the internet would be like 5 years after this kind of law or ruling went into effect.

The internet is a much to big and important to be distorted and crushed by inadvisable, anti-due-process censorship aimed at teens pirating movies and implemented by none other than the inept folks at your local ISP--yeah, the cable company or Big Telco people who never answer the phone and are unaccountable for network outages, shoddy service or customer/billing problems. Let them be in charge of the network operation, but keep them out of content monitoring and censorship and don't give them police and judicial power.

I love news like this. :)

Nice!! Good on the Australian Federal Court, and let's hope this is the start of a stand against these money-grubbing middle-men.

Just make everything easily available, affordable and simple to use. Once that is in place, fine anyone caught stealing very high penalites. The majority of people will use the legal service. And profits will roll in.

The ISP's need to rethink their strategy. If an ISP is repeatedly notified that their IP address www.xxx.yyy.zzz has been sharing copyrighted material and the ISP does nothing about it, then they become an accomplice to intellectual property theft. If a particular ISP becomes a known haven for crooks, then their ENTIRE block of IP addresses can be blacklisted from being routed by the main trunks of the internet. It hasen't happened yet to the best of my knowledge, but it's fairly easy to make a range of IP addresses non-routable at the points of entry into a country.

(continuing the thought) Why should an ISP care if some country decides to blacklist their IP blocks? If all the customers of a particular ISP suddenly find they can't access anything in - say - the United States, how long do you think it would take them to switch to an ISP whose addresses are NOT blocked? An ISP is a business and when their own inactions affect their bottom line, they will need to change their stance or suffer financially.

As I recall many years ago the Walt Disney Co took the VCR industry to court because a VCR allowed for copyright infringement, WDC lost the case and what did they do, they turned around and embraced the VCR by selling any and all of their classic movies on tape (now DVD). So why are they repeating the past? They should take their previous lesson and embrace the Internet and stop spending what little profits they have on lawyers and instead rake in more profits from legal downloads.

Patenting and Copyrighting often reward the first to make a legal claim, rather than the true inventor/innovator - much like empires colonising the world during the age of exploration (see Eddie Izzard's "Do you have a flag?" routine if you don't see the parallels)

How many novels can be said to be truly original? How many songs? What if I copyrighted C#, or B♭? This is the problem with copyright, in particular how it is used to curb innovation, rather than inspire it - copyright rewards those who are either first or have the better lawyers.

A corporation having eternal rights over a mouse caricature until the end of time? Why, because they were the first to draw animated mice?

On topic, in a free society, why should a service provider regulate potential negative use of their products and/or services? It is antithetical to the entire idea of a free society. I applaud, and agree wholly with bagmigrane's post

@Fadamor

If an ISP is repeatedly notified that their IP address www.xxx.yyy.zzz has been sharing copyrighted material and the ISP does nothing about it, then they become an accomplice to intellectual property theft. If a particular ISP becomes a known haven for crooks...

This really depends on your definition of "intellectual property theft" "copyrighted material" and whether violating the first makes one a "crook" I personally would not place unlicensed use of media alongside crimes such as "robbery" or "theft" or even "fraud", based upon the impact that the latter crimes (and I mean crimes) compared to the fragrancies of the former - something akin to jaywalking Many innovators of today are "crooks" if I am inferring your definition correctly.

Many people hate the idea of trying to control the internet just for the benefit of the (mainly U.S.) movie and music industry. These industries are now using modern technology to make huge record profits on a scale they couldn't have dreamt of 20 years ago. Individuals concerned in these industries have become some of the richest people on earth. But they still want more. They estimate that piracy is costing them "billions", but conveniently overlook the fact that a huge majority who make "illegal" downloads wouldnt buy the material anyway if they couldn't get it for free. The bottom line is that it is up to these industries to find a solution to their own problem without impinging on other peoples' freedoms. Once the internet has started to be controlled and censored by private interests, it wont be long before the whole system becomes restricted in many other ways.

A good result here. For too long the large media corporations have had their way, buying legislation to extend copyright to absurdly long periods, running what amounts to extortion rackets by threatening to sue those they accuse of downloading their wares into bankruptcy unless they pay up a few thousand dollars etc.

It's no business of the ISP what I do with my internet connection and I'm not about to pay them money so that they can snoop on me. The media companies cannot win with legal threats and intimidation. They need to compete on price and have a single, global price, instead of this nonsense where an iTunes track costs Y250 in Japan and 99c in the US. You want me to pay three times more because I live in Japan? I'll download it for free and you'll get nothing.

A good result here. For too long the large media corporations have had their way, buying legislation to extend copyright to absurdly long periods, running what amounts to extortion rackets by threatening to sue those they accuse of downloading their wares into bankruptcy unless they pay up a few thousand dollars etc.

Media is commonly used by the governments to spread propaganda. ISP are only that! A provider of a service and not a creator and distributor of said content.

Who said only the CHINESE loved to download and copy everything??? Look at these Aussies! Geez, the nice image I had of that land down under, ruined for every and ever, let me go get me self a nice cold Foster's!! God I hate this rich greedy bastards in HOLLYWOOD, good on our Australian mates!!