How iiNet beat Big Content

More tasty bits from the judgement

Other interesting bits from the judgement include an observation, at section 116, that by suggesting iiNet had a duty of care to act on its evidence, AFACT was asking for an awful lot.

“... the width of the terms in which the proposed duty is cast would present iiNet and other ISPs with an uncertain legal standard for the conduct of their operations,” the judgement says. “Further, as counsel for Alliance submitted, this would achieve for copyright owners, but at the expense of the ISP, the suspension or disconnection by their ISP of subscribers from the internet, a remedy which would not be available to the copyright owners were they themselves to sue the subscriber

The court also found, at section 64, that “iiNet had no direct technical power at its disposal to prevent a customer from using the BitTorrent system to download the appellants' films.” One reason the court felt iiNet could not prevent torrenting was that while each iiNet customer has one dynamically-assigned IP address, it is impossible to identify which of possible multiple users was conducting illegal downloads. ®