Thursday, November 20, 2008

First shot fired. Big movie cartel goes after small Australian ISP; has the war against ISP's begun?

We have learned that the Australian counterpart of the MPAA has filed a lawsuit against a small Australian ISP, perhaps as a warm-up for a war -- by Big Music and Big Film -- against ISP's in general.

The larger Australian film studios have ganged up against iinet, an Australian ISP which holds 5% of the market.

The action was filed jointly by a group of supposed 'competitors' -- Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network (free to air tv channel).

http://www.afact.org.au/pressreleases/AFACT_Media_Release_201108_iiNet.pdf

It is rumored that they went after a small ISP and would not dare to take on the might of Telstra, Australia's largest ISP, www.bigpond.com, which would be better equipped for litigation, having a large litigation team.

The court documents are available here

iinet had this (pdf) to say about it, and has a forum in which to discuss the suit.

Commentary & discussion:

p2pnet.net





Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Obvious stratagy: Pick on a small guy and then use a victory over him to bludgeon the larger ISPs. All Australian ISPs should band together to fight this case now since, in the end, it will affect all of them and cost them each a whole lot more if they don't stop it now.

{The Common Man Speaking}