Dallas Buyers Club slays iiNet in landmark piracy case

[silicon_toad2000]

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/dallas-buyers-club-slays-iinet-in-landmark-piracy-case-20150407-1mey38.html

A Federal Court judge has ordered several Australian internet service providers, including iiNet, to hand over to a film studio the identities of thousands of account holders whose internet connections were allegedly used to share without authorisation the Dallas Buyers Club movie.

But in a win for iiNet and the other Australian ISPs, Justice Perram ordered that any letters sent to alleged illicit pirates must first be seen by him. He said this would "prevent speculative invoicing", which under Australian may not be lawful.

...To uncover the alleged pirates, Dallas Buyers Club LLC, through Voltage Pictures, tasked German-based pirate-hunting firm Maverick Eye UG to identify those who were sharing the movie online.

Maverick Eye joined torrent "swarms" that were sharing Dallas Buyers Club and then tasked its software to log the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of those who distributed the movie without authorisation and in breach of copyright laws. A total of 4726 IP addresses were identified.

Dallas Buyers Club LLC then contacted iiNet and other ISPs, asking them to divulge customer details associated with those IP addresses without a court order — but the ISPs refused.

It then sought to have the ISPs disclose customer details in the Federal Court through the preliminary discovery application process, which is often used by parties to a case where the identity of the person or company they want to take legal action against is unknown but can be discoverable through a third-party.

But iiNet sought to challenge the request on grounds it would lead to speculative invoicing, whereby alleged infringers are sent letters of demand seeking significant sums for infringement. These letters often threaten court action and point to high monetary penalties if sums are not paid.

"We are concerned that our customers will be unfairly targeted to settle any claims out of court using [this] practice," iiNet said in a blog post about the legal action last year.

The ISP also argued that customers could be incorrectly identified as alleged infringers if details of the account holder were revealed. For example, the relevant IP address could have originated from a person in a shared household where someone other than the account holder infringed copyright, it said.

[GhostShip]

In nearly all cases the account holder cannot be 100% confirmed as the person using the internet service to torrent with, iinet are correct in stating that any release of customer data will lead to speculative invoicing or harassment  aimed at pressurising the account holder to act as an unpaid investigator, this will involve litigation after all so any requests aimed at the account holder for information must be replied to with a scale of charges so the account holders time is paid for., this is standard legal practice.

At this time enquiries should also be made to iinet to ascertain how long they store such data for and also some statistical data obtained from them regarding just how accurate is the equipment used to generate the data as in some other countries is has been shown that this type of customer billing data can be incorrect and thus this too is an important avenue to investigate to prevent a potential miscarriage of justice.

[GhostShip]

This US Judge seems a bit more savvy and saw through some patently false claims made by a film making company.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2015/04/10/judge-says-ip-addresses-cannot-used-identify-copyright-infringers