News

AFACT appeal dismissed

A Federal Court has dismissed the appeal lodged by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft against internet service provider iiNet.

The CEO of iiNet Michael Malone urged the Australian film industry to address “the growing demand for studio content to be delivered in a timely and cost effective manner to consumers and we remain eager to work with them to make this material available legitimately”, while AFACT said that the decision “was not an emphatic win for iiNet”.

In February 2010, Federal Court Justice Dennis Cowdroy ruled in favour of iiNet in the copyright infringement legal action launched by AFACT in 2008, saying iiNet was not liable for its customers’ downloading habits. AFACT lodged an appeal 21 days later.

Malone said the judgment “again demonstrates” that the allegations against iiNet have been proven to be unfounded, and that there is growing evidence that partnerships between ISPs, legal websites and copyright holders is helping reduce piracy and showcase the copyrighted content.

“While fighting iiNet in the courts, many of these movie studios have signed content deals with us through our television service, Fetchtv. The success of Fetchtv was a clear and successful demonstration of the benefits of these partnerships and Australians’ strong desire to access affordable legitimate content,” said Malone.

But a statement from AFACT said that the effect of this judgement is that an ISP can no longer claim that they have no responsibility for the known repeat infringement of their customers’ accounts.
“The court provides guidance for future cases against ISPs who fail to prevent known copyright theft on their network. The Court found that iiNet would not have had the protection of the safe harbour provisions
because they had no repeat infringer policy. We take heart from this decision and we will now take the time to consider our options. We note that the court will now revisit costs for the primary case and will also hear costs on the appeal given that AFACT’s members were successful on many grounds,” said the organisation.

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