Studios sue iiNet over video piracy

Studios sue iiNet over video piracy

www.zdnet.com.au

iiNet was today dragged into the federal court as major film studios filed a case against the ISP for allegedly letting its users download pirated movies and television series.

According to the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, speaking on behalf of Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc and the Seven Network, thousands cases of pirated movies and television shows have passed through iiNet tubes without iiNet doing anything about it

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Report: The End of the Internet Is Near


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[edit on 11/20/2008 by maria_stardust]

I am not defending PIRACY it's theft.

I would like to see child pornograghy sites shut down immediatly and site owners brought to task.

BUT: Will this mean that your internet service provider will start doing CONTENT FILTERING ?.

If so then who decides what we can do on the net ?, the Government ?, then I think we can see where thats headed,no free speach or anti-establishmentarianism comments.

What if the anti-piracy police did some work and went after the people that do the downloading and leave out the ISP which seems like picking on ISP's is the easy way out.

The interwebs seems like the final frontier and it's gonna mean nought if we get content only from TPTB.

www.zdnet.com.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

Mod Edit: Altered thread title to reflect actual article headline.
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[edit on 11/20/2008 by maria_stardust]

reply to post by ROO-meh


I think that's exactly what it means. Tptb will be deciding what can be put through the web. I think at a point we will see the same thing happen with movies that happened with the music industry. The entire idea behind it is to keep the rich getting richer and the poor to stay there.

It's no good going after the individual unless you wish to make a public statement, like in the past, downloaders have been fined unlimited sums, which has put off current and potential downloaders getting there files from illegal sources, although, if you want to put a stop to the problem you must take out the big fishes, the sites that supply the downloads in the first place.

Although, take out one big site, and 10 more seem to crop up, and the time it takes for an investigation and a permit for the websites closure it has already done its cause, and will probaly pop up over night again with a slightly different name. It seems these angry music/movie/software production companys, and quite rightfully so want there money somehow, and because the web is so large and uneasy to manage and track data flow these companies will foot the problem to the ISP.

[edit on 20-11-2008 by fill0000]

I disagree. Basically this means that the ISP was grossly negligent in trying to track down the offenders that the ISP was notified of from the movie studio's. Because they didn't track down, turn off, turn over, and educate the customer that was illegally downloading stuff, they are liable.

Thats the premise of the case anyway. This will get settled out of court with the ISP agreeing to implement policy changes to expediate any cases related to copyright infringement. Once they make the changes, the Studios will settle, and move on. They don't want to own ISP's and they don't want to shut them down. They just want to stop people from illegally downloading.

I used to work for an ISP. One of my responsibilites was tracking down people for our abuse department. I would catch the person, then hand the act info over to our abuse, which would then shut them off, and turn the info over to the studios.

As far as someone posting, that they will start implementing filtering? Got news for you, its already happening. Almost all large ISP's in the U.S. have filtering implemented. The filtering is port based on the routers. Alot of the cable ISP's have servers to monitor things as well. Here's a clue for you.

If you are on Time Warner, Go to Internet Explorer, and type in:

asjdfhkasjfhlkasjdg into the address bar. Then read what comes up. There not the only one that have servers that filter your net, All of the vendors do it to one form or another. True, it doesn't say that its filtered, but when there server is the go between me and the internet, the ability exists

What something else to read, look up "sandvine"

Bottom line, this ISP was negligent, otherwise they wouldn't be getting sued. I think it will get settled out of court.

Cheers,

Camain

"I am not defending PIRACY it's theft. "

Please attempt to explain to me, in a logical manner, how exactly it is theft and exactly what it is you are stealing?
Lost profits?
How can there be lost profits, when the people copying it just to watch it, don't posses the income or money to purchase it legally in the first place?
Ok so they don't physically have the money to pay for it.
Someone doesn't have the money to pay for a dvd player, so they go to the store and steal it.
The store "loses" 1 dvd player.
What does the movie company physically lose?
NOTHING.
If you go to your friends house, and watch a dvd, do you to have to buy a license to watch it?
If you go to a party, where they are playing music, and you listen to said music, do you have to buy all the albums and songs they play?
If you play an xbox game at your friends house, do you have to then ring up the game company and say "oh im sorry I played one of your games without paying for it" and give your credit card and be "charged"?
Think about what you are saying for a moment, please.
The anti piracy movement is simply about profiteering and extra profits.
Its not about protecting revenue and profits, that don't exist in the first place.

You want to stop this? Then stop buying there movies at the stores or online.
Do not support them in anyway.
This will get the governments attention. Nothing like going to the money source. It looks like the Movie company's are going through the back door.
This way the can get the government to pass laws that the will not now.
All of us in the free world have got to start some where on stopping issues like this. If we do not it will not be long till they will be coming in our homes searching to see if we have something that some company want money for.
And with company's going under at a fast rate they will use any means to get money .
All of us need to start paying attention to what is going on around us or all of us will have no right left and the Corp's will be stripping us of all the cash they can.

What people fail to understand is that Peer to Peer is Private.
It is not publiclly distributing or selling copyrighted works.
They tried to ban P2P in a court case and the Judge said NO it has legitimate uses.
If you go and look at the laws on this, you will see it relates to public not private use.
But the anti piracy movement on the premise of trying to make 9000% more profit from lying to people.
Would have people believe sharing a movie or song privately is illegal.
When legally it is no different than 5 people going over to the persons house and watching it.
Which isn't illegal.
They constantly use figures from commercial copyright criminals, in defense of everyday people watching a movie or listening to music in there house.
They want you to pay them, for every single living thing you do in your life.
They want total control of YOU.

You will see more and more cases such as these as the economy tightens down. Entertainment dollars will dry up as people start choosing between paying bills and buying food or going out for the night.

These types of lawsuits have always upset me as the plaintiff is looking at the court system to be nothing more than an co-extortionist or a very cheap collection agency. This will be settled out of court with the ISP supplying every name of suspected usage and some money.

They don't really dare stopping it. They only simulate...

This is a very strong attractor (of attention). If they take it away, people will start doing some real thing, arming themselves and organizing and the days of greedy capitalism are gone.

Keep downloading and don't worry.

As the thread OP thanks for input.

1/Piracy is theft no doubt, someone makes a production and others don't pay for their efforts.

2/Content filtering already excists pls elaberate

3/PsP is reallity but shouldn't hard effort get reward ?.

Hai I H8 TPTB as much/more than most but ... back on topic are we heading into Cable type Internet with limited sites/channels filtering TPTB selection.

Thats the worry cause I wanna type up jack diddle and see whats UP ^^^

Will ATS get ISP banned because it might not fit into GOV filter ?

peace ATS'rs I recently got retrenched and need positive Karma.

no sympathy ,goodwill welcome

Isn't this just like suing the city, because people drive too fast on their roads and the police only fines about 0.3% of them?

Cases like these should be thrown out of the courts in my ( pirate "Yarrr" ) opinion.

Have a nice day.

[edit on 20-11-2008 by Manawydan]

FFS! George Orwell was not a novelist, nor a visionary. He was a psychic! I don't know if he was or not but it seems like it these days.

Why the F do people let large corperations and allow laws and government regulation go unchecked which facilitate 1984 becoming a reality????

If I run someone over in my Toyota truck, who does the victom press charges on? Me or Toyota?

If someone shoots a kid with a Colt gun, who gets thrown in jail? The shooter or the Colt company?

We need to petition or government to pass a law which throws out court case law suits which would be considered "common sense". Come on. A lady wins a law suit over spilling her own dang HOT coffee in her lap? WTF is wrong with our judicial system. Thank you very much lady, now I have to pay more for my coffee. Movie companies suing ISP's because some customers are "pirates"? Now we will all be paying a buck or two more for ISP connection.

Australia should follow suit as this court case is in thier country. There are more citizens than there are government. Citizens OWN and RULE government. Cast your vote correctly, petition congress and Senate, become active, wake up politcally to what's going on around you.

Somewhat off topic
(sarcastically) Brilliant. I use ph and net from iinet and I have to find out they are getting sued in a conspiracy forum. I like them, they run a fast, friendly company and I'd hate them to get badly sideswiped from this (yes I like them a lot better than my previous providers by far) . I'm not going to pay out the nose for the only other 2 options for internet in rural Oz.

$110 per month for phone and 1 gig, yes 1 freaking gig of internet is the only other option I have. If iinet fold I'm going back to dial up it's heaps cheaper.

Back to you regulary scheduled topic

(pardon the spelling)

so a knee jerk reaction from sip`s will be to block ALL contene from the mentioned movie studios , legal or otherwise , then movie studios will then complain and the isp`s will stick 2 fingers at them.

Maybe it is a conspiracy between the movie studio and the ISP. They settle and the ISP agrees to turn over guilty parties. In return, the ISP gets a percentage of any damages won. That way both make money in the process.

Maybe if the movie companies would

*quit releasing sub par movies

*Stop charging $10 a ticket to see sub par movies

*Stop charging exorbitant amounts at the snack bar

*Stop blocking attempts to legally copy my overpriced DVD's

I would support them. But they don't . . . so shiver me timbers matey.

Ya the ISP's most of them already track you and here's a prime example.

My sister-in-law was downloading music on napster back in the day.

I told my brother 3 months before any news hist the TV or internet that there was a tracking underway and people were going to get singled out and sued for downloading music.

I then told my brother how they were doing it and if at all possible just don't download music for now. He laughed and said he was only into porn and games.

I then said "tell your wife, she may have a law degree but when it comes to computers, she's pretty stupid."

He told his wife the next day.

3 months later they went after Napster and after individuals allowing uploads.

They then started using Kazza just to be on the safe side plus it was much better. I again warned my brother and his wife and told them if they must here's how to avoid it. I knew my brother didn't mess with music but like I said his wife is pretty stupid.

A year later my brother gets a letter in the mail telling him that they may be prosecuted for piracy and intent to distribute copyrighted music.

My brother thought it was a mistake untill he talked to his wife. Did I mention she's stupid.

His wife then admitted to my sister she had been downloading music the whole time. I then asked to see the music as I wanted to know how much she had downloaded.

She had a suitcase filled with DVD's and CD's I counted 600 CD/DVD's every one was filled to max with MP3's I about fell over dead.

She then called and claimed ignorance and started citing off a bunch of laws and cases so they just told her don't do it again.

She also found out the ISP handed all the info of every song she had downloaded to them.

I still can't believe she's not in jail. How in the heck do you listen to that many songs? She's too stupid to know how to distribute so I know she just kept them all, but then again her father use to go in the theater with his camcorder mounted on his shoulder and recorded every movie they saw back in the 70's and 80's.

HAMSTER syndrome...

But what do you expect?

You give everyone broadband connection. Plus, you sell everyone an MP3/4 player, integrate them in other gadgets - you have created a speedway for downloading consumable stuff like music, games, movies...

And then you complain about piracy? Give me a break! By doing so, they will only criminalize people and do a real harm to themselves. I don't see any brains in what they are trying to do.

reply to post by Darthorious


Your about half right in your information.

This is how they catch you. Whenever you connect to p2p, you are connecting to the IP's of other people that have p2p. This being said. The Movie and music industry hirer tech companies to attempt to upload, or download from other parties. While downloading, they put a packet sniffer on there connection. This packet sniffer monitors all the traffic over there connection, not yours. This being said. Your IP is sending traffic over there connection to there computer to relay the data(ie song/movie) The IP is encapsulated with every piece of the data that you are sending. Once they finish the download/upload from you. They verify that it is infact a copyrighted material, and then go on to hand that IP over to the person that hired them.

*Side note, If you share your folder that they the song is in, that means they can now view EVERYTHING that is in that folder. You just gave them permission to look at every song you ever downloaded, that you kept in that folder.*

The people that hired them, then look up the IP address. The IP address itself is part of a block of IP's that are owned by a specific ISP. They then send a certified letter requesting that the ISP track down and hold data related to that IP.

The IP does a search of the network. In DSL and cable modems. you public IP goes back to your Nic Mac address. The Nic mac address goes back to your modem, your modem is tied to your acct. your acct has all your contact info.

Once the modem is located they then copy all DHCP logs showing that you were given the IP during that time frame, then the copy the ARP entries tieing the modem to the nic, and the nic to the IP.

If the ISP does there job correctly and in a timely manner, you are NAILED. there is no way to fight it. You as the act holder for the ISP are legally responsible for everything that happens on the connection.

In the case above, they didn't have all the songs she had ever downloaded they had 1 or 2 songs. That though is enough to justify a search warrant. If the did that they could scan your computer hard drive and do a bit by bit recovery of everything that has been on your hard drive that wasn't copied over. Once this is done, instead of 1-2 songs, you are now on the hook for 100 - 200 songs, all of which you can be fined up to 250,000 each. Walla they own you now.

Now before I go on, you may ask what incentive does the ISP's have to catch these people, obviously this costs money and man power. The answer, is Yes and yes. It does cost both of the above. With that said though, 90% of the bandwidth is consumed by 10% of the population. With the isp that I worked for, they spent ruffly 30% of the actual cost of the service on bandwidth. here is an example breakdown.

internet at $45 a month, they spend ruffly $13.5 to provide the bandwidth. No imagine this if that 10% that consumed 90% of the bandwidth were kicked off, they could do 2 things, 1 lower the cost per user, and 2 increase the number of users per bandwidth. Instead of having 100 users @ 45 a month, they could now have 10,000 users @ 40 or even 35. The profit margin is incrediable.

The ISP's have every reason to get the heavy users off there connection, thats why they do it. It saves them money by not having to increase bandwidth to get more users on the connection. It a partnership, the ISP's make the studios look like asses, the studios make people fear them to stop downloading illegally, these people inturn, go to tv to get there jollies, which inturn the studios get kick backs for everything played. They make money, the tv provider(which if you have cable is the same as the ISP) makes more money, they reduce the amount of bandwidth hogs, and increase profit margins. Mo money, mo money, mo money. Thats what it comes down too.

You want my advice, instead of P2P use newsgroups. They aren't tracked, they are private, and you have to have an act to login to download. no one has ever gotten sued from newsgroups, only p2p.

Cheers,

Camain