Copyright Infringement Issues

As you may have heard, AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) is currently suing iiNet for supposed infringements of its customers. The case is still to go through the courts, however the implications on ISP's like Dreamtilt could be huge.

AFACT is stating that iiNet had a responsibility to follow up on allegations that they sent to the ISP of particular customers that were infringing on copyright (by using the ISP's connection to download movies / music via peer-to-peer software) and that the customers should have been disconnected.

What is worrying is that the allegations by AFACT have not been followed up in court. They have demanded that persons be disconnected and it is the ISP's responsibility.

Now whilst I am not advocating peer-to-peer transfer of copyright material, I do not believe that all peer-to-peer traffic is illegal. In fact peer-to-peer can be an effective way of transferring files to the public.

The argument that the ISP is responsible for the disconnection of customers without first proving they did anything wrong is a concern. Firstly there is the issue of disruption of revenue to the ISP - is AFACT going to assist the ISP in lost revenue? Unlikely.

The second issue is that the way they track it is with an IP address. So whilst the ISP do log the IP address of a user when they connect, how can AFACT prove it was not just someone coming over to use your wireless connection, someone else using your logon, or worse - another person using an unsecured wireless network to do their downloading leaving the unsuspecting user in the hot seat?

What also is a concern is that if the iiNet loses its case, more pressure will be on ISP's to then monitor its users traffic and block P2P traffic. The problem with this is, like I have previously stated, not all P2P traffic is bad. It also increases the cost of equipment and resources needed by the ISP to 'police' all this 'supposed' illegal activity.

And this means higher costs to the end users. Now this should really worry AFACT. After all, if the people out there have less money to spend - who is going to actually purchase movie tickets, dvd's, and cd's anyway?