iiNet slams AFACT appeal
- — 19 March, 2010 15:38
"Neither the original case nor the Hollywood studios' appeal will stop piracy, even if they were to win the appeal," said Michael Malone, founder and managing director of iiNet.
iiNet has sent a request to the Federal Court to put a stop to film studios' appeal against last month's decision to clear the Australian Internet service provider (ISP) of copyright breaches. The ISP filed a 'Notice of Contention' in the Federal Court, seeking to not only reaffirm Justice Cowdroy’s decision, but to overturn some points in the case that did not go in its favour.
The executive director of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), Neil Gane, had previously stated that there were good grounds to appeal the decision.
"The court found large scale copyright infringements, that iiNet knew they were occurring, that iiNet had the contractual and technical capacity to stop them and iiNet did nothing about them," he said last month. "In line with previous case law, this would have amounted to authorisation of copyright infringement."
But iiNet CEO Michael Malone has said that he was confident the court would uphold the February ruling regardless of AFACT’s claims.
"We go into this latest legal round anticipating we will come out in an even stronger position than when we won last month," he said. "Justice Cowdroy’s judgment was unequivocal and we are confident the Full Court will confirm his ruling and strengthen it."
In a bid to also strengthen their current position, the Notice of Contention also contains two other requests. Firstly that iiNet should not be seen to have authorised any infringement of copyright by customers who used BitTorrent. Secondly, that under no circumstances should iiNet have to disclose customer information to bodies like AFACT.
"Neither the original case nor the Hollywood studios' appeal will stop piracy, even if they were to win the appeal," Malone said. "More legal proceedings are not the solution, but we have filed our Notice of Contention to secure and strengthen the original judgment."
