In a piece for Crikey today, I mention that Justice Cowdroy did call out AFACT for deliberately blurring those boundaries in, amongst other things, their very name. T for Theft.

Of course Justice Cowdroy was ruling on the law as it is, not as AFACT would like it to be, or iiNet or you or me or anyone else. He did note the apparent scale of infringement, implying that clearly this is a problem that needs sorting out — but that the law indicated that ISPs acting as copyright police on the basis of allegation is not on.

Calling the police (in this thought experiment context re a council venue) might be some kind of Intellectual Property ‘police’ of some kind. If memory serves the ACCC (?) has a jurisdiction on market stalls selling knockoff breach of trademark items and they do irregular raids on that. Not sure ACCC get into web 2.0 illegal downloads at all. Is this ACMA? And do they have capacity?

Assuming their is no civil law IP police to call (absent a criminal offence making it regular POlice say because it’s fraud on the copyright owner?) hence the civil law case result here, as the resident over the road, then it does become a political issue because neither police or council will deal with it.

My example is direct from local councillor experience where the local MP Peter Debnam MP saw the PR opportunity around hoon cars and gangs and promoted impounding legislation of the cars. And this was generally acknowledged as a real perhaps limited deterrent.

I wonder what folks who had their prize technology impounded and sold off would feel like. Or even blacklist from web subscription - at least in their own name - a bit like cancelling driving (web surfer) license?

I’ve met Mr Malone, and what a gentleman he is.
Hoorah!

Since Australia caved on a large part of the US IPR rules for freemarket rights (which basically, we got shafted on. I mean, the value of the leather seat cover business exporting to the USA is really not ‘it’ these days, and they seem to prefer not to have terminals capable of handling our gas, even if they could afford to buy it) the suspicion would be.. that we’d cave.

We caved on circumvention devices didn’t we?

And the word is that Obama filled Justice with Hollywood friendly lawyers as payback on the boost he got from the pretty faces, so you’d expect this to get a good foothold in DoC facing Australia if it requires a strongarm tactic to get up..

ie, “won the battle, lost the war” is always possible.

-G

Local council creates a public sports venue with no alcohol signage (think no illegal downloading). All kinds of activities are legal and acceptable. The rowdies get in late at night and booze up, chuck bottles around smash glass and make a bloody nuisance of themselves.

Soooo … is the local council (think ISP), fully aware of the rowdies abusing the public open space acting illegally for failing to prevent the illegal drinking, now also acting illegally for the open gate at the sports ground? Doesn’t ring true to me. Sure as a matter of politics they might be pressured into locking the gates at night, or hiring security guards or getting change in legislation to impound their cars. But the illegality surely is the direct perpetrator. It’s a political not legal issue for the venue operator, and government, with potential of legislation intervening depending how strong the complaints get over the abuse.

……………………………

Can we assume as a matter of industry sector lobbying future domestic or international treaty laws on ISPs in the future to tackle illegal downloading expanding the legal duty?