14 DAY TRIAL // The Federal Court of Australia dismissed the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft's (AFACT) appeal in a case in which it accused an ISP of authorizing copyright infringement by refusing to take measures against illegal file sharers.
The lawsuit was filed in November 2008 and the anti-piracy organization represented the interests of 34 film, TV and recording industry companies.
The landmark trial aimed to determine if Perth-based iiNet authorized acts of copyright infringement and if it was liable for the actions of its customers who downloaded copyrighted works.
In February 2010 Justice Cowdroy ruled in favor of the ISP noting that "iiNet is not responsible if an iiNet user uses that system to bring about copyright infringement... the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another."
AFACT appealed the decision, but its appeal was dismissed today by the Full Bench of the Federal Court of Australia who ruled that Copyright Owners are not entitled to relief.
It did however note that this is not an end of the matter and acknowledged that "the questions raised in the proceeding are ongoing."
"It does not necessarily follow from the failure of the present proceeding that circumstances could not exist whereby iiNet might in the future be held to have authorised primary acts of infringement on the part of users of the services provided to its customers under its customer service agreements," the ruling said.
The court agreed that iiNet couldn't have been expected to issue warnings to its customers, or terminate their service at AFACT's request, as long as it wasn't provided with the methodology used to determine that those users infringed the rights of others.
"It cannot be right that, in effect, the ISP, who has the power to prevent copyright infringement online and admitted they were taking place, does not share the responsibility to stop them," said AFACT executive director Neil Gane following today's decision.
"Our original contention was upheld that we don’t believe we ever authorised or did anything to encourage customers to breach copyright," said iiNet CEO Michale Malone, according to TorrentFreak. He added that the issue of ISP liability will have to be sorted out by the government.