Dear Wikimedia Australia list, Many of you may know this already, but some may not...
Today the judgement was handed down by Justice Cowdroy in the AFACT v iiNet case. This is an extremely important case in Australian Internet law and will potentially be used as a precedent internationally. Essentially, the decision found that iiNet (an ISP) did not endorse the actions of its customers infringing copyright for three reasons: "First, the copyright infringement occurred directly as a result of the BitTorrent system, not the use of the internet, and iiNet did not create or control the BitTorrent system. Second, iiNet did not have a relevant power to prevent those infringements occurring. Third, iiNet did not sanction, approve or countenance copyright infringement." (summary from Peter Black<http://freedomtodiffer.com/iinet-wins-at-first-instance-judgment-now-ava> ). The money quote from the judgement is: "It is impossible to conclude that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement ... (it) did not have a relevant power to prevent those infringements occurring," AFACT is a consortium of Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount , Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Disney, the Seven Network and others and stands for the "Australian Federation against Copyright Theft". The full judgement has now been published at AustLII: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2010/24.html [note, my employer]. Here's a few relevant news stories: ABC - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/04/2809856.htm?section=entertainment Fairfax - http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/iinet-slays-hollywood-in-landmark-piracy-case-20100204-ndwr.html Computerworld - http://www.computerworld.com.au/tag/AFACT%20v%20iiNet And here's the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFACT_v_iiNet Happy interwebs, -Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata
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