Stop the Internet Filter!

Discussion reaches tipping point.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy has indicated initial acceptance of key recommendations made by a review of the Australian classification system that is likely to have an impact on the Federal Government’s mandatory internet filtering proposal.

In the first major movement on the proposal since it was referred to the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2010, Senator Conroy said he was “very comfortable” with the commission’s recommendation to replace the ‘refused classification’ category with a more narrowly defined scope of ‘prohibited’ content on websites and other media.

It suggested in its final report, released in February, that internet service providers be obliged to block specific categories of content encompassed within the proposed ‘prohibited’ classification category with a key focus on content that “promotes, incites or instructs in matters of crime” to “serious crime”.

Internet service providers in the UK have been ordered by the British High Court to block file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, the UK’s main music industry association said Monday.

A High Court judge told Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media on Friday to prevent access to the Swedish site, which helps millions of people download copyrighted music, movies and computer games.

Music industry group BPI welcomed the order by justice Richard Arnold that the service providers block the site within the next few weeks.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said sites like The Pirate Bay “destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists.”

The service providers said they would comply with the order. A sixth provider, BT, has been given several weeks to consider its position, but BPI said it expected BT would also block the website.

Providers who refuse could find themselves in breach of a court order, which can carry a large fine or jail time.

An internal Government review has backed a decision by the Federal Attorney-General’s Department to censor almost all information about the secret Internet piracy meetings the department has held with the content and ISP industries over the past six months.

Over the past six months, the Federal Attorney-General’s Department has been hosting a series of closed door meetings between the content industries, represented by groups such as the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, and Internet service providers such as iiNet and Telstra. The meetings have also been attended by industry groups such as the Communications Alliance, although consumer groups have been explicitly barred from attending.

The phones must be running hot in attorney-general Nicola Roxon’s and communication minister Stephen Conroy’s offices this afternoon. Internet service provider iiNet just won its long-running legal battle against the massed forces of Hollywood, but there’s some gotchas buried in the High Court decision.

The #iiTrial, officially Roadshow films & Ord v iiNet Limited, kicked off in the Federal Court in 2009 when 34 Australian and US film and TV copyright-holders alleged that iiNet was “authorising” (in the technical legal sense) the copyright-infringing actions of its customers by failing to act on the complaints they’d filed. The case was informally called AFACT v iiNet after the industry lobby, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.

Unanimous decision: ISPs not liable for copyright infringement

Decision means net users won’t be disconnected from net for piracy without courts
Content owners pressuring government to change laws

A damaging blow has been dealt to the giants of the film industry in the High Court today after it decided to dismiss their copyright infringement appeal case against internet service provider (ISP) iiNet in a landmark ruling.

Eyes government-led changes.

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft has used its latest court loss and the impending NBN rollout as a springboard to lobby for legislative reforms on copyright.

AFACT managing director Neil Gane used today’s unanimous High Court of Australia judgment against the studios to seek law changes, citing the impending rollout of the National Broadband Network as a second reason to institute a crackdown.

He said the High Court decision exposed “the failure of copyright law to keep pace with the online environment” and urged the Government to provide legislative certainty around the copyright issue.

“We are confident the Government would not want copyright infringement to go on unabated across Australian networks especially with the rollout of the NBN,” he said.

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) today said its high-profile loss in its High Court case against ISP iiNet illustrated that Australia’s Government needed to step in and take action on the issue of Internet piracy in Australia.

This morning the High Court dismissed an appeal by AFACT and its cohort of several dozen film and TV studios, in the conclusion of a long-running case in which the content owners had alleged iiNet had authorised the infringement of copyright through not taking action against the pirating activities of its users through platforms such as BitTorrent. The case is viewed as setting a precedent for how Australian ISPs will deal with Internet piracy in future.

However, in a statement issued this afternoon, AFACT said the war was not over. “Today’s decision by the High Court exposes the failure of copyright law to keep pace with the online environment and the need for Government to act,” AFACT said in a statement this afternoon.