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ARTICLE · 08 FEBRUARY 2010

Hollywood v ISP – iiNet held not responsible for its customers’ copyright infringement

Norton Rose Fulbright Australia
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Federal Court dismisses claim by multi-national alliance of motion picture and recording industry companies that iiNet, Australia’s third largest internet service provider, had authorised copyright infringement by failing to stop its customers from using the otherwise legitimate BitTorrent file sharing software system to download copyrighted movies.

AustraliaIntellectual Property
Stephen Clune
Stephen Clune
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Today the Federal Court dismissed a claim by a multi-national alliance of motion picture and recording industry companies, represented by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), that iiNet, Australia's third largest internet service provider, had authorised copyright infringement by failing to stop its customers from using the otherwise legitimate BitTorrent file sharing software system to download copyrighted movies.

AFACT had collected evidence showing that iiNet's customers were using the BitTorrent system to download copyrighted movies. BitTorrent is free software that allows a user to easily share video and audio files with other internet users using peer-to-peer networking. AFACT wrote to iiNet to inform it of this copyright infringement and asked it to take steps to prevent its customers from downloading the movies. The measures sought by AFACT included requiring iiNet to cancel its infringing customers' subscriptions and to block certain

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