Hollywood v ISP – iiNet not liable for authorising copyright infringement by its customers

This morning, the High Court handed down the much awaited decision in the appeal between Roadshow Films Pty Ltd & Ors and iiNet Limited.

In essence, Roadshow together with a number of film and television companies which own copyright in film and television programs (Appellants) alleged that iiNet, an internet service provider (Respondent), authorised infringement of the Appellants' copyright by failing to prevent its customers from sharing the copyright works on the Internet using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing system. The Appellants argued that the Respondent had the power to prevent its customers from infringing the Appellants' copyright by issuing warnings and suspending or terminating customer accounts once the Respondent received notices from the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) alerting it to the infringement.