Internode's Simon Hackett ultimately wants to see around 50% of Internode customers using naked DSL
Western Australian law firm iLaw director Anton Shuli, said ISPs should not be forced to monitor network traffic for copyright material. He said the onus is on enforcers of copyright, such as AFACT, to police infringements of intellectual property.
AFACT executive director Adrianne Pecotic said in a written statement iiNet has a legal obligation to stop copyright infringement on its network.
“iiNet has an obligation under the law to take steps to prevent further known copyright infringement via its network,” Pecotic said.
“iiNet refused to address this illegal behaviour and did nothing to prevent the continuation of the infringements by the same customers.”
The group claimed the federal court case may take up to a year to resolve.
Copyright enforcement has gained massive publicity following high profile lawsuits against file sharing organisations and Web sites, spearheaded by the likes of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Peter Sunde, co-founder of torrent hosting site The Pirate Bay, told Computerworld US creative commons licensing is more appropriate for the Internet than traditional copyright laws.
“I do see things that can work in a copyright, but for commercial aspects. It's very important to not infringe on personal life due to copyright. Creative Commons and other licenses are a better way than today's copyright laws, however, I do feel that Creative Commons is not reaching far enough,” Sunde said.
“The media industry is fighting, lobbying and bribing their way through the system, which is a really bad thing, both for us and them. In the end, it will show that they are only in this for money and nothing else.”
Co-founder of once notorious pirate release group DrinkOrDie, Hew Griffiths, was the first Australian to be extradited under US copyright law. Griffiths, aka 'Bandido', was charged with copyright infringement in 2003 and served almost four years in jail.
File-sharing Web site Torrentfreak claimed that 19 percent of Windows desktops run either the official BitTorrent client or µTorrent application.