The Federal Court of Australia today dismissed an appeal in Roadshow Films Pty Limited v iiNet Limited [2011] FCAFC 23, so finding the ISP iiNet not liable for authorizing the copyright infringements of its customers.The judgment says that iiNet ‘demonstrated a dismissive and, indeed, contumelious, attitude to the complaints of infringement’, but held that an ISP that doesn’t suspend an infringer’s account is not liable for future infringements unless right owners have first (a) provided a verifiable level of evidence for infringements in their notices, (b) undertaken to reimburse the ISP for its costs in investigating infringements and (c) undertaken to indemnify the ISP if customers’ services are suspended in error.
The claimants may appeal to the High Court.
The claimants claim that piracy has cost them a lot of sales (and thus presumably Goods and Services Tax payments). A lot of big retailers also claim that on line shopping is costing them sales and GST payments.
ReplyDeleteAs best as I know the actual figures for GST collections have not shown changes that could be attributed to the internet. (I could be wrong on this .)
I stopped teaching ten years ago , but even then getting 25 year old students to read anything at all was a battle and they had little interest in the movies, fair enough - most films are aimed at the 12 year old these days.
As best as I know, sales of computer games are going gangbusters.
It is easy to blame market behavior when your product fails to sell.