Piracy liability claims continue to threaten iiNet

A request to limit the consequences to 86 films in the court case that has been bought against iiNet by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) has been turned down by the Federal Court.

The record of particular IP addresses of customers of iiNet that made a particular 86 films available online are being used as evidence of copyright infringement by AFACT.

Any decisions that is made by the court on the issue could, however, be affected by the fact that a great deal more TV shows and films are held on the catalogues of members of AFACT.

iiNet has stuck to the argument that any further hearings with regards to the matter should be limited to those films in light of AFACT already saying in other hearings that it had no intention of adding further titles to the current identified films list.

The relief that its members would be entitled to would, however, be limited by this scope complained AFACT.

In court recently Justice Cowdroy said that limiting the hearing to just these films would not be appropriate, despite the defiant stance of iiNet, and he pointed to similar cases where a court order was made on the complete catalogue based on a subset of infringements heard in another case, similar to that of Universal Music versus Cooper and Kazaa.

Despite iiNet’s conviction that no proof of physical copies being made by users were held by AFACT, Cowdroy said that the matter would not dropped prior to the hearing taking place. On one part of its case he also ordered that more information be provided by AFACT.

Concerns that this matter may take longer than expected were expressed by Justice as he discussed future hearing dates for the case. So that the case could be heard without the need for breaks he wanted to settle the date as November. Hearing a case as technical as this all together was something he considered important.