Preparations for a court battle underway for iiNet

As the big fight against infringement of copyright charges begins this Friday, iiNet, the Internet Service Provider prepares itself for a difficult battle in the courts.

With the court case beginning on the 5th February both parties will soon be filing their defence and have been very busy preparing the evidence they will be giving in court.

The suit was filed against the ISP, which is based in Perth, in November by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), who will be representing a huge list of well known television and film companies. This suit was filed because the ISP had allegedly failed to respond to a number of calls to stop the illegal swapping of TV programs and movies by its customers.

It has been alleged that the most popular platform for file swapping that iiNet subscribers use to exchange files is BitTorrent. It is suspected that the cost to the ISP could run into millions of dollars as AFACT seek damages for the alleged copyright infringement.

It was felt that the seven weeks that had been given for iiNet lawyers to prepare its defence were not long enough after the ruling given at an initial hearing held on 19th December at the Federal Court in Sydney.  The company has, however, recently announced that it is now ready to go. A company spokesperson said. “iiNet is anticipating lodging its defence tomorrow as required and on time.”

Although it is understood that AFACT were confident that it had a strong case against iiNet, officials for the group refused to make any comment on the current progress of its preparations.

AFACT has already prepared itself for a probably argument that may be given by iiNet that when it came to the illegal moving of files using BitTorrent it was unable to trace individual subscribers. It appears that evidence will be provided by AFACT that will show the court that infringing users could have easily been identified by the ISP and letters could have been sent out warning them of this infringement.

At the moment the fact that despite AFACT informing iiNet repeatedly over an 18 week period to act on practices of alleged illegal file-sharing and the ISP allegedly did nothing about is the biggest bone of contention.