P2P

Dallas Buyers Club No 5

Perram J has rejected Dallas Buyers Club’s latest attempt to get permission to send those letters of demand out.

Last time out, Perram J said DBC could get the names and addresses of the 4726 “downloaders”[1] only if it gave undertakings to use the information for the purposes of resolving its infringement allegations. limited the demands for compensation to the retail price of a download and some part of the unrecovered costs of detection and put up a bond of $600,000.

This time round, DBC wanted to claim monetary compensation on a different basis, including additional damages under s 115(4) and restrict the bond to $60,000 as it was only seeking release of details of about 10% of the “downloaders”. It also did not offer up the undertakings.

Perram J told them, no sale; they had their shot at what they wanted in the previous hearing(s). His Honour gave them until 11 February 2016 to comply with his previous orders or he would dismiss the application.

Dallas Buyers Club LLC v iiNet Limited (No. 5) [2015] FCA 1437


  1. By which I really mean the account holders whose accounts the ISPs’ records showed were using the IP addresses at the time of the alleged infringements.  ?

Dallas Buyers Club No 5 Read More »

The Internet Wars (copyright campaign) come to ISPs down under

The big movie studios have brought proceedings against iiNet, one of the larger (in a non-Bigpond sort of way) ISPs seeking to impose liability on the ISP for infringing downloading by its subscribers.

The Application is here (pdf) and the Statement of Claim is here (pdf).

Various analyses:

Nic Suzor has a detailed view here

Kim Weatherall here

Australian PC Mag here

The Film Industry outlines its position here

IPRoo carries a quote from the Internet Industry Association’s CEO here.

As you can see from this coverage, this has really set the cat among the pigeons.  The striking thing about this action, however, is that one might have characterised iiNet as a general purpose ISP, not existing just to promote infringing downloads like the Court’s found Mr Cooper’s mp3s4free.com or substantially like Kazaa.

Thus, the distinction propounded by the record companies in Cooper (at [123]) and both questioned and side-stepped by Branson J (at [40]) appears to be very squarely off the table. So, as many of the bloggers note, it is not too much of a stretch to claim that the future of the internet is at stake here.  Will the old Copyright Convergence Group‘s analogy to the postal system – imposing liability only on the person who introduces (posts) the material – be confirmed or will we, through the Courts, turn back into a closed, monitored system?

The ISPs can hardly be surprised:

(a) s 101(1A(c) expressly provides for the development of an industry code to establish norms;

(b) the copyright owners have directly attacked the ISPs in Eire;

(c) the UK government has “brokered” some sort of more “pro-active” role on ISPs too.

No doubt, if the matter goes to trial, we can expect to see a volume of evidence about the volume of iiNet’s P2P traffic vis a vis its other activities and, before then, perhaps some applications for discovery of traffic details.

Given that liability appears to be predicated on authorisation, it will also be particularly interesting to see how the movie producers circumvent the prohibition on intercepting communications over a telecommunications system and, perhaps, (if an ISP is a carriage service provider) the prohibition on use or disclosure of information the contents of any communication carried by a carriage service provider.

The Internet Wars (copyright campaign) come to ISPs down under Read More »

The record industry against the world

The EFF undertakes a review of the recording industry’s war against file sharing on the fifth anniversary of the launching of the RIAA’s first case.

Meanwhile, the RIAA is suing an attorney who seems to work overtime for defendants sued by the RIAA: here and. Amongst other things, Mr Beckerman maintains a checklist of tips for people facing an action by the RIAA: they won’t be directly applicable here, but who knows what food for thought you may find. If you want to get a better understanding of how the US litigation works, read Mr Beckerman’s article from the Judges Journal here.

And the RIAA is appealing (more here) the Jammie Thomas decision, seeking to be heard before the retrial.

Lid dip: Excess Copyright.

The record industry against the world Read More »

Jammie Thomas wins – sort of?

Ms Thomas, a single mother of two, is was the first person successfully prosecuted to a substantive trial by the RIAA in the USA for copyright infringement by P2P file “sharing” – using KaZaa, she downloaded and “shared” 24 copies of protected sound recordings.

The jury awarded RIAA statutory damages of US$220,000 by the jury (or $9,250 per song file downloaded).

Well, (pending the appeal), it’s all coming unstuck – a bit.  The trial judge, of his own motion (they do things differently over there?), recalled the matter, heard further argument and has granted a retrial on the basis that his instruction to the jury was erroneous. 

Jury Instruction No. 15 was as follows:

“The act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer?to?peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners’ exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.”  

The error appears to be in those words “regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown”.  

US copyright law, like much in the US I guess, is rather different.  The US Copyright Act does not include a “making available” right (see art. 8 WCT and arts 10 and 14 WPPT).  In the funny way they do things there, copyright owners do not get an exclusive right to communicate a work electronically; rather they get – in addition to publication and reproduction rights – (1) a right to publicly perform it and (2) to distribute copies: see 17 USC §106, in particular (3):

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.”   

The “public performance” right is how they provide control over broadcasting.  It turns out, however, that distributing copies requires that there be an actual distribution, not just a making available for distribution.

Four comments:

First, the trial judge has granted a new trial.  

Even on the narrow approach taken by the trial judge (putting to one side the potential for an appeal), Ms Thomas seems to be extremely exposed.  For example, the RIAA argued that the error didn’t matter because Ms Thomas infringed the copyright by downloading the recordings: an exercise of the reproduction right.  The trial judge noted that may well be right, but it was impossible to tell whether the jury awarded the US$220,000 damages on the basis of infringing the reproduction right or the erroneous instruction no. 15, or some combination of factors.

Similarly, the only proof of “distribution” was the copy downloaded by the RIAA’s private investigator.  Ms Thomas argued that this could never be a distribution because the copyright owner (and its authorised agents) can’t infringe its own copyright.  The trial judge rejected this:

The Court holds that distribution to MediaSentry can form the basis of an infringement claim.  Eighth Circuit precedent clearly approves of the use of investigators by copyright owners.  While Thomas did not assist in the copying in the same manner as the retail defendant in Olan Mills – by actually completing the copying for the investigator – or as the retail defendants in RCA/Ariola – by assisting in selecting the correct tape on which to record and helping customers copy – she allegedly did assist in a different, but substantial manner.  Plaintiffs presented evidence that Thomas, herself, provided the copyrighted works for copying and placed them on a network specifically designed for easy, unauthorized copying.  These actions would constitute more substantial participation in the infringement than the actions of the defendants in the Eighth Circuit cases who merely assisted in copying works provided by the investigators.   

That is, by using KaZaa, Ms Thomas placed (whether knowingly or not) unauthorised copies of the recordings in her “shared” file so that other KaZaa users could access it and copy it.  That would be sufficient for liability for distribution if a copy were shown actually to be distributed.  A retrial was necessary, however, because it wasn’t possible to tell how much that infringing act contributed to the damages award and how much as a result of the erroneous Jury Instruction No. 15.

Secondly, the trial judge’s interpretation of the distribution right seems somewhat narrower than what some people had been arguing: that distribution required distribution of physical copies, not transmission of electrons.

Thirdly, Ms Thomas’ imaginary Australian cousin, would not have much hope: see e.g. ss 31(1)(a)(iv) and 85(1)(c) of the Copyright Act 1968, bearing in mind the “communicate” is defined in s 10910 to mean

make available online or electronically transmit (whether over a path, or a combination of paths, provided by a material substance or otherwise) a work or other subject-matter, including a performance or live performance within the meaning of this Act.

and there would also be the small matter of the reproduction of the infringing copy on her computer.

She would not of course be exposed to statutory damages.  As Howard Knopf, over at Excess Copyright notes, the trial judge is extremely upset about the imposition of statutory damages in this context.

Although if the imaginary Australian cousin continued after receipt of a letter of demand “additional damages” might loom large: see Review v Innovative Lifestyle at [55] – [65] (a registered designs case).

Finally, trade war?  Well, not yet.  Who knows whether there will be an appeal and how long it will take.  In any event, the making available right is in the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performers and Phongrams Treaty.  These are not obligations that are required to be implemented by TRIPS and so are not subject to the WTO dispute resolution procedures.

But hey, may be Australian copyright owners could lobby the Australian government and get it to take matters up under the Free Trade Agreement procedures.  One can imagine (well fantasise is perhaps more accurate) that the US administration and Congress would be terrified at the offence to their treaty partner’s rights amidst all that Wall Street “flu”.  At least, it might be something to poke them back in the eye with (in due course and providing they are not wearing lipstick).

Case is Capitol Records Inc v Jammie Thomas here.

Jammie Thomas wins – sort of? Read More »

Scroll to Top