AFACT sues iiNet over piracy

Industry group AFACT has launched legal action against iiNet, claiming it infringed copyright by not preventing pirated material from being downloaded by its customers.

AFACT (The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) said that the move “was necessary because the ISP ignored repeated notices over many months identifying thousands of illegal file transfers via iiNet’s network carried out by its customers.”

Full story here, commentary from iiNet user and unpopular low-rent blogger “Panda” after the jump.

I’ve been with iiNet for over 3 years. When I first joined, they were an ambitious but fledgling eastern-states ISP undergoing rapid expansion and investing heavily in communications infrastructure around the country.

In many capital cities, they were the first ISP to install their own DSLAMs in telepone exchanges, offering customers who wanted ADSL2 their first real alternative to using Telstra’s expensive and inferior service.

iiNet’s customer service and technical support were locally based, and they were very, very good. Wait times were short, there was a minimum of hassle, and you always spoke to someone in Australia, who communicated in fluent Australian English.

3 years down the track, iiNet is something of a sprawling behemoth. I’ve endured billing errors, slammed telephones down in frustration on countless occasions since they outsourced most of their call centres to India, tolerated my speed, bandwidth and connectivity becoming increasingly variable and unreliable, and remained taciturn on their pathetic support for the gaming community (by way of hosting game servers etc.) compared to the Internodes and Bigponds of this world. Oh, and they’re 50% more expensive than they were when I joined.

So basically, they’ve gone from being streamlined, customer-focused and cost-effective to overblown, shoddy and expensive. Yet I’ve persisted with them. Why? Because they have demonstrated time and time again that a) they have principles, and b) they won’t be pushed around by larger organisations.

Friends of mine with different providers have, in the past, received letters from their ISP after downloading copyrighted material via the Bittorrent network. The letters vary in tone and content, but essentially demand that the user removes the file from their hard drive, deletes any copies they may have made of it, and write a letter to the ISP apologising for downloading pirated material and promising not to do it again. Yeah, you read that right - they demand an apology.

If I ever received something like that (which would be a colossal injustice, as I have never downloaded anything of a copyrighted nature) I would be on the phone to Mumbai faster than you can say “chicken tikka masala”. Any ISP which refuses to protect my privacy online, especially one which charges so exhorbitantly as iiNet, would not get a red cent of my money. You can ascertain, with some minimal research at places like Whirlpool, which ISPs will protect your rights and which will capitulate to the first menacing letter they receive from a law firm, so don’t get pushed around Australia!

I will of course be keeping a very close eye on the legal proceedings in question, and hope that a strong precedent is set in favour of ISPs not involving themselves in copyright infringement matters.