Roadshow Films V II Net - Judgement

Judgement

The trial judge, Justice Cowdroy of the Federal Court, found in favour of iiNet, dismissing the case with costs. The finding claimed that AFACT had misled the court in regard to the number of infringing users, and, while iiNet users did infringe, this was not the responsibility of iiNet to deal with:

iiNet is not responsible if an iiNet user uses that system to bring about copyright infringement ... the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another

It was also found that iiNet had place an anti piracy policy and while that was not up to the standards demanded of them by AFACT, it was considered acceptable to the court that iiNet did not authorise copyright infringing activities on their network.

Justice Cowdroy found that the provision of internet access by iiNet was not the "means" of infringement. Rather, the "means" was the exploitation of BitTorrent, which iiNet had no control over, in a deliberate manner to infringe copyright. Justice Cowdroy determined that iiNet did not have adequate power to prevent users from performing unlawful downloads and had not sanctioned, approved or countenanced copyright infringement. Since iiNet does not have control over the BitTorrent network, and the ISP Safe Harbour provisions apply, iiNet could not be held responsible for anything done by its users on the network.