AFACT v iiNet: Day 8 – Anti-Piracy Evidence Lacking
Written by enigmax on October 15, 2009Day eight of the trial between anti-piracy group AFACT and Aussie ISP iiNet. Today’s proceedings centered around the quality of the evidence supplied to the court by AFACT. It was ascertained that AFACT likely counted breaches more than once, with one of their lawyers admitting that one method used was not 100% accurate.
It’s day eight in the copyright infringement case of AFACT – representing several Hollywood studios – and Aussie ISP iiNet (earlier coverage of day one, day two, day three, day four , day five, day six and day seven).
After AFACT dropped the claim that iiNet was a primary infringer by caching copyright works on their servers, according to ZDNet the case will now examine a sample of 20 iiNet customer accounts.
Earlier in the case, AFACT submitted evidence that it claimed showed around 95,000 breaches of the studios’ copyrights by iiNet subscribers. iiNet barrister Richard Lancaster cross-examined AFACT lawyer Michael Williams on techniques used by AFACT’s investigators to count these alleged breaches of copyright.
The recording of these claimed breaches were described by iiNet lawyer Richard Cobden during day two of the trial as a “novel composition and adventurous” and “a dramatic extension of the application of the law”. He then went on to describe AFACT’s claims of 94,942 infringements as “artificially inflated by a contrived process”.
It was then revealed in court that AFACT had probably counted some of the same infringements more than once – if it checked in the morning for infringements and then again in the afternoon, if the same infringement on an individual’s computer was still ongoing, AFACT counted it as yet another infringement, not a single extended one.
Another process AFACT used to record alleged breaches of copyright breach was by using a Reverse DNS Lookup – a process used to determine a domain name associated with a an IP address by using the Domain Name System (DNS) available on the Internet.
iiNet’s lawyer Richard Lancaster said this was not a reliable method since DNS records were often out of date. Lawyer for AFACT Michael Williams agreed this method was “not 100 per cent reliable”.
While re-addressing the possibility that AFACT was relying on evidence which artificially inflated the number of alleged infringements, following cross-examination both AFACT and iiNet conceded that technical issues can cause iiNet subscribers to leave and then reconnect to the network, resulting in the same iiNet users being allocated multiple IP addresses during an online session. If AFACT was tracking these particular users, it would then identify each IP address as a separate infringement, which would inflate their claims on numbers of infringements.
Of course, the accuracy of such evidence is important, since any damages awarded for, say, 50,000 breaches, would be substantially less than 95,000 breaches.
“If the judge finds further down the track that iiNet is guilty of the claims AFACT is making – which I don’t believe they will – because they are seeking damages, the number of offences does matter in terms of the final decision on what the damages will be,” an iiNet spokesman told ARN.
Today’s proceedings bring an end to the first two weeks of hearings in the case. It will resume November 2nd.
Previously: RIAA and MPAA Can’t Stop BitTorrent, Study Finds
Next: Pirate Party Condemns $5.4m Claim Against P2P Operator
27 Responses
Why the fuck do they need 2 weeks off? What the hell is up with court systems these days…
Can’t wait for the outcome, good luck iiNet.
Seems to be going alright…
@2 Agreed. I’m starting to hear something more akin to ‘common sense’ in the last couple of days. iinet FTW.
haha good now for their imprisonment and Extradition to Geneva for their charges of violation of human rights.
thats what should happen all persons evolved no matter how small should be punished for this dispikable regard for human rights.
wont be long now, thier liveing in a just like hittler soon they will be finished.
ummm i don’t remember a spectacle like this for the ice-men who were put out of business because of white good manufactures.
seriously we don’t need people like this in peaceful world.
creativity is art not a job GET OVER IT!
and whats more its not worth any life or prosecution.
thankyou inet for sticking up for the real reason minded and sticking it the fat greedy 60 children who now run fascist corps. what ever happened to free love ?
a fact ? whant a fact ? afact are hitters children, well done fellas hitter would be proud.
Best luck to you, iiNet!
How adorable! An ISP that fights for their own subscribers rights. :D
ISP usually fight for net neutrality, they don’t want to pay for majors and goverments pushing for DPI and they don’t want to see their customers give bad reviews. Majors have shareholders wanting something to be done without having a clue about all that networking thing. Govs just want an excuse to make a law in which to put massive profiling and make it legal. ISPs are the ones that pay the more, buying sniffers, keeping databases, employing people and such.
#7
How adorable! An ISP that fights for their own subscribers rights. :D
As it should be, we need more iinets!! but I believe in this case they really have little choice, their own defense forces them to fight for their subscribers…
I have said it before, help your ISPs out by protecting yourselves as well…
I have a feeling that even if we think iinet is “winning” in the end it’ll be like TPB, the judge will probably be corrupted and AFACT will get out of this with what they want.
@10 – No-name
Sadly, you’re probably right. Any fool can see that iiNet is innocent as court of law requires the plantiff to prove them “guilty without a reasonable doubt”
this is bollocks. we all know what the outcome is going to be. it doesn’t matter how crappy the evidence is presented by AFUCT, or how bent the judges are, or how many outside interests the prosecutors have, it will go in the favour of AFUCT. it always will. and if it doesn’t they will appeal until it does; they are the ones with the money and will pay until they get their way so the anti-piracy ruling becomes precedent in law.
@1
Tons of court systems do this for numerous reasons. Holidays, schedule conflicts, whatever… It’s not like it makes much of a difference, they come back, do a recap of everything in the case and then continue.
@8, ISP’s aren’t usually in favor of net neutrality, they just don’t like having to pass on Cease and Desist letters to their customers. Net neutrality just means they can’t slow down p2p traffic on their networks, and ISPs absolutely hate having to spend money on hardware (or on anything else for that matter)
No justice no peace.
How can they expect ISP’s to monitor such a thing? Bittorrent isnt illegal and can be used for filesharing of files that people do have the rights to. There is no way of determining if the files being shared are illegal or not, without downloading or catching the user in action. Personaly i cant see AFACT winning this case.
From the development of the case till now there is little doubt iiNet cannot be held responsible for the so called infringements. I do hope this doesn’t fall on the users. If it does, I hope they are prepared to defend themselves.
There are examples of successful file sharers in this MAFIAA vs All war. Once you prove that you actually buy what you download, that you actually watch movies on the cinema even when you get some leaked version then there is little MAFIAA can do to stop a decision not favorable to their pockets. Unless you are unlucky enough to get biased people to judge you like in TPB’s case….
The only problem I see with these arguments is that courts, in general, don’t like when the truth and facts are complicated.
Court wants everything to be reduced to some “common sense” type of BS such that court can claim that they made a clear judgement based on the “facts”.
If they can’t do that, they simply ignore evidence and rule on “intent” because it’s much easier to pass off one’s beliefs as “facts” in this case.
@18, “we have a claim and it’s not based on fact” will not tide well with the judge. Considering that iinet is not a normal citizen who is bled dry as they sue them, I put all money on iinet not losing this case.
Isn’t submitting evidence that you know to be inaccurate a crime in Australia?
Surely it is…The case really should have been kicked out & AFACT should have been charged costs.
@Yo
I’ve heard it said before that emotional arguments tend to win, not factual.
Judge Judy would have said that this is bullshit and the case thrown out of court long.
I agree that the case has no merit for a number of reasons, but I’m not a prize fighting kangaroo judge down under.
If I were not already locked into a contract with another ISP I would give serious thought to subscribing to iiNet for fighting this case.
ISP’s should not be held accountable for what their customers do with bandwidth that they have purchased.
Just a thought and maybe you may put put me dowm as scaremonger but:
Are the supossed superpowers using these cases (and funding them) to allow DPI ( deep packet inspection) to become law so in the end we will have no privacy at all.
Here in the UK there is already a law authourising the courts to oblige to give away your passwords for encripted files so that the ‘police’ can acertain whether you are using this for distribution of child pornography or planning terror attacks.
Where is you privacy now!
lets go out and fight for our demogaphic right to have privacy on the Internet and stop all these scare tactics used to take this away from us
With all this new information proving AFACT is lying, inflating the evidence, and has no case to begin with, I can’t imagine how an unbiased jury could ever possibly charge iiNet.
Of course, the court systems are all biased, but there’s always a chance! There’s always a chance.
Sadly, I think iiNet’s lawyers just aren’t up to it, or they would’ve had the case thrown out of court by now.
Let’s face it everyone, there IS a whole lot of pirating going on, but you can’t hold the ISP’s responsible.
It’s like trying to hold Oil Companies responsible for car accidents, isn’t it?
It’s many of us, the end users, that are doing the wrong thing, and yelling the loudest.
Yes, I s’pose I’m just as bad as some too, sorry.
…. but by the same token, companies are claiming huge losses due to pirating and bit torrents, yet their profits and pay outs to share holders don’t seem to support that claim.
They are still cleaning up, and all the CEO’s seem to be still doing OK.
Let’s change the focus on how legal THEIR affairs are.
How many musicians and associated industry workers etc, do all the work, only for the cream being taken off the top, and distributed amongst all those that DON’T deserve it. eg, CEO’s and share holders…..
So is pirating and bit torrenting really the issue or is it just a way to keep everybody’s focus from what’s really going on?
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