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Anti-Piracy Group Loses In Court, Doesn’t Want To Pay Costs

At the beginning of February, AFACT, representing several Hollywood movie studios, lost its case against iiNet after the court decided that the ISP was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers. Despite being ordered to pay all costs, AFACT says it will now go back to court in an attempt to avoid paying them.

AFACTEarlier this month, the Federal Court in Australia ruled in favor of ISP iiNet following a copyright infringement case brought by AFACT, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.

The studios it represents, Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network took legal action against iiNet, claiming that the ISP did nothing to stop its customers from sharing copyright media via BitTorrent.

As part of the defeat, AFACT was ordered to pay iiNet’s legal costs, recently revealed to be a staggering $5.7 million ($5.08 million USD). Despite the ruling, AFACT says it will now return to court to avoid paying some of the costs. The anti-piracy group says that even though the final verdict went against them, elements of the trial went in their favor, so they believe they should not have to pay iiNet for defending those parts.

One area of claim was highlighted by AFACT spokesperson Rebecca Tabakoff, who said that early on in the trial iiNet conceded that its customers did indeed share copyright material, despite earlier claims they did not.

“[iiNet] spent a lot of time in the lead up to the trial not conceding that their customers had infringed copyright. The judge awarded all costs against applicants but iiNet was not successful on all fronts,” she explained.

Tabakoff indicated that AFACT would present other arguments to see if costs could be recouped elsewhere.

iiNet managing director Michael Malone believes that since AFACT lost the case, they should pay the costs.

“We didn’t ask to be sued. They came to us and sued us and they lost, so I don’t see why we should be paying any of their legal expenses,” Malone told ZDNet.

Malone says that money spent on legal action would be better off spent serving customers better.

“I look at the amount of money we have spent on litigation, and no doubt there would have been a lot more [spent] by the studios. Think of what that could have been spent on if it was applied to online content instead.”

This attempt by AFACT to challenge the instruction to pay iiNet’s legal costs will be heard on February 25th, the same day by which it must appeal the original ruling in order to take it to the High Court.

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  • mrhardy

    why i`m not surprised?

  • http://www.eZee.se www.eZee.se

    Hopefully, this will result in additional costs and the court will compel them to pay ALL costs including interest.

    Well, thats our hope at least.

  • genius!

    so basically the burden of proof applies only when it comes to the MAFIAA losing money?

    bye bye AFACT! that 5.7 million is going to worry your shareholders and suddenly your new “sue everyone” business model falls apart

  • The Gingerbread Man

    ““We didn’t ask to be sued. They came to us and sued us and they lost, so I don’t see why we should be paying any of their legal expenses,” Malone told ZDNet.”

    You’ damn skippy.

  • Tim Roll

    You where asking to be sued when you let your customers steal those torrents!

  • John

    You where asking to be sued when you let your customers steal those torrents!

    How did they let them ‘steal’ the torrents exactly? What more could have they done?

  • r0ck

    @5 Tim Roll:

    How did you do this? How can you put so much false information into a single sentence? Was it the exclamation mark? Amazing.

    “asking to be sued”
    quite clearly they didn’t want to, needed to or chose to be sued

    “let customers”
    just like the government “lets” bankrobbers use the motorway

    “steal torrents”
    how can you steal a link?

  • Tim Roll

    They could have blocked the IPs of the trackers and websites which are the worst offenders in terms of file sharing,

    They could do deep packet inspection on their customers’ connections to limit/shape the amount of data bit-torrent can share (thus limiting the damage it does)

    They could inject a popup or redirect to a warning page when a customer goes onto a torrenting site which says something like
    The page you are about to visit may contain links to illegal content which – if you download it – may result in a disconnection of your account. You have been warned.

    These are all really simple and realistic things ISPs could do.

  • ill tell you how

    ill tell you how you can steal a link.

    by not knowing anything about the internet or torrents, besides that the pirating of movies funds drug cartels in south america and terrorists factions in the middle east.

    lol

  • John

    @ 8 – Tim

    What?!

    These are all really simple and realistic things ISPs could do.

    I don’t know much about computers, but these don’t sound easy to me. Perhaps someone else will chime in on whether or not this is possible?

  • Sven

    @Tim Roll Why should ISP’s do that? because torrent = illegal? There are enough legal uses out there for torrents why should any ISP block it? Plus the cost for deep packet inspecting ALL traffic would not be possible and create an overhead which causes all Internet traffic speeds to drop!

  • GuyFawkes

    Hey Tim Roll im downloading a Linux distro via Pirate Bay. fuck you ass hole. GTFO

  • the.dwarfer

    @9 lol. don’t drugs fund the drug trade? :D

  • An Enchanter Named Tim

    “They could have blocked the IPs of the trackers and websites which are the worst offenders in terms of file sharing”

    Yes, clearly the correct response is to block a site that does have legal content because some content may not be entirely legal. That’s like saying we should block the streets which lead up to banks that have been robbed because they are the worst offenders in terms of streets used by criminals.

    “They could do deep packet inspection on their customers’ connections to limit/shape the amount of data bit-torrent can share”

    Aside from the obvious privacy invasion (if it’s a federal offense to look into your mail while it’s en route, why should packets be any different?) and the fact that this is NOT ‘really simple and realistic’ for an ISP to do because it would cost quite a bit of money, people would just use encrypted traffic and VPN’s which makes this entirely useless.

    “They could inject a popup or redirect to a warning page when a customer goes onto a torrenting site which says something like
    The page you are about to visit may contain links to illegal content which – if you download it – may result in a disconnection of your account. You have been warned.”

    Again, this is not the ISPs job though. They are not the police of the internet. The Australian court even ruled that it’s not the job of the ISP. Therefore take your orwellian ideas elsewhere :)

  • Tim Roll

    Of course it’s possible!

    I don’t know much about computers

    I think that says it all John…
    I’m a Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), and as part of our course we learnt about how Bit-torrent is the number 1 method of distribution for illegal/copyrighted materials.

    Slice it any way you like, you guys are crooks for stealing other peoples hard work.

  • 7SeVeN7

    @tim roll…..

    “They could have blocked the IPs of the trackers and websites which are the worst offenders in terms of file sharing”

    doing this isnt right. these people have paid good money to have acess to ther net.blocking will just have them movto another ISP.

    “They could do deep packet inspection on their customers’ connections to limit/shape the amount of data bit-torrent can share (thus limiting the damage it does)”

    basically throttling them still not a good idea,if im paying for 10MB/sec i want my 10MB.how would you like to be throttled back jus cause ur online gaming looks a lot like downloading movie`s from torrents (yes this happens,it did to me an had to call my ISP an bitch/bitch slap them about it,i got my 10MB/Sec back btw)

    “They could inject a popup or redirect to a warning page when a customer goes onto a torrenting site which says something like
    The page you are about to visit may contain links to illegal content which – if you download it – may result in a disconnection of your account. You have been warned.”

    NOW THIS WOULD WORK,warn them with a popup/redirect BUT still let them go an download but they know now what could happen IF caught plus not only cut off by ISP but also remind them of the criminal ramifications of what they are about to do….

    just my 2 cents worth……..

  • anon2

    no surprise here, really. as soon as a verdict is in their favour, afact (or similar) broadcasts that fact and how much it has cost the ‘loosing’ side. when the verdict is against them, afact (or similar) starts the moaning in one way or another. will stand corrected of course but i have never heard of a court case where costs have been awarded but only for certain parts of a trial. nor have i heard of a return to court to dispute the awarding of costs, either. had afact have won this case, would they have only claimed costs for certain issues or the whole thing? i am willing to bet a pound to a penny it would have been for the whole thing and they would have been extremely vocal and condemning if they didn’t get it!

  • hmmm

    You are all misreading. It’s not Tim Roll, it’s Rick Roll.

    neva gonnnnnna giiiiiiive you upppppp,
    neva gooonnnnna leeeeeeet you dowwwwwn
    affffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaact

  • John

    @ 15, 7SeVeN7

    doing this isnt right. these people have paid good money to have access to their net.blocking will just have them movto another ISP.

    Artists don’t pay good money to make the products eh? Some how you downloaders are better than them eh?

    how would you like to be throttled back jus cause ur online gaming looks a lot like downloading movie`s from torrents

    Thats why i said they should do deep packet inspection, so they can distinguish between the crooks and the legitimate customers.


    NOW THIS WOULD WORK,warn them with a popup/redirect BUT still let them go an download but they know now what could happen IF caught plus not only cut off by ISP but also remind them of the criminal ramifications of what they are about to do….

    I’m glad you can see it my way!!

  • Gareth

    “NOW THIS WOULD WORK,warn them with a popup/redirect BUT still let them go an download but they know now what could happen IF caught plus not only cut off by ISP but also remind them of the criminal ramifications of what they are about to do….”

    Only if the end user is using their ISP’s DNS server. Using something like opendns would get around this too.

    Back on topic – Fingers crossed that AFACT are laughed out of court.

  • Freedom.Fighter

    @Tim Roll

    I too am an MCITP. I’m also a CCNP, or a Cisco Certified Network Professional, my shoalin temple style defeats your valley mantis. As some one who does know a lot about computers, and networks, I’d like to be the one to tell you that it is neither simple nor cost effective for any ISP to do deep packet inspection on all networks, or even on specified ports. It’s a choke that unfairly effects those who use the internet for any mean, legal or illegal, especially since ports are not always static. It has also been ruled in several countries that the ISP should not invade the privacy of it’s customers any more than the post office should cut through mail. Bit-torrent is the number one method of content distribution, because it is the most effective form in that it’s so variable and dynamic in it’s form. Also, making statements about the legality of “piracy” is rather presumptuous, as in several countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands, it is legal to share media as long as it is not for a price and for personal use. Thus, it they are not “crooks” as they have broken no laws. Know the rules, know the codes, and don’t regurgitate everything you learned in a certification class taught by one of the companies taking the biggest hit from bit-torrent. Read up.

  • John

    Err, why have you used my name ****head? Are you afraid people might find out who you are or something?

    Let the record stand:
    I AM THE ONLY JOHN!

  • im troll

    its not tim roll

    its im troll. :D

  • none

    @ Tim Roll

    lmao, what a joke, you haven’t a bloody clue.

  • tech guy

    isp’s carn’t block a damn thing,i should know this is my field, WHY! simple hundreds of proxy services, VPN’S and other various tools to tunnel links make it impossible to stop,anyone who has a clue knows this, O and DPI dos’ent work on on SSL or AES encryption DPI only works on clear connections i use it now and again its WANK all you get is the size of the file being looked at, as much use as a chocolate fire guard, dos’ent prove a thing, but i would’ent tell my boss that LOL.

  • Anti-AFACT

    “We didn’t ask to be sued. They came to us and sued us and they lost, so I don’t see why we should be paying any of their legal expenses,” Malone told ZDNet.
    —-Quote
    You should be sued for say this, think if all the innocent people you try to sue. Don’t you think they say that to themselves? I didn’t want to be sued” Think about it before you think you shouldn’t be sued. You should be sued just for thinking about sueing people for money who like to share and bring artist up not down. Why do you think you can police the internet by going after a ISP, are you nuts! Your company should be bankrupt by now just for that market plan!
    ———————————-
    Malone says that money spent on legal action would be better off spent serving customers better.

    “I look at the amount of money we have spent on litigation, and no doubt there would have been a lot more [spent] by the studios. Think of what that could have been spent on if it was applied to online content instead.”
    –
    You mean by sueing you customer because they are sharing artist music to show people good music they might want to buy if you STOP SUEING EVERYONE!! Its about time we get a right Judge in the court who actually has some Common sense and doesn’t think everyone HAS to be WATCH BY BIG BROTHER!!

    WHy the F*CK , is there a law if you get caught for sharing you go to prison for 5 years and its 250,00 fine!! THAT IS MESSSED UP, nice brain washing laws, we have to sit through all your dumbass anti copy commericals bEFORE WE EVEN WAtch one of yOUR DRM license movies. RE THINK YOUR BUSINESS MODEL or go to H*LL

  • Quartz

    The existing law was absoloutely clear before AFACT tried to use its financial muscle on a common carrier to seek unfair advantage for its commercial memebers, thus clearly they where going to lose the case and thus should have been fully aware thet would have to pay the entire court costs.

    A carrier is protected against any claim for any activity that its customer undertake, thats the law, if numbskulls like AFACT didnt bother to read the law thats there lookout.

    Epic lose AFACT.

    Btw does AFACT stand for “Anti Free And Cartel Types” ?

  • Jim

    Of course their trying to dodge paying.. that’s that thieves do.

    Hopefully justice will be served and they will have to pay every penny.

    Its the very least this criminal organization should have to do.

  • Tim Roll

    I’m not a troll
    You know how many times people say that to me on online discussion boards? It’s getting really old guys.

    @ 24

    ‘lmao, what a joke, you haven’t a bloody clue.’

    You won’t be saying that when the boys in blue come knocking on your door.

    Know the rules, know the codes, and don’t regurgitate everything you learned in a certification class taught by one of the companies taking the biggest hit from bit-torrent. Read up.

    You read the rules and read the code. I know what lies beneath the surface. You just have to go to the source and you see for yourself what this is all about.

  • Exodus

    @Tin Roll: Remind us just why you’re here again? If you can’t provide a sensible argument, then GTFO. I honestly couldn’t care less who you work for, you evidently don’t know what you’re talking about.

    @anon2: Agreed. AFACT and the like act like spoilt children, because they know it’ll get them what they want. This whole state of affairs sickens me.

  • Quartz

    Well said Jim.

  • P2P_Worshiper

    Ohhh that’s a hard one to swallow!! haa RIAA/MPAA monkey’s.

    Yees that’s the true face they showing now from this Entertainment Industries scum bags.

    For them is payment only the one-way ticket model.

    It’s all my precious’ss, no one takes Goloms precious away, you fatt ugly’s hobbits/piret’s :-) :-)
    Goloms like Master, Golom will protect master’s precious from the theft hobbits behinds the glass screens.

  • Tigger

    “I’m a Microsoft Certified IT Professional (“MCITP”)”

    Lol – no offence, but i used to be Microsoft certified, Its a total waste of a qualification, not only do you loose it after so long, but a monkey could pass the “Microsoft exams”
    Cisco Certified Network Professional – now thats a decent qualification =)
    Better yet, just learn to program properly – actual knowledge beats any qualification. Forgetting all the invasions of privacy Mr Tim Roll, id be interested to see your infallible code for ISP based pop ups.

    On topic for a sec, AFACT are just sore loosers – i wonder if iNet would be doing the same thing if the roles were reversed?? ….I doubt it ;)

  • Laughing

    Hey Timmy, will we see you in the office at FD Third Person this week?

  • anon

    c’mon people, stop feeding the trolls.

    ISPs are not the police of the nets and are not responsible for what is in the traffic. The fine Aussie courts have ruled on this.

  • Aerilus

    @ tim roll

    buddy I suggest you go and read your Eula from your ISP it is legally binding or so all the software companies would have us believe. And all of the stuff you mentioned could be gotten around by encryption and changing the default dns server. The point being Otis not the ISP responsibility to male sure another industry is making money welcome to captalism if you don’t like it move to Cuba I’m sure Castro would be accomidating

  • anonymouse

    i suppose the next thing afact etc will be saying is that they cant pay any monies to the artists they have been robbing (and have been caught) and ordered to repay royalties to, because they have to pay costs for lost court cases. they need to think first about who instigated the court cases, did the artists that are ‘supposedly’ being represented agree to the court cases and who was ‘supposedly’ going to benefit the most if the court cases were won.

  • Pirate Dave

    AFACT has to fight the costs.

    Otherwise they are going, going, gone…

  • GP

    @8: Get out a dictionary and look up “privacy”. You might also dig up some information by searching for “illegal wiretapping”.

  • Scooter

    DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS

  • Anonymous

    Tim Roll.

    T. Roll.

    Troll.

    Are you guys that dense?

    The best way to slay a troll is to starve him and you keep feeding his ass instead.

  • duane

    @ Tim Roll

    If people on forums everywhere tell you you are a troll, then maybe, PERHAPS it’s because you are being a troll? You know, a T-Roll. Just sayin’.

    As far as most people on TF are concerned, you are damn wrong, and the things you are suggesting are not just naive, but criminal. That you waste your time and ours trolling TF makes you a twat of major proportions.

  • Chris

    @Tim Roll I lied on a application form to get a Microsoft Admin MSDN account and I uploaded “EVERY” file on there to a torrent site.

    Now how do you like that? It isn’t ‘Stealing’ it’s sharing dumbass. Rofl

  • Anon

    @Tim Roll

    You know it’s sad, as a person who obivously has some love for technology, sits on the fence on how pirating is hurting people. All it is doing is letting us know with that new movie is shit, so we don’t waste our movie. Not to mention you must also assume that every movie downloaded is a lost sale…

    Also there is a important factor people seem to miss, the majority of downloaded movies are 17-26 (last i heard) Most of that age group makes up college students, and kids just out of college. Add to the fact that many countries are in either a depression or rescission and you will see that companies are not so much loosing money as the people commonly stealing just don’t plain have the money.

    But you right the pirate’s are scum suckers, right next to people who have lost their homes and live in poverty. STFU, and get out.

  • Simplex

    Tim Roll. T.Roll. Troll.

    ”
    I’m a Microsoft Certified IT Professional (“MCITP”), and as part of our course we learnt about how Bit-torrent is the number 1 method of distribution for illegal/copyrighted materials.”

    “I think that says it all John…”

    Yes, you’re Microsoft Certified, i think that does say it all….

    I learnt in school knives are the number 1 method for stabbing! Oh, the horror!. :(

    Moving on to the actual article, as an Austalian, AFACT not wanting to pay the court costs for a frivolous time wasting case is pathetic, ridiculous, disgusting, and simply abhorrent. Now they want to try avoid the costs by wasting more of the courts time…. this money could be better spent monetising online distribution models.

  • bleh

    And I hope now they’re gonna have to pay double, would serve them right, that’s what they do if YOU, the person that get sued, lose and request an appeal, you get more fines.

  • John aka T. Roll

    View -> Source -> Ctrl + F -> Troll.

    The only person’s time i’ve wasted here is the time of people who’ve replied to me.

    I come to TF every day to see what’s going on in the world of filesharing, and every day i read posts from blatant super-trolls like ReasonedMind, et al.

    This doesn’t bother me – where there is anonymous forums there are people who wish to exploit it and wind people up for there own amusement.
    I have to say, even i was getting a little into it…

    But the truth is that the only person’s time they are wasting is their own. If you choose to join in with their farce you are just as bad as they are.

    I would like to urge anyone who considers themselves a regular on TF to stop replying to these nonsensical posts. You wouldn’t forward a chain e-mail, so don’t reply to flamebait.

    Lets all just try and keep on topic from now on, okay?

    Congratulations are in order for everyone who recognized i was a troll – however, people who post “He’s a troll” are just as bad as people who write a small book in retaliation.

    JUST. IGNORE. STUPID. POSTS.

  • tester errer

    The logic or the irrational

    —
    Despite being ordered to pay all costs, AFACT says it will now go back to court in an attempt to avoid paying them.
    —

  • Rabbit80

    @T. Roll

    “They could have blocked the IPs of the trackers and websites which are the worst offenders in terms of file sharing,”

    My VPN sees to that. Other bypass methods are proxy, OpenDNS – and If I found my ISP blocking LEGAL websites, I would have a field day with them!

    FAIL

    “They could do deep packet inspection on their customers’ connections to limit/shape the amount of data bit-torrent can share (thus limiting the damage it does)”

    See my previous comments… I might also have a case legally against my ISP for invasion of privacy.

    FAIL

    “They could inject a popup or redirect to a warning page when a customer goes onto a torrenting site which says something like
    ‘The page you are about to visit may contain links to illegal content which – if you download it – may result in a disconnection of your account. You have been warned.”

    See above comments. Also, there are plenty of pop-up blockers and other ways around this idea. Plus, I would change ISP if they started poisoning my connection with this crap!

    FAIL

    “These are all really simple and realistic things ISPs could do.”

    … that would not make the slightest difference to file sharing, and would simply piss off legitimate customers (like the music industry is learning with DRM)

    The solution is simple – provide customers with a competing service that offers much more than file-sharing sites. Exclusive content, memorobilia etc.. Make the paid for sites offer different filetypes, sample rates etc..

    Why does bottled water sell so well when tap water is a perfectly good (and free) substitute?

  • A Dangerous Precedent

    But hey, who am I to stop AFACT! Let them lose here and every lost case will already have a piece of case law in this arena for lawyer fees!

    Hope they get hosed, both in court costs and lawyer fees

    Go iiNet

    Whats truly funny … NOT one internet service provider can say they have a clean (NO PIRATES) network!

  • adyshor

    Rules apply only for poor people.
    We are MAFIAA, we own everything. LOL!
    They will sue 5.000 people so they can pay 5 millions dollars.
    Even f*ckin AFACT is a growing business

  • hms-one

    I cant believe how many responses there are to such a brief comment from a person who actually named themselves Tim Roll.

    T. Roll?

    Troll. Get it? God, your all so F-ing thick.

    Now I have to wade through all these tarded troll responses. Ugh.

  • duane

    @T. Roll

    Obvious troll is non-obvious!

  • djnforce9

    “The anti-piracy group says that even though the final verdict went against them, elements of the trial went in their favor, so they believe they should not have to pay iiNet for defending those parts.”

    There is so much wrong with that statement.

    1. How do you calculate the exact cost for and “element” of the trial?

    2. How can they claim they any “element” of the trial was in their favor? iiNet doesn’t have to answer to any of AFACT’s demands so I’d say AFACT outright lost here.

    3. Since when is there any legal obligation for iiNet to pay for only “elements” of a trial depending on what the other party “thinks” is in their favour? This sounds like something AFACT completely made up in a desperate attempt to minimize the massive financial loss as a result of something which was bogus to begin with (and so AFACT deserves what they got).

  • Predator

    “You where asking to be sued when you let your customers steal those torrents!”

    The problem is that these torrents are txt files are not copyrighted nor are they the property of the corporations of parasites. Finally the torent were not stolen.

    “Now I am going to try to download your car and your house, If tomorrow your car or your house is missing that would be me.

    Ho! I forgot this though: since I am going to share your stuff on P2P you might be able to re-download a copy of your home and car. I will put a torrent on TBP for that or share a magnet links for this.

  • Anonymous

    AFACT did the crime they must pay the time!

  • Phoenix

    have u ever seen thieves pay for something ?
    they simply dont and thats how anti piracy groups do things ^^

  • BIOS

    Very good news,

    AFACT: “Whats that?! Im not invincible”
    Everyone: “No you’re not! GTFO!”

  • Mark

    LOL

    Sheesh there really isn’t any good in these guys is there?

  • Jay

    “We didn’t ask to be sued. They came to us and sued us and they lost, so I don’t see why we should be paying any of their legal expenses,” Malone told ZDNet.

    LOL, exactly.

  • DeltaPan

    The T-Roll oik is acting like he knows it all, but cannot seem to understand the difference between civil and criminal law.

    A frackwit trying to profess as somebody who knows what he’s on about, going on like an industry insider, but actually knows very little.

    **Downloaders are not criminals**, by definition in law, it is a civil infraction of copyright, get your fracking facts straight, bloody oik.

    last thing i am is a criminal, i’m close to the poverty line and download very few films, mainly documentary stuff and scifi to save my money for things like electricity, gas and food etc, all increasingly expensive and i find your attitude insulting so have a few back!

    Just a troll attention seeker, i should pity the sad git, all alone because nobody likes him because he trolls everywhere he goes and articulates nothing but a diatribe of detritus and now wants some attention and that’s the only way he can get some, by coming on TF and coming out with utter BS, so i don’t pity him at all.

    So shut the frack up and get real.

    - – -

    On topic…

    Serves AFACT right, hope the courts deny their appeals and they have to pay every dollar of the costs, why should they be so special, everybody who loses in court pays costs.

    Don’t want it to happen, don’t try and sue everything which moves, simple.

    Peace. :)

  • ememdeee

    Tim Roll… T(im )Roll… TRoll… Troll!!!

  • GOSANE

    Tim Roll = Hollywood shill.

  • Blippy

    It’s a feed the troll contest! See who can feed it the most! And the most often!

    Nobody here has a life.

  • KsbjA

    @52 – duh! Well, what I wanted to say is, I spotted that one, too.

  • DeltaPan

    You’d have to stupid not to notice it’s so obvious.

    Still a fracking pain in the arris though, gotta say something!

  • Terminator

    Obvious T.roll is obvious

  • Mirage

    @Tim’s posts.

    You’re fucking retarded.

    I don’t care if you carry around some flashy microsoft certification, you have no idea the kind of overhead that a deep packet inspection for everyone for isp’s would cost, it would cost more then piracy itself causes in losses.

    If you’re so pro-anti-piracy then you shouldn’t be trolling around on this website now should you.

    Run along back to your fancy microsoft certifications.

  • bah

    Must…*urgh*…not…*wrr*…feed…*gasp*…troll.

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  • harr harr

    an attempt at bankrupting iiNet via the back door…and a petty vindictive move, suck it up ..and cough up the loot LOSERS

  • Trelew

    So AFACT is not only a sore loser but a cheapskate as well. Not surprising.

    @various corporate trolls out there (Tim Roll, John, et. al.)

    First off deep inspection of the packets is an invasion of privacy and unless you want to violate civil liberties and thus open up a whole sh!tload of civil cases, this is not a good place to go.

    This is nothing but corporate powers-that-be wanting the ISPs to be their security b!tches because they are too cheap to do the right thing.

  • laughing now

    Block the ip’s of those offending….ok…lets start with…
    google…yahoo…bing…and any other search engine on the web….lets not forget any website that has any exterior links to anyting…might be copywrong material ya know….
    Get real ya idiot….not possible…
    Can we say VPN on a mass scale….no way to block someone from going where they want….always a way around…Unless ya kill the internet altogether….Course the MAFIAA’s would just love that!!!1

  • laughing now

    And I still don’t get it….
    Trolls keep saying downloading is illegal….got news for ya…
    Even here in the USA it is not criminal….at best…it is a civil matter…!

  • How Funny

    Afact are sore losers & thats a fact!

    tim troll = brainwashed citizen

  • AnyMouse

    This is actually very funny. I’d love to see how Reasoned Mind comes to defend this. Actually, he won’t post here, he’ll just ignore it and wait for an article that better suits him.

    Anyhow, at least this brings some balance of power back, with a “totally legit and for the artists” cause trying to bypass making payments.

  • Anonymous

    No surpsise they don’t want to pay. All these FACT companies are owned by the MPAA, all of them use strategies that shift the burden of any legal costs to other people, usually the taxpayer.

    FACT in the UK has been using Private Prosecutions for some time and reclaiming the cost back from the UK Taxpayer (a la TV Links case).

    Scumbags who feed off the poor so that MPAA’s members don’t have to go without the latest Gulfstream.

  • Black Swan Social Media, Inc.

    @Tim Roll

    I wasn’t aware that torrents in and of themselves were copyrighted material. Probably because they aren’t. Hmmm… there’s a thought. If every tracker copyrighted their ‘own’ torrents, would those trackers could then be able to turn around and sue individuals like AFACT, Brein, and Web-Sherriff when those organizations downloaded the torrents in order to confirm their suspicions that the torrents lead to copyrighted works?

  • Anonymous

    appeal until u get the result u want.. gg greedy bastards.. just pay!!

  • Grok

    I find it hilarious how these incompetent legal bullies try to get out of what they deserve to pay for habitually excessive litigation. They show that they don’t understand how the legal system works, and then they go on to insist that they’re not wholly responsible for the expenses incurred on the people wrongly accused, who have had their time and money wasted by these overzealous lawsuit-flingers.

  • CapnS

    @47

    Pure, epic, win. I’d give you a beer if I knew you.

  • Yo

    “I’m a Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), and as part of our course we learnt about how Bit-torrent is the number 1 method of distribution for illegal/copyrighted materials.”

    And I stayed at Holiday Inn Express!

  • cruzader

    We didn’t ask to be sued. They came to us and sued us and they lost, so I don’t see why we should be paying any of their legal expenses

    True e-nuff!

  • Welshie

    @ John aka T. Roll

    View -> Source -> Ctrl + F -> Troll.

    What a clever, evil little blastard… lol!

    Seriously though… I waste enough of my time browsing websites… now I gotta waste even more looking at the page source ;)

    Well worth it though…

    (And people STILL don’t get what you did… even after you explained it in detail! I despair for the youth of tomorrow… I really do!)

  • Anonymous

    Oy vey, Hollywood is run by very greedy people. You’ve got tons of money, why are you so cheap?

  • SEEDplease

    I hope AFACT loses again if they go back to court and are forced to pay not 5Million, but $10Million!

  • Ricktroll

    - Your customers steal torrents
    - Your customers defraud torrents
    - Your customers commit rapes on torrents

    All these happen and you turn a blind eye. You deserved to be sued

  • Im Troll

    “Tim Roll”

    Remove the “T” and place it in front of “Roll” and you get Im Troll, the devil troll LOL

  • AJ

    “We didn’t ask to be sued. They came to us and sued us and they lost, so I don’t see why we should be paying any of their legal expenses,”

    Truer words never said.

  • costs

    Lets hope AFACT are also ordered to pay the costs of the appeal about the costs, lamers

  • Dr. Sick of DRM!

    If you can’t pay, don’t play the game!

  • Surys

    @Tim Roll (aka “John”)

    “They could have blocked the IPs of the trackers and websites which are the worst offenders in terms of file sharing.”

    Proxies, etc. make this completely ineffective and as the proxied connection is only to the tracker (not the peers) – transfer speeds are also uneffected. The net result is bad PR for the ISP whilst achieving nothing because users are smart enough to overcome IP blocking.

    “They could do deep packet inspection on their customers’ connections to limit/shape the amount of data bit-torrent can share (thus limiting the damage it does)”

    Encryption. You inspect that encrypted content, conclude it’s encrypted, have to let it through as it may be legitimate. Another waste of time and waste of money for the ISP. It’s a bad option and is increasingly becoming redundant as a way of combatting piracy or other network activity that some may consider as ‘rogue’.

    “They could inject a popup or redirect to a warning page when a customer goes onto a torrenting site which says something like “The page you are about to visit may contain links to illegal content which – if you download it – may result in a disconnection of your account. You have been warned. “”

    If they use a proxy, no warning. If they ignore the warning as most would, no effect. Again, this is just bad PR generation at cost to the ISPs whilst truthfully achieving very little to stop piracy.

  • Ricardo

    If they do not pay the artists, why should we think they would pay the legal costs?

  • Some Lamer

    I might have something in my pocket – let me just go around naked so you can see that what I have I rightfully own. Will Rupert Murdoch do the same?

  • $deity

    I hope the courts decide that AFUCT are vexatious sycophants and not only maintain the verdict of costs awarded to iinet, but also slap on top the market interest rate for late payment, and finally, demand that a $1,000,000 donation be made to the courts poor box.

  • 667_devil

    ““We didn’t ask to be sued. They came to us and sued us and they lost, so I don’t see why we should be paying any of their legal expenses,” Malone told ZDNet.”

    This is also confusing to me…
    Pay up, scum!

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  • Tim Roll

    Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!! I can’t take it anymore! AFACT should have won, buuuaaaaahh! (putting gun in mouth) fnog gu aaw!

    >BLAM<

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  • networking student

    BLAHBLAH I HAVE A MICRO$HIT CERT N THEY SAY THE TORRENTZ R BADS SO IT MUST BE TRU!!1!

    I’m with Freedom.Fighter@21.
    It’s is neither realistic or cost-effective in any way to use deep packet inspection, never mind the legality of such an invasion.
    Take your MCITP and shove it up your ass, you probably could only pass the Consumer Support Technician exams anyways.

  • John

    @ 80 & 83.

    Thanks guys!

    Unfortunately, it had little effect. People just don’t bother reading all the comments, and much prefer to skim-read the highlights and build the picture they want to see.
    Take 91 for example. If he spent the time it took writing his trollcake to actually read all the comments, he could have saved himself the hassle.

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  • yo yo

    AFACT’s members involved in price fixing? Conspiring to rip off the consumers? Noooooooo

    http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9162979/Sony_LG_Samsung_Hitachi_Toshiba_accused_of_price_fixing

    A home electronics retail store has filed a class-action lawsuit against Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Toshiba Corp., LG Electronics Inc., Hitachi Ltd. and several subsidiaries, accusing the electronics manufacturers of colluding to fix prices in the U.S. optical disc drive (ODD) market.

    http://www.p2pnet.net/story/33826

    MDL Docket No. 1361 read:

    “The Plaintiffs have alleged in two separate amended complaints that the Defendants conspired to illegally fix and control the pricing of Music Products sold to consumers through Defendant Distributors’ adoption and utilization of Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) programs in violation of the Sherman Act, state antitrust and unfair competition and/or consumer protection laws. The Plaintiffs have further alleged that as a result of the conspiracy residents of the Plaintiff States and members of the Plaintiff Settlement Class have been injured by paying more for Music Products than they would have paid in the absence of the illegal conduct. The Defendants have denied and continue to deny each and all of the claims and contentions alleged by the Plaintiffs and any violation of law. The Court has not made any determination as to the merits of any of the claims or defenses of the parties to this Litigation.”

    In the hot seat were:

    * LABELS: Capitol Records, Inc d/b/a EMI Music Distribution, Virgin Records America, Inc, and Priority Records LLC; Time Warner, Inc, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corp, WEA, Inc, Warner Music Group, Inc, Warner Bros Records, Inc, Atlantic Recording Corporation, Elektra Entertainment Group, Inc, and Rhino Entertainment Company; Universal Music & Video Distribution Corporation, Universal Music Group, Inc, and UMG Recordings, Inc; Bertelsmann Music Group, Inc and BMG Music; and, Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
    * RETAILERS: MTS, Inc d/b/a Tower Records, Musicland Stores Corp, and Trans World Entertainment Corp.

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