Foxtel, Roadshow in court over costs to anti-piracy scheme
ISPs unable to agree with rights holders on costs of blocking piracy websites.
- Published by David Knox
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Foxtel and Village Roadshow were in the Federal Court this morning relating to the industry scheme for tackling copyright infringement.
ISPs including Telstra, Optus, TPG and M2 have been unable to come to agreement on the costs of the scheme to block piracy websites. Discussions have been underway since December last year.
Foxtel and Village Roadshow have filed separate applications to block Australian access to The Pirate Bay, SolarMovie, Torrentz, Torrentound and IsoHunt file sharing websites.
The ISPs argue they “shouldn’t have to pay” for an order in which they are an “innocent party”.
“We were hopeful we wouldn’t need to trouble the court with costs, but we [have to]” Optus counsel said.
The ISPs pushed for four weeks to allow them to develop evidence to show the court how much it would cost them to comply with a site blocking order.
M2 said its costs would sit between $400 and $800 plus overheads while TPG put its costs per domain name at $50.
There is also disagreement over the definition of ‘online location’: An intentionally broad phrase used in the site-blocking legislation. The rights holders want to ensure that the final orders issued by the court capture proxy and mirror sites, as well as changes in IP address or URL.
Richard Lancaster SC, representing Foxtel and Roadshow contended that an “online location” could refer to a server that changed its IP address or the same “digital content” being accessed on a different server. “So far as the user is concerned, the same website is being accessed,” he told the court.
Parties will return to court for a hearing on the site blocking application on June 23.
Source: IT News, Computer World
2 Responses
I don’t understand why media companies expect the ISPs to cover the cost for this. It’s not the IS’s fault that some people use their service for piracy and nor should it be up to them to police it, just like it’s not Telstra’s responsibility to monitor who is using their phone lines for crimes. I also don’t think blocking the sites will do anything because it’s whack-a-mole but that’s another story…
This will not fix anything, block one and more will pop up in no time.