Recording Industry Breaks Down Doors Of Australian ISP For Using BitTorrent

Legal Issues

from the but-what-actually-happened? dept

Last year, the recording industry’s private police force in Australia, the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), raided the offices of Sharman Networks, the makers of Kazaa. They were using a rarely used feature of the Australian civil court system that lets private parties get warrants and raid the property of those they’re accusing in civil suits. Apparently, the industry was so thrilled with such Anton Piller orders, that they’re using them again. This time, they sent this private police force to break down the door of an ISP that used BitTorrent. The details are very muddy, so it’s not at all clear what’s going on here and how involved the ISP actually is. If it’s just customers of the ISP using BitTorrent, then it’s hard to see how the ISP is responsible at all. Furthermore, there are a ton of perfectly legitimate reasons to use BitTorrent to distribute files. The whole point of BitTorrent is that it helps in the actual transport of files among users. It has nothing to do with the search functionality of finding files. In other words, if you’re going to attack someone for using BitTorrent, you might as attack them for using FTP or HTTP. It’s just a protocol — it has nothing to do with the content at all. Still, this whole thing certainly makes you wonder why Australia allows private organizations or individuals to raid other private organizations or individuals. What recourse is there? While the folks from this private police force claim that “these raids are a new and important development in our fight against Internet music piracy,” it certainly sounds a lot like an abuse of power to bully companies. At least this time they didn’t say (as they did after they raided Kazaa): “Internet music piracy is finished in Australia.”