If this lawsuit succeeds, I will chuck.
If ISPs are responsible for stopping customers using their service to commit crimes, why haven't ISPs been sued for criminal acts committed by hackers etc?

This cannot work.

Your article, while factually incorrect about which ISP is the biggest, overlooks one thing....

iinet resells telsta ASDL !!!!! so WTF isn't Telstra getting the shafting from the music/movie moguls as well.. 

Probably the real reason iinet is being singled out is that the bully's that are music/movies figure they have more of a chance of extracting money as iinet will have more limited resources to fight with than Telstra.

If ever there was 'waste of space carbon based life forms' roaming the earth its got to be these ip leeches and their bloodsucking lawyer mates.

Lets just make sure we all know what this is about.

Private company makes claims, expects another company (the ISP) to act based on their claims, without evidence or outside verification of collection methods. Annoyed when ISP won't take their word for it, and pursue an action which would leave the ISP liable for breach of contract lawsuits.

It's a bad publicity move for AFACT, but it's also intended to be a threatening move, to try and intimidate users into thinking "they're so serious, they're going to sue the ISP, hope they don't sue me!".

Karl - probably peerguardian's blocking the list update server. It's not uncommon, someone adds to the list so-called "anti-p2p" IPs, and is surprised when the list update server is on that. Thus, when you go to update, it deletes the old list, and goes for the new, which it can't access. Of course, peerguardian doesn't do anything anyway, every independant study done on them has proven that. The ESET case earlier this year also strongly suggested that those behind the blocklists are actually anti-p2p people themselves. UK based, and deceptive, I'm guessing bluetack's a subsidiary of the BPI or BSA, but thats just based on their actions and attitudes.

I think actions like this lawsuit will just encourage people to sign up for the Aussie Pirate Party though, we could make a strong showing at the next election, just as we hope to in the EU election in June.

Andrew Norton
Pirate Party International.

I'm with IInet and went to do some downloading yesterday. Immediately noticed that peerguardian doesn't show that its blocking any IPs now.

Looks like IInet might have introduced the peerguardian IP ban list at a network level. It was showing banned IPs right up until Thurday evening (20 Nov) not a single one since.

iiNet are doing what is the industry accepted thing, when they recieve a notice of infringement they forward said notice to the police and return back to the people who sent it that they will need to contact the authorities to take it further (effectively giving their customers the benefit of the doubt, as far as IP discovery goes), which this particular little tool of ARIA have not deemed to do yet.

Seems to me they have had every opportunity to sue the sharers, but they are refusing to... maybe they are scared of opening that can of worms?

So AFACT wants iiNet do spend maybe hundreds of thousands of $$$ to track every single user's activity. Getting stuff done for free, hmm I'm all confused now, who's the pirate again?

iiNet should've said : "Sure thing, cut us a $5 million check and we'll get started right away. Uhm, that's MONTHLY ofcourse.".

Face it guys, the cash cow is GONE.

FYI, iiNet is Australia's third largest ISP. The clusterphuck that is Telstra still retains their irongrip on the top spot, much to the despair of Australia's populace..

Neither common people nor ISPs should be sued for so calling piracy. It's the seeders that should be asked to cease and desist, not anyone else.

iiNet is actually the third largest ISP not the largest. They're probably being sued 'cause they two bigger players have much deeper pockets. Apparently, iiNet has been passing on the alleged infringements to the police. The largest ISP, Telstra, is reported to completely ignore the allegations it receives.

I can hear the pigs gathering into masses.

Sounds as smart as:
Auto makers should be sued for drunk drivers and drive by shootings. 

Maybe they should just sue God and get the big suit over with. 

...sueing the company that built a road because someone stole a car on it and were speeding

Actually the biggest ISP in Australia is not iiNet but is Telstra (aka Bigpond) and probably the second from that would be Optus. iiNet are one of the 'larger' ISPs which makes you wonder why AFACT have not gone after the largest ISP "Bigpong" - who has a monopoly over here.

You can see a more in depth discussion on this topic over at the forums on http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1090914
... all 40+ pages of it

A representative from that company says there on the forum in reply to a the question
"If you had to guess at the accuracy of infringement notices, as a percentage, what would your guess be?"

Answer:

"By definition zero. Because IP addresses don't infringe.
IP addresses are not people. IP addresses do not download stuff, people do.

If somebody traces an infringement to a street address (say your house) does that automatically mean the person whose name is on the electoral roll as the owner of that property is therefore guilty of whatever the offense might be?"

The sourced article states it's one of the largest ISPs, you paraphrased this to "the largest" - absolutely not 3rd to huge telcos Telstra and Optus. Nice try though.

A real article: http://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1820&show=all

So, are roadbuilders liable for speeding motorists or the post office for posting a threatening letter.

The MPAA and RIAA extortionists give so much money to government ministers...

Just a minor correction, iiNet is not the bigest ISP, they are about the third. Telstra is the bigest (and quite horrible when they can get away with it) and Optus is second. (disclaimer, I'm an iiNet customer who uses bittorrent quite a bit)