HOLLYWOOD FILM STUDIOS have decided to appeal against an Australian court ruling that struck down their bizarre claim that an ISP is responsible for the content of traffic on its network.

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), representing a consortium of 34 studios, said that the Australian Federal Court's ruling was out of step with well-established copyright law. We think that just means that the plaintiffs didn't like having lost the case.

Neil Gane, executive director of AFACT said that the court found large scale copyright infringements and that Australian ISP iiNet knew they were occurring, that iiNet had the contractual and technical capacity to stop them, but that iiNet did nothing.

He claimed that in line with previous case law this would have amounted to authorisation of copyright infringement. In other words because they managed to get the courts to believe that all P2P traffic is engaged in copyright infringement the courts have to accept the same thing about ISPs.

Gane said the ruling set a dangerous precedent that allowed Internet companies to turn a blind eye to copyright theft. Apparently Australia's creative community and all those whose livelihoods depend on a vibrant entertainment industry will suffer.

Michael Malone, iiNet's CEO, said it was sad that AFACT had decided to prolong the legal battle. This case has not stopped one illegal download and further legal appeals will not stop so called 'piracy', he pointed out.

Australia has been chosen as a test ground by the movie studios to see how far they can push the law. After years of accepting that ISPs were not responsible for P2P filesharing and dragging people into court, the studios decided it was better to hit a bigger target. If it can get the ISPs to do as they are told and act as its enforcers then all the studios will have to do is give an ISP a list of people it doesn't like and they will have to switch them off.

Australia was a good test spot because it had a British legal system and would give them a dry run before they tried something similar in Blighty or the US.

But unfortunately the law courts did not do what was expected. The content industries always expects people to do what it says and to be fair they have had a lot of luck convincing politicians, and we're sure their generous campaign contributions have had nothing to do with that.

As far as dangerous precedent is concerned, if the court had not backed the ISP it would have established the presumption that the service was responsible for assisting every criminal operating on its network. An ISP could be shut down and jailed for every crime committed by one of its subscribers.

What is perhaps more surprising is that the film studios are continuing with the case. It is possible that they were relying on the ignorance of a jury or a judge's lack of knowledge about technology. Perhaps they are hoping for a more ignorant judge in the appeal. µ