Australian judge rules Internet provider not responsible for illegal downloads of movies

Film companies lose file sharing case in Australia

SYDNEY — An Australian Internet provider cannot be held responsible for copyright violations when its users illegally download movies, a judge said Thursday in a ruling against major film companies.

The decision was likely the first of its kind, Federal Court Justice Dennis Cowdroy said, throwing out the suit by major film companies that sought to force the provider to stop its customers from downloading illegally or throw them off the Internet.

A group of 34 movie companies, including Australian branches of Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, claimed Australia’s third-largest Internet provider, iiNet, breached their film copyrights by failing to stop users from illegally sharing files.

Federal Court Justice Dennis Cowdroy ruled that while iiNet knew its users violated copyrights and failed to stop them, that did not mean that the provider was authorizing those breaches and it could not therefore be held accountable for them.

“I find that the mere provision of access to the Internet is not the means of infringement,” Cowdroy said in a summary of his 200-page ruling.

He said iiNet did not have the power to stop illegal downloads.

iiNet Managing Director Michael Malone welcomed the ruling and said his company wanted to work with the film companies to find ways iiNet users could access movies legally.

Neil Gane, the executive director of the industry group that represents the film companies, said the outcome was disappointing and an appeal would be considered.

Cowdroy said there was ample evidence that infringement of the movie companies’ copyrights was occurring on a large scale worldwide but that Internet providers should not be targeted for it “merely because it is felt that something must be done.”

“An ISP such as iiNet provides a legitimate communication facility which is neither intended nor designed to infringe copyright,” he said.

The judge said that as far as he was aware, the ruling was the first in the world in a suit claiming that an Internet service provider was authorizing copyright infringement by its users who engaged in illegal downloads.

Cowdroy said he allowed the proceedings to be published on Twitter — a first for Australia — because there had been so much interest in the case in Australia and overseas.