As the battle between the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and iiNet recommences on Monday, a law professor has told Computerworld the corporate music industry's attack on technology is giving it image problems.
University of New South Wales law faculty professor Kathy Bowrey, said the music industry is threatened by technology.
"[The music industry] has been reasonably slow to experiment with business models and it's seen [BitTorrent and P2P] technology primarily as threatening," she said. "It has created a lot of image problems for the music industry being seen as against the technology."
Bowrey said the problem of illegal downloads was exacerbated because BitTorrent and P2P technology was available years before a legitimate service was introduced in Australia.
"Obviously if you don't provide a mechanism for people that want to consume their music digitally and get all the advantages of the portability of digital formats, people are going to find a way to do it," she said.
As far back as 2000, heavy metal group Metallica and its music company filed a copyright law suit against P2P site Napster after the band discovered its music was available to download digitally. The case was privately settled the following year, but consequently resulted in the death of Napster as a file sharing service.
The sentiments of the Napster case have been echoed by the public during the ongoing AFACT and iiNet case.
In a post on the Computerworld website, Matthew said: "If these companies are successful in stopping piracy over the Internet then we will all just revert back to buying one cd/dvd post it to a friend, copy it and post it on to the next person via AustPost and we'll all save a fortune. Better yet why not wake up smell the roses and find a solution."
In the Federal Court of Australia on Monday, iiNet chief executive officer, Michael Malone, is expected to take the stand to kick off the ISP's defence, which some say is being targeted in the same way Napster was.
During the trial, which started October 6, AFACT, which represents over 30 film studios and TV broadcasters, introduced several witnesses including AFACT's expert witness, Nigel Carson, and representatives from four big film studios, Warner Bros, Paramount, Disney and Fox by video from Los Angeles.
Among many topics discussed the court heard the studios did have agreements in place with BitTorrent -- the P2P network identified as being used by iiNet customers to share copyrighted files -- but many of these had lapsed.
The trial was adjourned by Justice Cowdrey two weeks ago.
The case is expected to be taken to the High Court of Australia, regardless of who wins the next round.
Reprinted with permission from Computerworld Australia. Story copyright 2009 Computerworld Australia Inc. All rights reserved.
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