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Moments of Flux in Intermediary Liability for Copyright Infringement in Australia

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Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of a recent shift in regulatory strategies to address copyright infringement toward enlisting the assistance of general purpose Internet Service Providers. In Australia, the High Court held in 2012 that iiNet, a general purpose Internet Service Provider, had no legal duty to police what its subscribers did with their internet connections. We provide an overview of three recent developments in Australian copyright law since that decision that demonstrate an emerging shift in the way that obligations are imposed on Internet Service Providers to govern the actions of their users without relying on secondary liability. The first is a new privately negotiated industry code that introduces a ‘graduated response’ system that requires Internet Service Providers to pass on warnings to subscribers who receive allegations of infringement. The second involves a recent series of Federal Court cases where rightsholders made a partially successful application to require Internet Service Providers to hand over the identifying details of subscribers whose households are alleged to have infringed copyright. The third is a new legislative scheme that will require Internet Service Providers to block access to foreign websites that ‘facilitate’ infringement. We argue that these shifts represent a greater sophistication in approaches to enrolling general purpose intermediaries in the regulatory project. We also suggest that these shifts represent a potentially disturbing trend towards enforcement of copyright law in a way that does not provide strong safeguards for the legitimate constitutional due process interests of users. We conclude with a call for greater attention and research to better understand how intermediaries make decisions when governing the conduct of users, how those decisions may be influenced by both state and non-state actors, and how the rights of individuals to due process can be adequately protected.

Nicolas Suzor and Kylie Pappalardo are academics and Rachel Choi is a Graduate

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Referring to the iiNet case, the US Ambassador to Australia writes: ‘Despite the lead role of AFACT and the inclusion of Australian companies Village Roadshow and the Seven Network, this is an MPAA/American studios production. … MPAA was the mover behind AFACT’s case (AFACT is essentially MPAA’s Australian subcontractor; MPAA/MPA have no independent, formal presence here), acting on behalf of the six American studios involved. MPAA prefers that its leading role not be made public. AFACT and MPAA worked hard to get Village Roadshow and the Seven Network to agree to be the public Australian faces on the case to make it clear there are Australian equities at stake, and this isn’t just Hollywood ‘bullying some poor little Australian ISP’.

  2. 2.

    “Safe harbour” schemes limit relief against carriage service providers who fall within a “safe harbour” specified in of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) Pt V Div 2AA from the risk of liability for inadvertently hosting or communicating infringing material on behalf of their users.

  3. 3.

    For an excellent overview and assessment of these schemes see Giblin (2014).

  4. 4.

    In July 2014, the UK government announced a new industry scheme, ‘Creative Content UK’, comprising of two components—a large-scale multi-media copyright education campaign, and a notice-and-notice subscriber alert program that will be implemented following the education campaign (see United Kingdom Government 2014; British Phonographic Industry 2015).

  5. 5.

    Since this scheme forms part of a settlement, the precise details are private. However, researchers have pieced together what they can of the terms (see Giblin 2014, 172–174).

  6. 6.

    The reaction of users in seeking ways of file sharing that are increasingly difficult to detect or quash accords with regulatory theory that punitive enforcement of the law is often less effective than persuasion, at least where punishment is used as an early choice: “punitive enforcement engenders a game of regulatory cat-and-mouse whereby [actors] defy the spirit of the law by exploiting loopholes and the state writes more and more specific rules to cover the loopholes” (Ayres and Braithwaite 1992, 26).

  7. 7.

    Bridy argues that the scheme does not permit users to raise defences based on sections 107 to 122 of the US Copyright Act, other than fair use in section 109, and does not permit a user to argue that the relevant content was in the public domain for any reason other than that it was published before 1923 (see also Giblin 2014, 178–180).

  8. 8.

    Including representatives from the Australian Content Industry Group (ACIG), Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), Digital Entertainment Alliance Australia (DEAA), Telstra, Optus, the Internet Industry Association (IIA) and the Communications Alliance. It is worth noting that ‘key stakeholders’ did not include user rights groups.

  9. 9.

    The Hon. Robert McClelland was the Attorney-General for Australia from December 2007 to December 2011.

  10. 10.

    The Code was initially scheduled to commence by 1 September 2015.

  11. 11.

    The Code will only apply to ISPs who have 1000 account holders individually or as part of a corporate group, and an initial cap on volume will be limited to up to 200,000 notices to be processed every 12 months.

  12. 12.

    For example, the limited scheme in Ireland implemented in response to EMI Records v. Eircom Ltd [2010] I.E.H.C. 108 seems to empower the ISP to terminate subscriber accounts upon receiving three notices of infringement. Additionally, the Copyright Alert Scheme implemented in the United States permits ISPs to impose ‘mitigation measures’ upon receipt of the fifth and sixth notice of infringement—these measures may include temporary restriction of the users’ internet access (see Giblin 2014, 173, 177).

  13. 13.

    As of 4 September 2015, Dallas Buyers Club LLC decided not to appeal Justice Perram’s ruling against its methodology for calculating damages. Indications are that they are re-working how to pursue additional damages beyond what the court has said it would allow (Reilly 2015).

  14. 14.

    Though ISPs are not compelled to hand over the identities of the customers; this is information which remains within the purview of the courts on a case by case basis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Nicolas Suzor & Kylie Pappalardo

  2. Paralegal, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Rachel Choi

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Correspondence to Nicolas Suzor .

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  1. School of Law, University of New England, Armidale, Australia

    Mark Perry

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Suzor, N., Choi, R., Pappalardo, K. (2016). Moments of Flux in Intermediary Liability for Copyright Infringement in Australia. In: Perry, M. (eds) Global Governance of Intellectual Property in the 21st Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31177-7_8

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