An internet café run by Interville Technology pleaded guilty in a Sydney court yesterday to 40 charges of digital copyright infringement, copping a fine of $82,000. It has also been ordered to forfeit terminals and servers used in connection with the infringements.
It’s a different kind of case to the recent iiNet litigation. Interville was storing and serving up whole copyright files, not just supplying bandwidth that was used by customers for peer-to-peer file sharing. But the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft is involved in both cases, and a win is a win. The court result underscores how much is at stake for iiNet and its shareholders.
‘It’s a raid !’
The first Interville Technology knew of a long-running investigation into its file sharing activities was an Australian Federal Police raid on 18 December 2007.
According to a Sydney Morning Herald report at the time ‘heavy duty electronic equipment was discovered at the premises and employees at the internet cafe were hired to scour the web for suitable material to download.’
According to industry body MIPI: ‘The internet cafe was operating 60 computer terminals and three servers which contained a total of 8 terrabytes storage which contained hundreds of thousands of infringing movie, TV and music titles. Seized movie titles included titles not yet released in Australian cinemas including American Gangster, National Treasure Book of Secrets while numerous music tracks from over 150 well-known artists such as 50 Cent, Alicia Keys and Justin Timberlake.’
Interville ‘rolls over’
In Downing Centre Local Court, Interville pleaded guilty to a bundle of charges, probably in a negotiated ‘plea deal’ with prosecutors.
AFACT commented:
The conviction and sentencing marks the successful conclusion of excellent work by the Australian Federal Police, said Neil Gane, AFACT Director of Operations at the conclusion of the case.
It is satisfying to see sentences handed down which properly reflect the damage operations like this do to rights owners and the 50,000 Australians working in the film and TV industries. The sentences will send a clear message to all Internet cafe owners engaged in commercial scale copyright infringement; you will be caught and you risk severe penalties.’
Our take on it
This was a case of ‘direct’ copyright infringement, and was clearly on a commercial scale. Criminal charges were plainly available to the Commonwealth, so that’s what it has done.
The claim against iiNet is based on a second kind of alleged breach: ‘authorisation’. It’s more subtle to prove than direct infringement. But if ‘authorisation’ infringement is proven, it’s hard to see how it wasn’t also on a commercial scale.
It should also be noted that the $82,000 represents a criminal fine, not civil damages. It isn’t a benchmark for damages that might be sought from iiNet if things get that far.
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