Studios vs. Australian ISP could preview coming U.S. war

By Eriq Gardner

If the industry's battles against P2P technologies and individual file-sharers represented stages one and two, respectively, in the fight against piracy, we may be seeing the third front in this war unfolding in Australia this week.

In a case that hasn't gotten much attention here in the U.S., a group representing 34 entertainment companies including Warner Bros, Paramount, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, and others, is suing iiNet, Austrailia's third-largest ISP, claiming it allows users to illegally share copyrighted material. The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft went to trial this week in an attempt to prove 98,000 iiNet customers had illegally shared material online within a 59-week period.

Australian newspapers report that if successful, studios would have a legal basis to make ISPs liable for acts of copyright infringement.

In the U.S., there was a strong push to get major ISPs like Comcast to aggressively police its network, but momentum has faltered somewhat as the FCC has embraced net neutrality.

Nevertheless, in the Australian case, we could be seeing the foreshadowing of some future lawsuit here in the U.S. by the MPAA or the RIAA against ISPs. The case so far has been interesting, with allegations by the defendant that studios promoted their product by making deals with BitTorrent.com. A decision is expected early next week.