Day Three: iiNet deals with thousands of "robot notices"

By Ry Crozier on Oct 8, 2009 3:47 PM
Filed under Telco/ISP

Other ISPs alleged to be in same boat.

ISP iiNet has revealed it received 1,356 notifications from a variety of sources seeking action on alleged copyright infringements in just one week last year.

Its general counsel Richard Cobden tendered the text of several so-called "robot notices" to the Federal Court today in its copyright battle with the film industry.

"Well before Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft notices began to arrive, iiNet and doubtless other ISPs were in receipt of thousands and thousands of notices," Cobden alleged.

Notices tendered to the Court included one from the Entertainment Software Association, a US industry body representing the interests of computer and video game publishers.

It was alleged that iiNet received approximately 1,356 notices over the course of a week commencing December 1, 2008.

These came in "parallel to notices from AFACT" and its investigators, it was alleged.

"There has been a constant bombardment of these notices and demands for takedown [of users] for years," Cobden alleged.

"Acting on [all these] notifications is simply unreasonable and burdensome and inappropriate."

Counsel for AFACT alleged yesterday that Perth ISP Westnet - which iiNet acquired - had developed its own automated system for matching and forwarding notifications on to users.

The case continues. You can follow the case in-full here. For a background on the case, click here.

Day Three: iiNet deals with thousands of "robot notices"

4 comments in this discussion

"Tallguy, I have seen these notices and they are from the ISP to the customer. The ISP I am with mailed these notices out to the address where the ADSL is connected. -I assume they did a mail merge ..."

By Digger11

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Comments: 4

Jahm Mitt Oct 8, 2009 4:18 PM	Ahhhh you shouldn't be picking on RFUKT, I mean Walt Dizzy - the feeder of evil junk food munching garbage to fat kids and fat adults has rigged the copy right from 35 years to 120 years...... So much for the Fee Trade Agreements, that the studios RIGGED. IF RFUKT want to chase people up - it's THIER job to chase them up, and not for others to act on allegations. Loosers.
Digger11 Oct 8, 2009 6:03 PM	So a company with thousands of customers and millions of profit and turnover, cannot work out a way of emailing or posting out 271.2 notices a day - what a strange defence !!!! I wonder if these customers stopped paying if iiNet would struggle to bar the service ..... somehow I doubt it.
tallguy Oct 8, 2009 11:28 PM	Digger11: The question is not if they could work out such a system, but rather if they should. I would say these notices are in some ways analagous to phishing. The scenario might go something like this: ISP dutifully sends on notice to its customer, fulfilling their duty under the privacy act to not disclose the personal details of their customer. Computer novice Grandmother receives notice and contacts the original sender. Sender of notice now has details of "infringer" and pursues them directly. Caveat - I have never seen one of these notices, so above scenario may not be likely. I prefer a due process to be followed before the ISPs expose their customers to action by 3rd parties.
Digger11 Oct 12, 2009 11:30 AM	Tallguy, I have seen these notices and they are from the ISP to the customer. The ISP I am with mailed these notices out to the address where the ADSL is connected. -I assume they did a mail merge or something. They did not specify to contact AFACT or anyone like that. No breach of privacy from what I can tell - they just referred to illegal activity on an IP address, the name of the file that was being uploaded (i.e. shared on bittorrent) and told you to stop. NFI why iiNet, most ISP's did - it was a simple process. They are basically a desist notice, aka a warning.