Day 14: Film industry wants iiNet to block Pirate Bay access

The film industry will seek Federal Court orders to force ISP iiNet to block its customers from accessing websites such as the Pirate Bay should it win the civil case currently underway.

In a controversial start to the morning session, the film industry's lead barrister Tony Bannon provided the court with a brief demonstration of the Pirate Bay website.

"[The question is] whether iiNet would have any desire for its customers to be accessing a site when the only purpose it serves is providing a way to download unauthorised copies of films?" Bannon put to Malone, prompting an objection from iiNet's barrister.

The "desire" of iiNet's customers to visit particular websites was "quite irrelevant" to the case, iiNet barrister Richard Cobden alleged.

Justice Cowdroy also questioned the relevance.

Bannon responded: "We do seek blocking orders if we're otherwise successful [in the case].

"We will seek an order that iiNet be ordered to block access to certain sites and this is one of those sites.

"We seek Mr Malone's position as to whether or not his customers should have access to sites such as this."

Bannon added, after given a further opportunity to clarify his line of questioning in relation to the objection, that he wanted to give Malone an "opportunity" to tell the court he [Malone] wanted customers to still have access to the Pirate Bay and similar sites.

After further legal argument, in which Bannon alleged the Pirate Bay website accounted for "about 50 percent of instances of infringement" in the case, Bannon withdrew the contentious question.

He continued, re-phrasing: "You've certainly taken no steps to block access of any customers to the Pirate Bay site, do you agree?"

"Yes," Malone stated. "We don't have the technical capability to do it today."

"Do you accept that you can acquire the technical capability?" Bannon pressed.

"To do a very naïve block of certain websites, to ‘blackhole' them, could be achieved with additional equipment," Malone alleged.

"I know this because we would have needed it to participate in the Federal Government's internet filtering trials."

But Malone said the technology could be "trivially bypassed" by customers.

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