In fact, the illegal redistribution of copyrighted materials has been a problem since the dawn of the internet – most notably in the form of movie piracy. Be it through shady websites or various torrenting platforms, the anonymity, accessibility and unmediated nature of the internet results in the perfect environment for this type of illegal activity to flourish with little to no backlash – especially here in Australia.
Consider the act of torrenting. Torrenting itself isn’t inherently illegal, it’s simply a networking technology utilising peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing as a means to efficiently deliver content to a user. Unfortunately, often these files can contain copyrighted materials – be it designs, music or in the case of DBC, a film.
The Case – Dallas Buyers Club LLC v iiNet Limited
Between April and May of 2014, Voltage Pictures traced the IP addresses of 4,726 individuals that had illegally downloaded their latest feature film, Dallas Buyers Club. These individuals had pirated the film via the aforementioned BitTorrent client, and had failed to take any necessary precautions to prevent their IP addresses from being traced.
“The idea that any court would assess DBC’s damages on the basis that BitTorrent users who were going to share the film over the BitTorrent network would have avoided infringement by approaching DBC to negotiate a distribution arrangement in return for a licence fee is so surreal as not to be taken seriously.”
– Justice Nye Perram on the costs sought by Voltage Pictures
So, what did this really achieve in the realm of copyright law?
As is the case with anything, law can become obsolete or irrelevant, and by no one’s fault. To conceptualise not only the advancements in modern technology over the next 50 years, but also to provide a definite answer to legal issues these technologies may produce is fundamentally impossible. As this case, and many others before it, have highlighted, the 1968 Copyright Act does not account for modern technologies, hence the 2018 Copyright Reform.
Unfortunately however, even after a multitude of amendments made in 2018, there still isn’t really a definite answer on ‘fixing movie piracy’. The passing of the 2018 Copyright Reform helped reinforce a proactive approach to pirate sites, rather than a reactive one – all while bringing search engines into the equation. The amendment gives copyright holders the rights to force both ISPs and Search Engine’s to completely disable access to identified pirate sites. However, due to the sheer scale of the internet and its user base this has resulted in what’s essentially an ineffective game of Whack-A-Mole.
