Evil US corporation targets Aussie battler pirates

It's official. US corporations are on the war path out to get Aussie pirates. Are they frustrated with the slow progress of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement and have entered the fray on their own? Or are they just so mean that they won't even give us the crumbs from their table?

I'm a pensioner. Worked 30 years before my body failed in a hard physical industry. Bought up a daughter in that time and cared for the family, me being the mainstay wage earner. I am the quintessential battler. Now we're fighting to keep a roof over our head. We battle on. 

So we download the odd show for free online. Whatever. We've got fuckin nothing. Surely a bit of free entertainment in our own home isn't going to send the corporations broke?

Well apparently so. Anyone in Australia that has downloaded the movie "Dallas Buyers Club" is now being targeted by the corp that made it. As the laws here protect such people as me who download for domestic purposes (similar to recording a VHS in the old days) from being subject to these copyright laws, the corp has tried to go around it in the courts, challenging these laws in a test case:

In the United States, the people behind Dallas Buyers Club had already filed 66 lawsuits by June and targeted more than 1000 alleged people who downloaded the film via BitTorrent 

They were asking for settlements of up to $US5000 per offence, or more in some cases. 

Now they're taking their battle to Australia, applying to the Federal Court that it have iiNet and other local ISPs hand over the identities of the alleged pirates. 

Chief Regulatory Officer Steve Dalby told TorrentFreak that iiNet will oppose the move made by Dallas Buyers Club LLC. 

"iiNet would never disclose customer details to a third party, such as movie studio, unless ordered to do so by a court. We take seriously both our customers privacy and our legal obligations," Dalby says. 

iiNet does not support piracy, but it is concerned about the way Dallas Buyers Club and its studio Voltage Pictures will use the information. Dalby says that while it may seem reasonable for a movie studio to ask for the pirates identities, if would only be so, if they intended to use information fairly and let the alleged pirate defend themselves in court. 

"In this case, we have serious concerns about Dallas Buyers Club's intentions. We are concerned that our customers will be unfairly targeted to settle any claims out of court using a practice called 'speculative invoicing'," Dalby says. 

He is referring to a practice, where a company mails 'invoices' to the alleged copyright infringer to get a cash settlement while trying to discourage them from appearing in court. It was a controversial scheme, that did not survive legal scrutiny in the UK. 

Dalby says that because iiNet have opposed the Dallas Buyers Club LLC application for the identities, it will now be up to the Federal Court, whether iiNet should do so. Read more