An Australian court ruling has ordered a number of Australian internet service providers to provide the details of thousands of customers whose accounts were allegedly used to download and share the Dallas Buyers Club movie.
Reports the ABC, the landmark ruling was delivered this afternoon, Tuesday 7th April, when Justice Nye Perram ruled in favour of Dallas Buyers Club LLC’s “preliminary discovery” application which requested that the ISPs disclose the identities of people it alleges dowloaded and shared the movie online.
The Judge ordered that the ISPs had to hand the contact details over to Dallas Buyers Club LLC – the company that owns the rights to the 2013 blockbuster – but said those details could not be made public and letters sent to the customers had to first be vetted by him. The details did not include email addresses.
Affected ISPs include iNet, Dodo, Internode, Amnet Broadband, Adam Internet and Wideband Networks. Dallas Buyers Club LLC claimed in court it had identified 4,726 Australian IP addresses where the film was illegally downloaded from as early as May 2013.
“They are to submit to me a draft of any letter they propose to send to account holders associated with the IP addresses which have been identified,” Justice Perram said. He also spoke about the “need to provide deterrence” against file sharing. “It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that damages of a sufficient size may be awarded,” he said.
The ISPs argued the request was a breach of privacy and puts customers at risk of being exposed to a practice of “speculative invoicing”. Such a practice involves sending alleged infringers invoices for large sums of money, accompanied by intimidating letters and threats of legal action if they don’t settle.
There are reports that this practice occurred in the US where customers received letters alleging they could be liable for payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars unless they agree to out of court settlements for thousands.
“Whether speculative invoicing is a lawful practice in Australia is not necessarily an easy matter to assess,” Justice Perram said. The ISPs have 28 days to appeal the decision.
Dallas Buyers Club LLC’s lawyer Michael Bradley said the decision was a move towards ruling out illegal downloads in Australia. “Australia is one of the jurisdictions with the highest rate of unauthorised downloading and this is a first step from a copyright owner to try to change that balance.”
