Late last year I was speaking to industry representatives
about the outcome for the iiNet court case. They all believed that it was a lay down misère, (in
favour of themselves).

After all, there was little old iiNet, a small (by world
standards) ISP and there were thirty-four financially well heeled complainants.
(Just on the basis of odds, it would have appeared that fortune would favour
the litigants.)

Well apparently not so.

This morning in court, reading out his summary of the almost
200 page judgment,  Justice Cowdroy summarized
that the evidence established that iiNet had done no more than to provide an
internet service to its users which was a legitimate communication medium that
was neither intended nor designed to infringe copyright.

And further, he said that “while iiNet had knowledge of
infringements occurring and did not act to stop them, such findings did not
necessitate a finding of authorization”. (In other words, iiNet didn’t create
an environment that publicly proclaimed “Join iiNet and get your movies for
free,” and thereby ostensibly “authorize” it’s users to download content illegally.)

This is the second time in in the last decade that the
content companies have gone after small Australian ISP’s. The last time in 1999
it was APRA for music on hold.

The content industry cherry pick their litigation victims based
on a formula:

Reliance on jurispridence in this instance would appear to have failed, so
it's back to the drawing board for the content companies.

Or maybe not, after all, ACTA is still hanging it’s head
over the entire free world, our politicians having been obviously influenced to
an extent by the large political donations recieved over the last few years.

Whichever way the content companies
jump, one fact remains foremost in every film directors minds.

“If everyone downloads the content
for free, then where will the funding for next years blockbuster movies come
from?”

There is however another story at
play.

That is the story about how for
decades, money has won the majority of legislative decisions, because after
all, that is the nature of the corporate beast (and it is the corporate beast that donates the most money for political hopefuls to become Miisters of Parliament).

The mantra of the Corporation is survive at all costs, repel all
boarders, prosecute all wrong doers (doing wrong against the company).

Anyone that is, or has been a CEO
knows that being the boss means that you have a fiduciary interest to the company
and its shareholders to win at all (legally permissable) cost.

Or, failing winning, the CEO still
have to answer to the toughest boss of all, the shareholders; and shareholders
can be a merciless audience at annual general meetings.

Shareholders don’t care why you
failed, they just know that their investment is worth less this year than last
and as you’re running the show it must be YOUR fault.

The content industry has had some
major upsets at the helm of several of their member companies. But what is also
happening is that their shareholders are realizing that strongarm tactics are
not working.

Sometimes it takes a long time for
an idea or meme to become an accepted fact.

In Australia,
the “Belt-up” seat-belt road safety campaign ran for ten years before
Australians accepted that putting on the seat belt was an automatic function of
traveling in a motor vehicle.

Possibly, the content industry
shareholders now realise that :

A)      File
sharing is here to stay.

B)      ISP’s
are unable to prevent it from occurring.

C)      The
Justice system is unwilling to enforce fascist type lawmaking precedence.

D)      Other
options need to be examined.

Now, if we could just convince our
legislators of the same (in relation to ACTA and restrictive and privacy
infringing aspects of other Free Trade legislation,) then we might just have a
world where we all get on a lot better and happier.

Wikipedia states that the definition of happiness is a
state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction,
pleasure, or joy.

 Happiness economics suggests that measures of
public happiness should be used to supplement more traditional economic
measures when evaluating the success of public policy.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley

I’m pretty sure that right now,
Michael Malone (CEO of iiNet) looks like the little guy above.

Curiously, I believe that today’s
decision means that the shareholders of content companies can actually now also
be happy and instruct their representatives, the content company CEO’s to start
the process of meaningful dialogue to profit from P2P, rather than lose from
it.

P.S: And Australia
really does have a balanced and fair court system. Which is rather nice to
know.

References:

Judgment – Roadshow Films Pty
Ltd v iiNet Limited (No. 3) [2010] FCA 24

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2010/24.html

Happiness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness

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