Legal Studies Oral Assessment Task 2

Name: Riley Lawer

Line: 2
Teacher: Ross Burton

Good morning today I will be talking about piracy. Piracy is the act of illegally reproducing or
disseminating copyrighted material such as movies, music, and films without the
authorisation of the copyright owner.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is one of the 15 specialised agencies of
the United Nations that aims to promote and protect intellectual property around the world.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is an international trade group of business software
companies that aims to protect software providers by securing intellectual property rights,
enforce software copyright legislation and investigating compliance in partnership with
major digital players like Apple and Microsoft.

A media report by SBS News in 2022 has shown that one in four Australians are engaging in
online piracy. A key point of this report was that video games were the only category with a
decline in unlawful consumption over the preceding 12 months. The report also showed 26
percent of respondents allowed someone outside their household to use their login details.
The biggest driver of piracy was the draw of free content.

In Australia there is no registration process for copyrighted material and therefore

intellectual property rights are automatically protected under the Copyright Act 1968
(Commonwealth). The Act was amended by the government in 2015 to introduce s115A to
tackle the persistent online piracy problem. The amendments allow the copyright owner to
make applications to the Federal Court for an injunction, which is a legal ordit to stop doing
something to require a Carriage Service Provider (CSP) to disable access to an overseas
online location that infringes the copyright. These sanctions have proved to be effective.

The government also introduced the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2018
into the Australian parliament with the purpose of broadening the scope of the online
copyright infringement scheme. The main purpose of the bill is to make online search
engines like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo subject to injunctions, previously injunctions were
only applicable to Carriage Service Providers, but it will now be possible to require online
search engines to not provide search results that link to the relevant online location once
the amendment is enacted. This bill makes illegally downloading free movies and other
digital content significantly harder in Australia.

The Dallas Buyers Club case was a dispute between Dallas Buyers Club versus iiNet that took
place in 2016 which was about Dallas Buyers Club LLC and parent company Voltage Pictures
LLC (collectively known as DBC) failed to obtain details of customers IP addresses and had
allegedly been used to illegally share their film online. The DBC believed internet users
illegally shared the DBC film online, so they sought to sue them for copyright infringement.
The DBC wanted to record IP addresses of those using BitTorrent, so they used a German
company to record IP addresses of those who illegally shared the DBC film. The German

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company found 4,726 IP addresses and the DBC applied to the Federal Court to order iiNet
and five other internet service providers to reveal names and contact details of those using
IP addresses. The court agreed with the DBC and said it was entitled to preliminary
discovery. The internet service providers failed to persuade the court to use discretion to
withhold relief but convinced the court to impose restrictions on what the DBC can use the
customer details for. The court made an order against the internet service providers for
preliminary discovery but prohibited the DBC from disclosing any customer details to third
parties or using the details for any other purpose other than for recovering compensation
for infringement. Justice Pearman stated that the restrictions would ultimately protect the
customers private information but still provide the DBC the right to sue for copyright
infringement.

In order for piracy to decrease in Australia there needs to be harsher penalties for people
stealing copyrighted material. This will hopefully deter people from committing piracy and
further protect the owner of their intellectual property. I believe there needs to be law
reform as the laws we have now related to piracy are outdated and are not up to date with
advancing technologies that are making piracy harder to detect. The legal system needs to
enforce stronger piracy laws to provide better protection of intellectual property rights and
provide justice for the victims who have had their work stolen.

Thank you for listening

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 References

Armstrong legal
https://www.armstronglegal.com.au/commercial-law/national/property-law/copyright-act-
digital-piracy/

Go to Court.com
https://www.gotocourt.com.au/civil-law/digital-piracy-copyright-act/

Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/topic/piracy-copyright-crime

Lawpath
https://lawpath.com.au/blog/5-things-you-should-know-about-piracy-in-
australia#:~:text=Piracy%20is%20illegal&text=Piracy%20refers%20to%20the
%20accessing,Copyright%20Act%201968%20(Cth).

SBS News Media Report

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/disturbingly-high-one-in-four-australians-engaging-in-
online-piracy/c2k2yhkq6

Federal Register of Legislation (Copyright Act 1968)

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00042

World Intellectual Property Organisation

https://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/arab/en/wipo_cr_krt_05/wipo_cr_krt_05_5.doc

Forbes Media Report Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2018

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2018/11/29/australia-tightens-online-
piracy-laws/?sh=95665203d129

Clayton UTZ (Dallas Buyers Club Case)

https://www.claytonutz.com/knowledge/2016/april/implications-of-the-dallas-buyers-club-
v-iinet-decisions#:~:text=The%20sixteen%2Dmonth%20Dallas%20Buyers,illegally%20share
%20their%20film%20online