Last week the Federal Court of Australia released its important decision in the iiNet case. As many commentators have pointed out, the court declined to require Australia’s ISPs to disconnect those of its subscribers who are repeat copyright infringers.
In the course of reaching this decision, the court made a number of important rulings about the liability arising from the use of BitTorrent networks including the following:
- Seeders and peers that make music available for sharing are infringers under Australia’s making available right.
- The transmission of copyright files as part of a BitTorrent swarm constitutes a transmission (communication) to the public by participants in the stream and is infringing.
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