The 4,700 customers alleged to have downloaded an infringing copy of Dallas Buyers Club have won a small reprieve, with Federal Court Justice Nye Perram ordering Dallas Buyers Club LLC – the company taking the action against the unauthorised downloaders – to pay the court a $600,000 bond before it can obtain the names and addresses of the alleged infringers, in a bid to stop it issuing so-called “speculative invoices”. From The Canberra Times:
In this case, the rights holder wanted to send a letter to 4726 iiNet, Dodo and other Australian ISPs’ customers alleged to have shared the Dallas Buyers Club film using peer-to-peer file-sharing.
But Justice Perram’s decision will now make that almost entirely impossible for the US-based company unless it pays a large bond…
The bond was so large because Justice Perram feared the rights holder would not have to comply with any proposed order’s restrictions around what they can do with the information they obtain through the court process.
“Because DBC has no presence in Australia the court is unable to punish it for contempt if it fails to honour that undertaking,” he said.
“I will therefore require its undertaking to be secured by the lodging of a bond… it seems to me that I should set the bond at a level which will ensure that it will not be profitable for it to do so”…
Speculative invoicing occurs when rights holders send letters to copyright infringers demanding thousands of dollars of compensation to avoid being sued. By making Dallas Buyers Club LLC lodge the $600,000 bond, it makes speculative invoicing less profitable and therefore less likely to occur.
It’s good to see Justice Perram standing up for Australians. Pity the Government has moved in the opposite direction in its bid to prevent Australians from having access to a free market for digital content.
