The Internet Industry Association has denied that negotiations between itself and various copyright holders groups over mechanisms for taking down infringing content have fallen through.

Michael Speck, the managing director of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), one of the companies involved in the negotiations, told ZDNet Australia   the organisations representing copyright holders were pulling out of the negotiations because they "didn't think the takedown protocol will do anything other than advantage the Internet industry".

"We want to understand the true levels of profits made by ISPs from illegal content," said Speck. "Any takedown protocol will protect them from taking any legal responsibility for [piracy] and prevent them from assisting copyright owners from identifying infringers."

Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association (IIA) denied the negotiations had been derailed. "I read a media report that said they were threatening to, but they haven't informed us and as far as we're concerned the negotiations are still on," he told ZDNet Australia  .

Coroneos said the copyright owners were probably expressing frustration at the pace of the negotiations, which he admitted had been "slow". "What we want to do is try and find protocols which preserve the balance of interests between those people who run networks and those people who feel their rights are being infringed by people on the networks," he said.

"There's no point in developing an industry code quickly and finding that no-one in the industry is willing to support it," said Coroneos. He pointed out that no country in the world had sorted out the problem posed by the Internet to copyright owners, and the US method of litigation led to "very unpredictable results".

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