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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from ZDNet Australia. --------------------------------------------------------------
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US piracy decision unlikely to hurt locals: lawyer By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia January 23, 2003 URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/US-piracy-decision-unlikely-to-hurt-locals-lawyer/0,130061791,120271476,00.htm
A recent US court order requiring ISP Verizon to release details of one of its users to the Recording Industry Association of America is unlikely to affect Australians in the short term, a telecommunications law expert confirmed today. A US District Judge found the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) required Verizon Communications to disclose the name of a Kazaa subscriber who was allegedly sharing more than 600 music recordings. Brendan Scott, a lawyer specialising in IT at Gilbert and Tobin, said a US court could theoretically order an Australian ISP to release details of a user, but was unlikely to. "It would require them to take an expansive view of their jurisdiction...Australians in Australia would not normally be considered by a US judge to be subject to US law," he said. "Even if they did, a US judgment isn't directly enforceable here. The plaintiff would still need to approach an Australian court to have it enforced, unless the ISP has assets [or] some other presence in the US," said Scott. The issue came to the fore recently when some Australian ISPs reported receiving a letter demanding the termination of accounts of users accused of sharing copyrighted material on peer-to-peer networks. A plaintiff could seek to subpoena this sort of information under Australian law in an Australian court, with the result depending on the apparent strength of the case, according to Scott. "A court would be unlikely to permit a "fishing expedition" for example," he said.
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