In his first interview since assuming the role, Michael Kerin, previously a Qantas investigator, said the prosecution of the Perth ISP for alleged online copyright infringement would send a clear signal to ISPs and file-sharing providers of the music industry's intentions.
Kerin replaces Michael Speck, who left the piracy watchdog but for his ongoing involvement in the Kazaa case.
Like Speck, the majority -- 16 years -- of Kerin's career has been spent in the NSW Police. There he worked in a range of areas such as electronic enforcement and counter-terrorism. For the last two years he conducted internal and external theft and fraud investigations at Qantas.
Since joining the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) unit last month, Kerin said he was meeting journalists, musicians and others to "fully form" his views on digital piracy.
However, he was adamant MIPI would force Australian ISPs to implement 'take-down' regimes for online copyright breaches, and act on them.
"It will be interesting to see the attitude of ISPs [to the result of the Swiftel case]."
The ISP industry has in the past been reluctant to take legal responsibility for all traffic carried on its networks.
MIPI claims about 50 ISPs around Australia shut down overnight the day the legal action was launched.
"I suppose some industry associations may feel the law is grey," Kerin said.
"However, the Swiftel case will allow us to put that into perspective.
"If they're going to be reckless with the law, they will be targeted."
The Internet Industry Association (IIA), of which Swiftel parent company People Telecom is a member, is working on a copyright code of practice for ISPs to deal with liability.
However, IIA chief executive Peter Coroneos said such a takedown regime was already in place, and that its members complied with every accurate takedown request.
He said the debate needed to move from liability issues to issues of control.
"It comes down to what degree is it reasonable for ISPs to take control of activity?," he said.
"If someone says I own the rights to a song [on an ISP network], it's not always transparent to an ISP.
"And if an ISP does remove that material but gets it wrong, they could be in breach of someone else's rights," he said.
"You wouldn't want a situation where all content on the Internet had to be scanned because there's a chance a law might be infringed."
MIPI and IIA stakeholders will continue to be involved with the code's development until it is published before the end of the year.
ISPs and peer-to-peer networks were the focus of MIPI's efforts, Kerin said, as they could be large-scale facilitators of piracy.
"I like to keep things simple," Kerin said.
"The people we have litigated and prosecuted have been flagrantly in breach of the law.
"I think we've exposed the myths about people painting themselves as 'digital revolutionaries'."
In keeping with this, he said he would maintain Speck's line that end-users would not be targeted. This tactic has caused controversy overseas where the industry has prosecuted children and the elderly for online piracy.
"We wouldn't like to see those headlines in Australia," he said.
Should the RTA be responsible for every unlawful activity on our roads ?
No that is what our tax funded police force are for.
Should commercial companies (like ISP's) be allowed to monitor (and
"accidentally" leak) our personal data for any reason ?
No, no one should, except law enforcement with courts permission (and
NSA equivalents of course :)
Oh yeah, and for what reason by the way? For national security to
protect our axses, NOT for the almighty business dollar.
Then how can it be reasonable to expect an ISP to invest huge amounts of
manpower, money and time in something the public don't want, just
because some business thinks it has a god given right, that outstrips
all our civil rights, to protect their lucrative property.
This country is desperately trying get decent, affordable Internet
access to ALL the Australian public. If ISP's are supposed to wear this
I would have to ****ume that cost would be p****ed on to us end users and
we'd take a few steps back.
No business should be worried, cause once we're all hooked up, THEN
they'll have more of an online consumer base to target for their endeavors.
So quite frankly, I think stop their corporate whining and attempts at
making the man in the middle responsible for their profit. If they have
to litigate against copyright infringements, fine !! They can dig up
their evidence through the same means that users find the stuff, make a
case and go for their lifes.
They should just stop trying to create a lot of hype that they are hard
done by. Technology and the world are changing and if they don't have
the foresight to morph their business model into something that rides
the wave then you are left behind, just like any of us.
One last thing, VIRUS/SPAM. They might argue that many ISP's are
already monitoring emails for VIRUS/SPAM, and is the same thing. Well
there are two distinct differences that make it acceptable the way I see it:
1. Its destroying/clogging/endangering the very Internet system itself
and must be eliminated for the good of us ALL.
2. Virtually ALL of the public desire, nay demand it. Even some purist
privacy advocates are even happy with the VIRUS/SPAM check done by
ISP's, as long as they can opt out for their personal account.