Gnutella Forums - ISP beats RIAA/MPAA in court case

This is not new news, it's a few months old. But I thought worth noting:

iiNet wins copyright battle | the iiNet Blog

I liked these comments in the blog, among others also:

"Hollywood and America’s music industry may have bought (and paid) their own government to implement Draconian laws against the average person but its still good to see that we have a legal system that can be both up to date and understanding and not allow our country to be bullied into bending to the will of the manic power mongers of such companies."

"Hey Mike – you need to get someone to do a iinet vs AFACT version of the Hitler clip that people have been customizing on YouTube."

"I could never understand the studios’ case. Isn’t hitting iiNet for piracy because your customers are using you to illegally download pirated material, equivalent to hitting AusPost because they deliver packages that contain illegally pirated DVDs?

No one [to my knowledge] has ever suggested AusPost should open and inspect every letter/parcel to ensure its contents are legal!"

"If AFACT won their case against iiNet etc then surely a Bank would have a solid case against Toyota if a bank robber made his/her getaway in a Toyota vehicle."

"That’s why we have a High Court. We’re not all criminals, but it’s a brave new world and all of us are trying to make sense of it. I love music. I bought my first vinyl record when I was 15 years old, almost 40 years ago! But I also listened to the radio for free… a lot. Then everything went into the CD format, and I followed along. I still listened to the radio for free… a lot. I can’t begin to imagine how much I’ve willingly handed over to the record companies, just grateful to have the music in an easy-to-play format. But digital and Apple changed everything! Playlists… on a device I could carry anywhere. Wow! Yes, it took a little while for the record companies to figure out what was happening and move with the times, but they got there in the end. I now buy my music online. (I haven’t bought a CD for five years.) But I do still listen to the radio for free… a lot. Hollywood needs to stop trying to beat up iinet and start embracing the future. I’d buy their movies online the same way I buy my songs now, but it’s just not there yet. Surely that’s not the fault of the consumer, if they haven’t got their act together yet. (The internet is hardly new, guys.) Hollywood could stop bullying consumers and just try talking to them. See the world from our end. And start making it seamless for us to buy next-generation, because for an ever-increasing number of us, DVD is the dodo. (I haven’t bought a DVD in the last two years.) The sooner Hollywood accepts that we’ve all moved on, the better off we’ll all be. As for the radio, I talk to a lot of kids these days, and downloading songs and pictures and movies is just like listening to the radio to them. They do it for free… a lot. It’s there, and you turn your dial, and you can find anything you want. Hollywood needs to start thinking outside the box. Let movie distribution be the new radio. Why not? Radio doesn’t kill the record industry. Why should bandwidth kill the movie industry? Anyway, that’s for the suits in Hollywood to figure out. But to iinet, and the High Court, a big thank you!"

"Good to see this settled sensibly.

There’s also some things that need to be rolled back.

One of those… They’ve pulled a fast one on the world with ACTA. Looks a lot like legislation by stealth and dishonesty, and Australia is implicated."

"My question has always been, why do they not take the blank video tape/rewritable DVD/external hardrive/usb stick manufacturers to court as well? They too are ‘enabling’ piracy and have about as much control over what the consumer does with their product. The whole case was a ridiculous waste of time and resources from the beginning! Hooray: it’s over and you won :)"

"A great outcome which reassures me that the old saying ‘the Law is an a$$’ does not always hold true.
Dare we hope that the anonymous ‘bean-counters’ who advise (control?) entertainment production firms in Hollywood and elsewhere will shortly realise that the too-high prices they desire for material (ie, inflicted NON-affordability) is a prime motivator for people to seek cheaper (ie, pirated, etc) alternatives ?
My $64 million question is -
When will ‘they’ wake up to the (commercial?) reality that a remarkably high percentage of people with an ‘average disposable income’ will happily pay $3 for 1 copy of a given item while the much higher prices (eg, $30) ‘they’ demand are affordable / appealing only to a distinctly smaller group of people, most of whom are blessed with an ‘ABOVE-average disposable income’ ???

To me, it appears that the world’s entertainment industry has lost touch with / totally forgotten certain principles of marketing / retailing related to ‘volume selling’. Namely –
High price = few buyers = poor return;
Low price = more buyers = better turnover;
Lowest possible price = maximum buyers = best possible profit.
Or something along those lines – been around for 60+ years, so my memory isn’t all that it once was. But it does seem to be a wee bit better than the ‘entertainment industry gurus’ … ????"