Australian universities forced 2 hand over computer hardware

[Jo]

Three Australian universities, suspected of piracy on their networks, have to hand over CDs and computer hard drives to a recording industry expert for examination.

The orders relate to legal action record companies EMI, Universal and Sony are taking against the universities over alleged music copyright infringements.

The companies have taken the universities of Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania to court over alleged music piracy detected by a routine check on Internet usage.

The Federal Court has granted the record companies access to the universities' computer system to investigate the allegations further.
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[OzzieKris]

This is so pathetic.

The companies are out of control, as if they dont make enough money already.

one thing I would like to know is, if they find evidence of P2P sharing who are they going to take legal action against, and how can they prove who was at the computer and who downloaded the songs. They cant it is humanly impossible to state that Joe Bloggs was the one who was downloading, it all comes down to dennying and that is the best defence.

Hell they cancome and take my PC away and look in it God knows what they will find, i will blame the P2P gnomes that sneak into my house at night to download movies and songs lol.

The Australian government is getting way out of hand and needs to ease up on the public

[pacmania_2001]

The problem I forsee is that a university computer is a shared public computer. They will have a hard time pinning the download to one person because of this.

If they track the login records to an individual that said individual could simply claim he went to go research something in the library and during that time someone did the downloading.

An attempt to sue the university itself would probably be a hard thing to do as well. The university I attend blocks most p2p sites and has strict file sharing rules in place. If they did go after the university it could claim it did a reasonable amount to stem piracy on its network.

[Vejita-sama]

They will most likely go after the university (and other large corporations) because their is a lot of P2P stuff going on with these machines. These d/loads are illegal and the companies failed to prevent them. There really is no such thing as 'reasonable' it's subjective.

Sure all universities have a policy against P2P, but they also have policy against cheating. And yet both happen. SO clearly the powers that be do not believe in protecting copywrights or following the law. A few law suits and court costs should remain these people that they can not sit by and knowling let their students break the law.

etc. etc. etc. Plus universitys 'might' have money (corps are a better bet).

[pacmania_2001]

I see a number of hurdles they would have to overcome if they did choose to go after a university.

Firstly they would have to prove that the university was negligent in stemming piracy. The mere fact that the said university had a policy in place as well as technical measures in place would be a blow straight off the bat to the movie/music companies case.

Secondly, Australia doesn't have in place policy like the DMCA that is open for (mis)interpretation by the movie and music companies.

Lastly, unlike an individual universities have the means to fight back. They have whole law departments (people with professors, ph.D's and barristers) who could fight such a lawsuit.