[AusNOG] Internet companies forced to block The Pirate Bay, bittorrent websites in Australia, Federal Court rules

[Paul Wilkins]

Whether or not it was stupid to seek arbitration is a a matter of opinion.
I think most would agree that where the ACMA have asked for an IP block,
there is no reason to assume an arbitrator will give you a better outcome,
whether the cost of arbitration is a legitimate use of the company's funds,
and there's the question of risk to the business if they are dilatory in
imposing an ACMA directive. I think it would be stupid to assume such
measures were imposed lightly, without running the consequences past
engineering and legal.

Kind regards

Paul Wilkins

On 20 December 2016 at 23:05, Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org> wrote:

> On 20 Dec 2016, at 1:18 PM, Paul Wilkins <paulwilkins369 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> The ASIC case was interesting because the ISPs begged ASIC not to do this,
> but in that instance, the decision was ASIC's, and the ISPs had no choice.
>
>
> The ISPs actually did have a choice, and were under no obligation to
> provide ASIC with the assistance they requested.
>
> Which is one reason why only some ISPs accidentally blocked hundreds of
> thousands of websites.
>
> In particular, every ISP could have invoked section 314(3)(b), but most
> didn’t.
>
> Additionally, sections 313(3) and (4) only require that carriers or
> carriage service providers “give such help as is reasonably necessary”.
> It’s a stretch to say that collateral blocking of a quarter of a million
> websites is “reasonably necessary.”
>
> In retrospect, it wasn’t; as the various inquiries into the matter
> concluded. The service providers who listened to ASIC and said, “Yep,
> sounds reasonable, we’d better do it…” no doubt believed they were doing
> the right thing, but they were objectively wrong, and should have pushed
> back, as the law permitted (required) them to do. There are lessons there
> which almost certainly have not been learned.
>
> Various ISPs came out of that episode looking like a bunch of dickheads.
> To portray the result as inevitable because they “had no choice” is a
> pretty stupid rewriting of history, and a misunderstanding of the
> legislation that governs the industry that you choose to earn your living
> from.
>
> These laws MEAN something. The Parliament intended that ISPs would be able
> to kybosh unreasonable demands from law enforcement agencies: That’s what
> the legislation actually says. To behave as if those words were never
> enacted into law and ISPs have to do what they’re bloody-well told renders
> the Parliament’s legislated intent meaningless, and is *obviously *
> bullshit.
>
>
>   - mark
>
>
>
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