iinet, the second largest ISP of Australia, has been sued by the film and TV industry over the violation of copyright by its users. The lawsuit is filed by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Disney and the Seven Network in the Australian Federal Court. According to the compliant, iinet has violated copyrights by not preventing users from illegal file sharing on BitTorrent.The companies are looking for a ruling that will force the ISP to stop their users from violating copyrights. According to Herald the chief executive of Internet Industry Association, Peter Coroneos said that the case may include use of safe harbor provisions under the Australian-US Free Trade Agreement:
This is a very important test case for the internet industry in Australia. It will test the effect of the safe harbor provisions that were introduced with the US free trade agreement, which provides immunity for ISPs in certain circumstances such as transmission, hosting, caching and referencing activities.
