Hollywood Studios Lose Australia Lawsuit Over Downloads

Walt Disney and Viacom’s Paramount Pictures are among Hollywood’s biggest movie studios that lost a piracy lawsuit in Australia as the country’s top court upheld rulings that a local Internet provider wasn’t responsible for customers illegally downloading films.

Iinet Ltd., based in Perth, didn’t authorize the infringement when customers illegally downloaded pirated copies of movies, the High Court of Australia ruled, according to a summary of the decision released on the court’s website. Village Roadshow Ltd.’s Roadshow Films led the companies trying to stop iiNet customers from using BitTorrent software to illegally download copyrighted films, in a precedent-setting case for Internet providers in Australia. The studios were appealing earlier court decisions vindicating iiNet, and seeking damages that they said could include royalties on illegally downloaded movies.