iiNet and 'Land Down Under'

For those who haven't already seen this, the Federal Court handed down two interesting cases today.

(1)
Cowdroy J finally handed down the long anticipated decision in iiNet. I won't bother talking about it too much because we will be looking at it in due course when it inevitably gets to the High Court. The issue was whether iiNet (the ISP) were liable for authorising copyright infringement because they failed to prevent their users from downloading movies. His Honour found that iiNet was not liable. Here's Cowdroy J's summary of his summary (i.e. it is not part of the official judgment):

In summary, in this proceeding, the key question is: Did iiNet authorise copyright infringement? The Court answers such question in the negative for three reasons: first because the copyright infringements occurred directly as a result of the use of the BitTorrent system, not the use of the internet, and the respondent did not create and does not control the BitTorrent system; second because the respondent did not have a relevant power to prevent those infringements occurring; and third because the respondent did not sanction, approve or countenance copyright infringement.

(2)
Men at Work got slammed for their use of 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree' in their song (Land) 'Down Under'.  Verdict: it is a material part.

I won't comment on the law in this post but I will say that (1) makes me happy as a computer geek and closet IP anarchist, and (2) makes me sad as a lover of 80's Australian anthems.