In a case which could have global repercussions, Australia's third largest ISP is defending itself against movie industry claims that it was responsible for its customers piracy.

The Movie industry is having a crack at suing the ISP for not doing enough to stop  its customers using P2P to download movies. According to iinet it was like suing an electricity company because its customers do something illegal with their power.

iiNet said that the Copyright Act and Safe Harbour provisions introduced with the US free trade agreement stipulated that ISPs were not liable for copyright infringement by customers.

Seven major movie studios and the Seven Network filed suit against iiNet for allegedly allowing its users to download pirated movies and TV shows using BitTorrent. If the movie industry loses the case, its planned targetting of ISP plan will have failed and it will have to  go after individual file sharers.  This plan cost it a lot of money and didn't deal with the situation at all.

However if iiNet loses, all ISPs could be forced to disconnect customers identified by the movie studios as illegal downloaders. Lawyers for the movie studios said they provided iiNet with evidence of its customers' copyright infringement yesterday. However the movie industry has a history of having its technical evidence proven to be bogus.

IiNet said it knew some of its customers were downloading illegally but the case was going to decide how much it was liable for the actions of its users.  Also what evidence the movie studios should provide to prove it.