This article is more than 1 year old

Dallas Buyers Club doubles down on Oz Torrenters

28,000 punters in its sights

The law firm that secured an Australian Federal Court decision against iiNet and other ISPs says it's widening its field of fire to target a further 23,000 individuals.

Marque Lawyers' boss Michael Bradley has told The West Australian that Australian internet service provider (ISP) iiNet was targeted by way of a test case. With the decision under its belt, the company will now send lawyergrams to other local ISPs, he said.

Given that it will take time for ISPs to match IP addresses against customers at the time of the infringement (if, in fact, Telstra and Optus haven't flushed their RADIUS servers recently) and draft letters for Justice Nye Perram's approval, Bradley says it could take a few months to set the wheels in motion.

In conversation with JJJ Radio's Hack program, Voltage Pictures' Michael Wickstrom said its letters might demand $AU8,000 or even as much as $US20,000 where “this person has every Voltage title, Disney titles, Warner titles”, a situation he called “illegal distribution at its worst”.

Such high demands would have to get past Justice Perram.

“I don't think the penalty should be so aggressive for the first-time downloader”, he said. “It's not always going to be a financial settlement”, he added, raising the possibility that the company might request infringing services be shut down if an account ignores the letters.

Wickstrom claimed the company has seen piracy rates in Australia as much as 50 per cent. ®

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