In a landmark decision that’s been spoken about in all corners of the (Australian) internet the ISP companies targeted by the Dallas Buyers Club have been ordered to hand over the details of suspected pirates, Federal Court Justice Nye Perram ruled on the 7th of April 2015.
Through using technology from the German firm Maverickeye UG the rights owners, Voltage Pictures, were able to find the details of 4,726 customers from ISP companies iiNet, Internode, Adam internet, Amnet Broadband, Wideband and ISPs Dodo who illegally downloaded the film.
If you’ve downloaded Dallas Buyers Club and are now freaking out – stop. We have some good news for (a lot) of you.
Firstly, only the people who were seen to be ‘seeding’ the film are the ones being slapped with a fine, not the ‘leechers’.
For all you folks that aren’t up to speed with internet lingo ‘seeders’ are people who upload a part (or whole) of a file to a peer to peer (P2P) network and make it available for others to download. These others are known as ‘clients’, and usually in P2P networks the ‘clients’ account is setup to automatically start sharing what they’ve downloaded with others so they become ‘seeders’ too. This can however be changed so that they are only downloading files, hence the term ‘leechers’.
So if you have only downloaded Dallas Buyers Club chances are you won’t be receiving a letter in the mail accusing you of being an internet pirate and demanding you hand over money (and your newborn child).
But probably the best news of all for those of you waiting with baited breath for your letter – the owners of the Dallas Buyers Club will find it hard to use speculative invoicing, a ‘bullying tactic’ which they have employed in the US in which they have attempted to glean thousands of dollars from US ‘pirates’. Instead they have to submit their letter to Justice Nye Perram before sending them out to the suspected Australian pirates which may mean that suspected pirates are only slapped with a $10 fine, enough to cover the cost of buying the film legally.
With the release of Netflix in Australia at the end of March 2015 and some on demand viewing of popular TV programs from America we may now see a fall in the amount of internet piracy that has happened in Australia. But as some series are still being received in Australia well after the release date (like Game of Thrones) the numbers may not drop as substantially as people think.
If you’re looking for a way around internet piracy to get your fix of the latest TV shows and films we have a couple of (legal) tips for you:
You can install Hola, a VPN extension for your browser which will allow you to instantly play media files without having to wait for them to download from all over the world. There are some known issues with this service so do your own research before signing up.
Then, if you have a Netflix account, you can switch on your USA VPN and voila! You now have a US Netflix account, allowing you to access all the delicious American TV goodness that everyone knows and loves – no more waiting around for GOT season 5 woohoo!
Dallas Buyers Club
iinet targeted, can’t afford to win case so they give the ISP (?) to them…. not accurate though so the company will have to do a fair bit of searching around… only give out first 8 numbers or something like that?
Netflix, screen sharing, Ola VPN extension for browser – USA VPN – allows you to access american netflix so you can get all the good things straight away. allows you to stream torrents which isn’t illegal.