The key to dealing with P2P infringements: regulation, partnerships and education

In iiNet, the High Court held that current Australian copyright law is powerless to prevent large-scale peer-to-peer (P2P) infringements. A similar conclusion was previously reached by the Irish High Court in the UPC decision. This article compares and contrasts the two decisions, finding that the judges in both cases came to a number of similar conclusions. The article also explains how dealing with large-scale P2P infringements requires a combination of appropriate regulation, partnerships between the telecommunications and content industries and education. It concludes that, as in Ireland, legislative reform is needed to deal with the problem of P2P file-sharing.