The Australian music industry has won its case against an internet service provider over the running of a bit-torrent file sharing network which, the record labels claim, was being used to enable high levels of illegal content sharing. The Association of the Recording Industry Of Australia's Music Industry Piracy Investigations unit claimed that a group of employees at Swiftel were operating the bit torrent network.
Despite initially resisting attempts to discuss its internal operations, bosses at Swiftel last week reached an agreement with the record labels over those allegations, reportedly making a compensation payment to the content owners and committing to ensuring no file sharing hubs are run on its network. While the specifics of the settlement are not known, Swiftel used the resolution as an opportunity to express its wishes to work more closely with the music industry to fight online piracy. The company's chief, Ryan O'Hare, told reporters: "Swiftel regrets that it has not taken enough action to date to stop internet piracy. We are committed to implementing a new set of industry leading compliance programs to protect the music industry."
Those comments are interesting, because internet service providers have, in the past, distanced themselves from the responsibility of policing the sharing of music online - often hindering attempts by the record industry to crack down on P2P usage by only revealing information on their operations or their customers when forced to do so by the courts. Swiftel, of course, had specific reasons to talk up ISP/record label collaboration, but their statement of intent may be a sign that the internet service providers are changing their attitude now that the music industry has scored some significant legal victories against the technology firms who make P2P software.