Broadband Advisor

The Australian Internet industry has supported iiNet in its defence against legal action filed by the leading US media giants and the Seven Network, which experts say could force providers to police peer-to-peer traffic if the Federal Court rules in favour of the plaintiffs.

The leading film studios and Channel 7 have taken legal action against iiNet claiming the ISP is complicit in the infringement of their copyrighted material.

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) and UNSW are assembling e-security and ISP filtering experts to examine the merits of the government’s proposed Internet content filtering scheme.

The US Congress will push for net neutrality legislation next year, even though the US Federal Communications Commission has acted against broadband providers that it found to block or slow Web content.

A U.S. Internet service provider suspected of aiding cybercriminals in online scams and hosting child pornography was at least partially cut off from the Internet on Tuesday night.

Federal Communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy has dodged a question by the Greens, who claimed he said in an October Senate estimates hearing that countries such as Sweden and Canada had mandatory Internet filtering systems similar to those now being trialled in Australia, when in fact they don’t.

The Competitive Carriers Coalition (CCC) and chair of Broadband World Australia 2008 have claimed that Telstra has pulled out of the event after it failed to force conference organiser, Terrapinn, to remove the CCC and independent telco analyst, Paul Budde, from the program.

Sprint-Nextel has decided to sever its Internet connection with Cogent, another US-based Internet service provider, according to a statement from Cogent.

The newly appointed shadow broadband minister, Senator Nick Minchin, has voiced his appall that a member of Senator Conroy’s office had tried to curb severely critical comments made by Internode network engineer Mark Newton regarding the government’s Internet content filtering scheme.

Hundreds of regional Australians have suffered another broadband blow after Internet connections were severed without notice for a week following a dispute between satellite provider IPSTAR and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) Lisp and GoBush.

A group of technology and entertainment heavyweights is undertaking a public relations campaign to dissuade consumers from illegal file sharing, something the group calls "net pollution."