Philip Danks was sentenced to 33 months' jail. Credit:Facebook/Philip Danks "It's high time that a specialist small claims tribunal be established to deal with low-level criminal and civil [copyright] infringements [in Australia]," Mr Speck, who was once the head of ARIA's music industry piracy investigations unit, said. "The vast majority of victims of copyright infringement can't afford to go before a court in this country. It's incredibly expensive to prosecute a case and it's very easy to stifle a civil or criminal prosecution," he added. "The enforcement process in this country is dysfunctional [and] the people that do get a success before the courts necessarily herald their success. It's a system that works in spite of itself in relation to commercial infringers." Mr Speck added that of the many investigations he's been involved with, many didn't make it to the police.

This was, he said, because there was "no system ... for criminal prosecutions to be dealt with by the appropriate law-enforcement agencies". "So, much of what would be criminal infringement of property - or indeed organised criminal infringement - is dealt with [in the civil courts] or it's not dealt with at all." Two days after Danks was arrested on May 23 he bragged about his efforts on his Facebook. "Seven billion people and I was the first. F--- you Universal Pictures," he wrote, referring to the fact he was the first to upload the film on the internet for people to download. Judge Raynor said this was "bold, arrogant and cocksure offending" when sentencing Danks.

Mr Speck said the sentence was fair because Danks intended to make money from his infringement. "There is no way that he can deny being a commercial infringer who set out to take a valuable piece of property and disseminate it around the world," he said. "He's quite proud of the fact he knows and intends for the dissemination to be global and to a ... multibillion-person audience." One of the most recent high-profile Australian piracy cases resulted in a Sydney father and son being sentenced by a judge in May after they were caught selling unauthorised Foxtel pay TV services to thousands of people. The judge ordered father Michael Scherle, 48, to serve a six-month jail term followed by home detention and community service for his role in leading the offences. His son Daniel Albert Clark, 24, was placed on a good behaviour bond for his involvement.

In another high-profile US case in 2009, a jury ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset - a then 32-year-old single mother of four - to pay $US1.92 million in damages for illicitly downloading 24 songs. In an effort to combat piracy here in Australia, the federal government recently issued an online copyright infringement discussion paper that included proposals to compel internet providers to stop subscribers who illicitly download and block overseas websites that host copyright infringing content. Submissions are due by September 1. The content industry has welcomed the paper's ideas while some internet providers like iiNet have rejected them, saying that the issue of piracy is primarily a pricing and availability issue. Conversely, telecommunications provider Telstra, which owns 50 per cent of Foxtel, recenlty said it supported the crackdown. David Thodey, Telstra's chief executive, said the issue needed to be addressed and that lack of availability was not an excuse for infringing.

"This piracy of content is theft. I hold a very strong view on that. You can't justify it on the price of content. A whole industry exists to create great content. It's theft," he reportedly said at the company's recent financial results. But despite Mr Thodey calling illicit downloading "theft", many Australian lawyers argue it is not. "... Despite what the copyright owners' associations would have you believe, copyright infringement by downloading for personal use is not theft and it's not a crime," Robert Gregory, of Maddocks law firm, said recently. "Theft is when you permanently deprive the owner of their property, like stealing a DVD from a shop. Once you've stolen it, it's gone and the shopkeeper can't sell it to someone else. When you download an episode of Game of Thrones without paying for it, you're infringing the copyright and committing a civil wrong, but you don't stop the owners of GoT from selling another copy of the episode to a paying customer, such as me." Regardless of this, Thodey said action needed to be taken.

"The question is how we as an industry — both in terms of the rights holders and the telco industry — find a workable solution that is ubiquitous and fair. And I think we've got to work through that," he said. "If we can play a role that helps prevent theft just like we do in any way to help law enforcement, we will, because we're an Australian company. We're subject to the laws of Australia. I think we need to take a positive attitude." Ramping up its effort to get a win in the debate, Village Roadshow took out a large advertisement estimated to cost tens of thousands of dollars in The Weekend Australian newspaper published on Saturday which said that the content industry was "in real jeopardy of being lost if the problem of piracy or copyright theft isn't resolved". "We believe that Australia cares and it is a choice between a tiny group who reap millions from advertising and the jobs of 900,000 people and economic value to our economy of $90 billion annually," co-chief executive officers of Village Roadshow, Graham Burke and Robert Kirby, wrote in the advertisement. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said recently that film studios and other content creators should sue "mums and dads and students" who download copyright infringing content.

Suing at least some users would make an example of them and therefore help curb illicit downloading, Mr Turnbull said. But Village Roadshow's Burke said suing individuals wouldn't work and "would clog up the courts". Clarification: Comments from a lawyer that go to the term "theft" were added and other minor adjustments made.