ILLEGAL downloaders can sleep easier tonight with the Australian Federal Court ruling that the names and addresses of pirates of Dallas Buyers Club will not be shared.

The court ruled this morning that unless Dallas Buyers Club (DBC) LLC pays a $600,000 bond it will not be able to obtain the names and addresses of Australians accused of illegally uploading the movie.

This comes after DBC LLC won the right in April to obtain the details of 4726 pirates that used Australian internet service providers to illegally upload the movie.

Justice Nye Perram came to the decision as a way to prevent DBC LLC from issuing “speculative invoices” to alleged pirates. The bond means that if DBC does go ahead and issue speculative invoices it would lose the entire bond, which is worth more than the damages it would receive from copyright infringers.

“Because DBC has no presence in Australia the court is unable to punish it for contempt if it

fails to honour that undertaking. I will therefore require its undertaking to be secured by the lodging of a bond,” Justice Perram said in his judgment.

“Having had access to what it is that DBC proposes to demand and the potential revenue it might make if it breached its undertaking to the court not to demand such sums, it seems to me that I should set the bond at a level which will ensure that it will not be profitable for it to do so.”

Speculative invoicing involves sending a legal threat to someone saying that unless they pay a sum of money they will have to face court. Often that sum of money is a few thousand dollars, when the actual loss to the rights holders would have been no more than a few hundred dollars.

People usually choose to settle outside of court — whether the sum is fair or not — because it would cost even more than that to take the matter to court.

Justice Perram stated that DBC proposed four different ways it could demand money from copyright infringers.

The permissible demands included infringers paying DBC the cost of a single copy of the film for each copy downloaded, and also covering the costs required to obtain each infringer’s name.

However, Justice Perram said DBC’s other two demands were ridiculous and the reason he put the bond in place.

DBC wanted to pursue the costs for a one-off license fee from each uploader on the basis that each was engaged in the widespread distribution of the film. But Justice Perram claimed that he would be satisfied that, if a case was brought to trial, it would be dismissed “as a case having no reasonable prospects of success”.

He also immediately dismissed DBC’s desire to claim further damages if it was proven that an infringer was a serial pirate.

Justice Perram said the bond was also put in place because DBC had not presented any clear figures on what it would be chasing in damages from infringers.