"It's not always going to be a financial settlement," he said. Asking for trouble: Pirates are downloading top-grossing film Furious 7 in the millions. Voltage Studios subsidiary Dallas Buyers Club LLC won a landmark federal court case on Tuesday against several Australian internet service providers including iiNet, giving it the right to obtain the names and addresses of nearly 5000 Australians it identified as having downloaded the film without authorisation using the torrenting software BitTorrent. Separately, Australian ISPs submitted a finalised industry code to the federal government on Wednesday, in which they agreed to a "three strikes rule" which would see them issue alleged pirates three written warnings before rights holders could apply to obtain the customers' identities and contact details through the courts. Neither Tuesday's court verdict nor the telecommunications industry code mentioned shutting off customers' internet connections, or slowing them down, as potential punitive measures for copyright infringement.

Other industry stakeholders have previously rejected disconnecting alleged pirates from the internet, including the Australian Home Entertainment Distributors Association, representing the $1 billion Australian film and TV home entertainment industry, and Music Rights Australia. Both bodies have also rejected fining individuals in response to copyright infringement, but have expressed some support for slowing down offenders' internet speeds and a graduated response scheme such as the one outlined in Wednesday's industry code. Mr Wickstrom's comments reinforce those made to Fairfax Media on Wednesday by the company's legal representative in Australia, Marque Lawyers' Michael Bradley. Mr Bradley said the studio would be unlikely to issue so-called "speculative invoices" to Australian pirates demanding thousands of dollars in compensation to avoid being sued, as it has done in the US. "We are working with our Australian attorneys to come up with an Australian solution for an Australian problem," Mr Wickstrom said. "What works in the US may not work in Australia, but we're developing a system that will become a deterrent."

He said cases in the US where Dallas Buyers Club LLC had invoiced pirates for thousands of dollars had involved individuals with "a network of hundreds of films", who were intentionally distributing them without authorisation. "I don't feel the penalty should be so aggressive with the first-time offender who has downloaded one film," Mr Wickstrom said. However, he defended the studio's aggressive stance on copyright infringement, saying it was "the first filmmaker to say enough is enough" because unlike larger studios it didn't have "theme parks or cable shows" to offset losses from unauthorised downloading. Shelston IP Lawyers partner Mark Vincent said there was little evidence to show pursuing individual pirates actually reduced instances of piracy. "If you look at all of the data available from jurisdictions around the world, when they bring in rights holders to sue infringers it's very difficult to show any impact at all on rates of BitTorrent use and downloading," Mr Vincent said.

Giving consumers easier, more affordable and timely access to content through platforms such as Netflix or Spotify had a more profound impact, he said. "One in a million brought before a tribunal is not going to cause seismic shifts in the popularity of piracy," Mr Vincent said, adding that backlash from readers commenting on Australian news sites in recent days indicated quite the opposite, with "a lot of people quite prepared to say 'I resent being called a pirate'". "There seems to be much more of a willingness to criticise the rights holders than to back them," Mr Vincent said. Data from copyright intelligence firm Excipio show pirated versions of the box-office smashing film Furious 7 were downloaded 2.59 million times worldwide in less than a week since its cinema release, despite these being poor quality recordings made with handheld devices in cinemas, Variety reports. The data shows some 352,000 of these unauthorised downloads occurred in the US and UK, despite studios issuing customers with hefty penalties in these countries.