You might want to read this if you're downloading songs and movies for free, or write music. Some recent copyright cases from Australia have been influential in our courts.

The Australian High Court recently ruled in favor of Aussie ISP iiNet, which came about as a landmark legal battle, where Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) accused that "iiNet was as guilty as some of its subscribers of online copyright infringement".

Larrakin v. EMI, also decided recently in 2010, concerned a 1934 song composed in Australia, called "Kookaburra". The composer, Miss Marion Sinclair, entered it in a competition conducted by the Girl Guide's Association of Victoria.

The owner of the copyright, Larrakin, alleged that two of the four bars in the song were reproduced in the 1981 recording of another iconic Australian song called "Down Under" by the group, Men At Work. In any event, the resemblance between the two songs was not noticed until 2007. The court's decision was that the 1979 and 1981 recordings of "Down Under" infringed Larrakin's copyright in "Kookaburra" as both recordings reproduced a substantial part of the 1934 song.

In Roadshow Films vs. iiNet Limited, the Federal Court Judge held that "an ISP is not "authorizing" internet users to infringe copyright by downloading copies of movies through a P2P system simply by offering those users access to the Internet".

It is widely considered as the first trial of its kind, involving an ISP sued for copyright infringement due to alleged authorization. The decision went in the favor of iiNet, which is the third largest ISP in Australia.