After failing to defeat iiNet, will AFACT attack the internet itself?

Some people would say the carrot is mightier than the stick when it comes to battling online piracy, but such sentiments seem lost on the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft. Yet AFACT's court battles against Internet Service Providers such as iiNet have repeatedly failed to deliver a killer blow. After once again failing to take out the middleman ISPs last week, AFACT's options are to target end users or to attack the problem at its source.

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AFACT has made it clear in the past that it's not keen on urban warfare. It doesn't want to drag everyday Australians through the courts, a stance it reiterated at Friday's press conference after the High Court verdict went against it. That would seem a wise strategy considering that such actions in the US turned into a PR nightmare. Courtesy of Wikileaks we know that AFACT is merely a puppet of the Motion Picture Association of America, so I'm sure they'll be coordinating their next move carefully.

Moving up the chain from end users, striking ISPs obviously seemed like a wise strategy until those pesky judges got in the way. AFACT was even smart enough to attack a smaller ISP like iiNet in an attempt to strike fear into the others, rather than tangle with the more powerful Telstra and Optus. AFACT has made some progress negotiating with ISPs over the last few years, but its legal threats now ring hollow.