DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY

Running head: IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
IINET Dallas Buyers Club case study: A Stakeholder Analysis
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1IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Executive Summary
This report has examined about the case of Dallas Buyers Club LLC and IINET that were
published in different Australian newspapers. It is clear the Dallas Buyers Club is a very
popular movie based on a real life story and is produced by Voltage Pictures in Hollywood.
Whereas, IINET is considered to be the second largest internet services providers in the
Australian market. The report is about the case of Dallas Buyers Club against IINET and five
other internet service providers known as Dodo Services Pty Ltd., Wideband Networks Pty.
Ltd., Amnet Broadband Pty. Ltd., Intermode Pty. Ltd., and Adam Internet Pty. Ltd., which
was filed in the Australian Federal Court. Dallas Buyers Club LLC claimed that the
customers of these service providers have downloaded the movie illegally before the film got
released in the market. It provided detailed information of more than 4500 customers of
IINET as well as other ISPs, who were caught downloading illegal film and insisted on
paying the financial reimbursement. Notwithstanding this, the case set to be dismissed in its
entirety by the federal court. This report went on analysing the stakeholders who were
engaged in this entire case study.

2IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................6
Policy Issues...............................................................................................................................7
 Technical.........................................................................................................................7
 Financial..........................................................................................................................8
 Legal................................................................................................................................8
 Social...............................................................................................................................8
Stakeholder Analysis..................................................................................................................9
 Defining Stakeholders.....................................................................................................9
 Who are Stakeholders?....................................................................................................9
 Dallas Buyers Club LLC and Voltage Pictures...........................................................9
 Internet Service Providers.........................................................................................10
 The Australian Federal Court....................................................................................10
 Website Owners.........................................................................................................11
 Internet Users.............................................................................................................11
 Media Distributors.....................................................................................................11
Conclusions..............................................................................................................................12
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................13
 Academic References and Jornals.................................................................................13
 Web Pages.....................................................................................................................14

3IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Appendices:..............................................................................................................................16
Appendix A: A General List of all the Involved Stakeholders............................................16
Appendix B: Affidavit of Mr. Michael Wickstrom..............................................................16
Appendix C: The Draft of Letter Submitted by DBC LLC..................................................17
Appendix D: Case Summary in Chronological Order..........................................................17

4IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Introduction
Most of the movies that are produced by the large production houses are generally
protected by copyright and it is a criminal offense to download them off through any other
websites. Downloading the copyrighted intellectual and material crap has always been a
crime (Spinell 2014). This is due to the fact that illegal downloading activity can notably
increase the risk of getting exposed to the personal identity theft and the costly damage to
both the owner and the person. In case of Dallas Buyers Club, Voltage Pictures had the
original copyrights of the movie. According to the Copyright Act, no person can download
movie copy illegally through internet without permission. But many did the same to
download Dallas Buyers Club movie from different internet sources. For this reason, the
company filed a case against IINET and five other internet service providers including Dodo
Services Pty Ltd., Wideband Networks Pty. Ltd., Amnet Broadband Pty. Ltd., Intermode Pty.
Ltd., and Adam Internet Pty. Ltd. as it suspected that about 4726 customers from these
service providers have downloaded the film from Bit Torrent software prior to the date of its
release without taking permission (Dallas Buyers Club v IINET 2015).
The case was filed in Australian Federal Court and the applicants claimed that the
customers have breached the Copyright Act 1968. Although the company had no idea about
who the end-users were but, they had their IP addresses. The then Australian Federal Judge,
Justice Perram announced theta the service providers should give the contact details of the
users by tracking their IP addresses (Turner 2015). Later, he declines the application as the
court found that the applicants demanded for other details instead of the contact details such
as their salary and the charges of the other downloaded movies. With the same, they also
demanded penal damages that were against the Australian law. On 10 February 2016, the
company (Voltage Pictures) decided not to charge any application on the issue and finally,
the court discharged the case (Refer Appendix D for the summary of the case in

5IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
chronological order). This paper shall elaborate on conducting a stakeholder analysis for the
case of Dallas Buyers Club.
Policy Issues
It is to mention that the Copyright Amendment policy of Australia reinforced the anti-
piracy law (Tyson 2018). As per the law, no one is allowed to download any work illegally, if
it is copyrighted without the permission of the rights holder and making payment to him/her.
The law restricts the breach of copyright law by means of blocking the different websites
such as The Pirate Bay or KickAssTorrents that provide the access to the stuff of holders for
free (Borella, 2016). However, there are certain objectors of the law and they are:
a) Internet Users
b) Australian Greens- a political party
c) Liberal Democratic Party
d) Dr. Matthew Rimmer, one of the former professors at ANU College of Law (Thomas,
2015)
However, they are not comprehensive for any type of disputes related to issues. The
section below would discuss about the impediment of the Anti-Piracy Law or policy with
well-detailed listings.
 Technical
o According to the Copyright Amendment Act, any user who is found to be
downloading any content unlawfully, the internet service providers should need to
send the Copyright Violation Notice to the user and then, apply the necessary filters
for blocking the sites that were used for illegitimate downloading.

6IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
o As a result, this filtration would reduce the website performance such as YouTube,
Netflix etc. that consume huge amount of bandwidth. Softwares like VPN (Virtual
Private Network) or Proxy Servers could be used for circumventing the filter (Thomas
2015).
o Tthere is still one unaddressed question- Is IPS filtering is 100percent efficient?
 Financial
o The policy has also did not include the financial details such as which party would pay
the cost of ISP filtering and website blocking.
o Also, it has not mentioned any information about who would pay the cost of giving
notice of copyright infringement to the ones who would breach the law.
 Legal
o The Australian Government Agency provided the IP address to the Internet Service
Provider for blocking a deceptive website rather than the domain of the website name
or the URL address. For this reason, about 2, 50,000 inoffensive websites are blocked
while it called for blockage of only one deceptive website. It happed as the server
hosted different other websites as well.
o The policy has also failed in addressing the “meaning of primary purpose, facilitation
and that of online location”.
 Social
o It is all about the likely involvement of website blockage on the file-sharing sites like
Mega Chat and Dropbox.

7IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Stakeholder Analysis
 Defining Stakeholders
Stakeholders are “the groups or individuals with whom the organization interacts or
has interdependencies” (Proches and Bodhanya 2015) and “any individual or group who can
affect or is affected by the actions, decisions, policies, practices or goals of the organization”
(Guerci, Longoni and Luzzini 2015). Stakeholder analysis is the process of systematic
collection and examination of the data and information for deciding whose concern is ought
to be taken into consideration during the creation and execution of any policy.
 Who are Stakeholders?
For the case study, the most important stakeholders are listed below. However, a well-
detailed list of all the involved stakeholders is presented in Appendix A.
 Dallas Buyers Club LLC and Voltage Pictures
From the case study, it has been revealed that both Dallas Buyers Club LLC and Voltage
Pictures are affected directly and for this reason, they can be considered as the first and most
important stakeholder for the case. Both of them are the Copyright owner of the movie Dallas
Buyers Club (Appendix B). As per the Copyright rule, no one is allowed to download any
work illegally, if it is copyrighted without the consent of the rights holder and making
payment to him/her. Dallas Buyers Club LLC was the first applicant of the case. Applicants
claimed that they have revealed the IP addresses by means of using the “Maverik Monitor”
software and also added that this software can be used in findings information about the ISPs
and the IP addresses by means of which the files were shared in the BitTorrent (Dallas
Buyers Club LLC v IINET 2015). The Justice Perram gave his first decision in favour of both
the applicants and ordered the six involved ISPs for delivering the contact information of all

8IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
the 4726 users but they first had to get the permission prior to communicating about the same
with the infringers. It was applied for stopping the tentative invoicing. Later, Justice Perram
refused to provide the contact details as the applicants demanded for other information too.
 Internet Service Providers
The six internet service providers IINET Ltd., Dodo Services Pty Ltd., Wideband
Networks Pty. Ltd., Amnet Broadband Pty. Ltd., Intermode Pty. Ltd., and Adam Internet Pty.
Ltd. are also the key stakeholders. They opposed the preliminary applications by both the
parties (the copyright holders) on different standpoints (Dalby 2017). Firstly, they claimed
that the rights holders failed in providing enough evidence of how they found the violation of
IP addresses. On the basis of this, the service providers also claimed that the application that
is laid against them is tentative. Secondly, they also refused the claim that the applicants have
provided enough evidence of having copyrights of the movie Dallas Buyers Club. Finally,
they apply to the court for not forcing them to disclose the private information of the
customers.
 The Australian Federal Court
The Australian Federal Court is also a significant stakeholder in this case. After all, the
case filed by Dallas Buyers Club LLC and Voltage Pictures was heard by the court, the
Justice Perram and the action taken on the same was the decision of the court. The final
decision was that the applicants are not allowed to threaten the users by means of sending
tentative invoices and second, it is the court that took the responsibility of whatever takes
place in the future and that of protecting the privacy of the users (Simpson, 2015 ) (Refer
Appendix C).
 Website Owners

9IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
For the case, Australian Federal Court orders the internet service providers in the country
to block all the websites such as BitTorrent, IsoHunt, The Pirate Bay, 123Movie etc. that
provide infringes content as a step for preventing internet piracy. Peter Tonagh, the CEO of
Foxtel appreciated and accepted the decision taken claiming that this decision was necessary
to take for preventing the internet piracy and in giving a message to the general public that
accessing such websites is illegal and that it is nothing but an act of “theft” (Ockenden and
Sturmer, 2016). The court decided to give the culprits a warning page, designed by the right
holders and the internet service providers, if they continue accessing the blocked websites.
 Internet Users
According to the data of Australia Internet Users (2016), about 85 percent of Australia
makes use of internet and within this percentage, 4726 users, who were suspected by Dallas
Buyers Club LLC, were directly affected for the case. For this reason, the Australian Federal
Court took decision on blocking the websites that have infringement content for preventing
the internet piracy. It also approved the Online Infringement Bill 2015 in June, 2015. This
decision directly affected the internet users and therefore, they are important stakeholders of
the case.
 Media Distributors

10IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Media distributors are also the key stakeholders as they too were affected because of the
case. For the case, the Australian film distributors like Netflix, Foxtel etc. had stopped about
sixty portals that contained Torrents, Pirate Bay etc. Such decision was taken for stopping
piracy issue in the country.
Conclusions
Hence, from the above analysis it is to conclude that the movie Dallas Buyers Club
LLC was intended towards collecting hundreds of dollars from the pirates who use the
“tentative invoicing” techniques as it had used the same technique against United States and
other different countries. On the contrary, there are many people who believed that the
Australian Federal Court has allowed Voltage Pictures to take a strict action against the
pirates for stopping piracy in the country. On 10 February 2016, the company (Voltage
Pictures) decided not to charge any application on the case and finally, the court discharged
the case. The pirates succeeded in the case against Dallas Buyers Club LLC and the
company. Notwithstanding this fact, the government approved the “Online Infringement Bill
2015” for stopping down piracy in Australian country. The case attracted many eyes towards
the Dallas Buyers Club LLC and how it fought against the 4726 Australian pirates and at the
same time, also let the public aware of how to stop piracy and what could happen if such
things happen. Government tried taking serious actions against copyright law after the
dismissal of the case for permanently giving a “Red Light” to the pirates in Australia.

11IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Bibliography
 Academic References and Jornals
Guerci, M., Longoni, A. and Luzzini, D., 2016. Translating stakeholder pressures into
environmental performance–the mediating role of green HRM practices. The International
Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(2), pp.262-289.
Proches, C.G. and Bodhanya, S., 2015. Exploring stakeholder interactions through the lens of
complexity theory: lessons from the sugar industry. Quality & Quantity, 49(6), pp.2507-2525.
Spinello, R.A., 2014. Intellectual Property: Legal and Moral Challenges of Online File
Sharing. In Ethics and Emerging Technologies (pp. 300-314). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Tyson, P., 2018. Evaluating Australia's New Anti-Piracy Website Blocking Laws. UniSA
Student Law Review, 3.

12IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
 Web Pages
Australia Internet Users. 2017. Internetlivestats.com. Retrieved 14 April 2020, from
http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/australia/
Borella, S. 2016. INSIDE LAW: Dallas Buyers Club and Village cases explained. If.com.au.
Retrieved 14 April 2020, from http://if.com.au/2016/04/28/article/INSIDE-LAW-Dallas-
Buyers-Club-and-Village-cases-explained/EYVYLSUVIQ.html
Dalby, S. 2017. Not our kind of club | the iiNet Blog. Blog.iinet.net.au. Retrieved 14 April
2020, from http://blog.iinet.net.au/not-our-kind-of-club/
Dallas Buyers Club LLC v iiNet. 2015. Copyright.org.au. Retrieved 14 April 2020, from
https://www.copyright.org.au/acc_prod/ACC/News_items/Dallas_Buyers_Club_LLC_v_iiNe
t.aspx
Ockenden, W., and Sturmer, J. 2016. Print Email Facebook Twitter More Internet companies
forced to block The Pirate Bay, bittorrent websites in Australia, Federal Court rules. Abc.
Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-15/federal-court-orders-pirate-bay-
blocked-in-australia/8116912
Simpson, C. 2015. iiNet Lost Its Piracy Fight Against Dallas Buyers Club. Gizmodo.com.au.
Retrieved 14 April 2020, from https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/04/iinet-lost-its-fight-
against-dallas-buyers-club/
Thomas, J. 2015. How will Australia's anti-piracy law affect you?. Sbs. Retrieved from
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/06/23/how-will-australias-anti-piracy-law-affect-
you

13IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Turner, A. 2015. Is iiNet's Dallas Buyers Club win an early Christmas present for Aussie
pirates? The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/gadgets-on-the-go/is-iinets-dallas-buyers-
club-win-an-early-christmas-present-for-aussie-pirates-20151217-glq5a8.html

14IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Appendices:
Appendix A: A General List of all the Involved Stakeholders
 Dallas Buyers Club
 The Voltage Pictures
 Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
o iiNET
o Internode Pty Ltd
o Amnet Broadband Pty Ltd
o Dodo Services Pty Ltd
o Adam Internet Pty Ltd
o Wideband Networks Pty Ltd
 The Federal Court and Justice Perram
 Internet Users
 The Media
 Two German Experts
o Dr Simone Richter
o Mr Daniel Macek
 Website Owners
 Michael Bradley – a lawyer of DBC LLC
 Graham Phillips – a lawyer of ISPs
 Steve Dalby – iiNET director
 Michael Wickstrom – vice president of Royalties, Voltage Pictures
 Mark Vincent – an IP lawyer, Shelston
 Tom Godfrey – in-charge of media team, CHOICE
 The Communications Alliance
 Erin Turner – CHOICE campaigns manager
 Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) and Policy Officer
at ACCAN, Xavier O’Halloran
 Media Distributors
Appendix B: Affidavit of Mr. Michael Wickstrom
Refer to the link provided below:

15IINET DALLAS BUYERS CLUB CASE STUDY: A STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/578122/here-what-dallas-buyers-club-letter-
pirates-could-look-like/
Appendix C: The Draft of Letter Submitted by DBC LLC
Refer to the link provided below:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/578122/here-what-dallas-buyers-club-letter-
pirates-could-look-like/
Appendix D: Case Summary in Chronological Order