ISP iiNet’s legal team has told the Federal Court that film companies should do more pursuing Internet-based pirates themselves, rather than relying on Internet providers to do their policing for them.

Senior counsel Richard Cobden told the court member companies of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft had deluged iiNet with letters and emails demanding it take action against iiNet subscribers who use the BitTorrent peer-to-peer service to download pirated films and TV shows.

In one week alone, iiNet received more than 3000 pages of allegations of copyright violations by iiNet customers.

“If all the notices iiNet received from film studios over a five month period were printed it would take 180 large folders and more than 12 trolleys to bring them into the court,” Cobden said. “No one can seriously be expected to respond to all these.”

AFACT, which represents 33 film and TV companies, is suing Perth-based iiNet for alleged copyright violations.

Cobden said that if it was possible for the film companies to track iiNet users illegally sharing files, then the film companies should go after the customers directly with a court order.

He said the companies could also ask BitTorrent to do more to crack down on piracy. “IiNet doesn’t want to be the judge, jury and executioner ­ it wants the studios to do their own dirty work,” said Cobden.