Legal Question in Technology Law in Australia

Re: Copyright infringement, webhost wont tell me who I've copied.

This is one of the deleterious outcomes of Australia's recent copyright law reforms that mirror the USA's much-criticised DMCA. The effect of both is that a copyright owner only needs to claim that there is an infringement (without any proof other than their word) before the ISP is subjected to potential legal liability. As a result most ISPs simply take material down without question.

However, if your ISP has not had reasonable grounds to believe that there has been intentional copying, they would be in breach of your contract with them. So if I were you I would write back to them telling them this and mentioning that if legal action was taken, you would be entitled to see copies of all correspondence between them and the copyright "owner".

Alternatively if you don't want the hassle and would rather just host elsewhere, try to ascertain the new host's policy on copyright infringment allegations before you sign up. If you are not at least given a chance to be heard, then I would steer away from that ISP.

There is no way that you can be held liable for copyright infringement if you wrote the material independently, even if it is word-for-word identical (though of course you may have trouble proving it was independently written in that case). Also, there is no copyright in "ideas", only in the expression of ideas.

Hope this helps.