Trendy Rhino launched ‘a call to arms’ against The School For Excellence after releasing copyrighted practice VCE exams
A VCE discussion Facebook page has released copyrighted practice exams then provoked a “campaign of harassment” against the rightful owner of the tests, a Supreme Court judge has found.
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A VCE discussion Facebook page has released copyrighted practice exams then provoked a “campaign of harassment” against the rightful owner of the tests, a Supreme Court judge has found.
Justice John Dixon has granted an interlocutory injunction against a marketing company, Trendy Rhino, which makes $50,000 a month selling advertising to 139,000 members on its ‘VCE DiscussionSpace’ page on Facebook, court documents show.
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His Honour found Trendy Rhino launched a “call to arms” that “arguably had provoked a campaign of harassment” against business The School For Excellence (TSFX), which provides programs and practice exams to Year 11 and 12 students.
It came after TSFX director Andrew Murchie complained in July about breaches of copyright when he found Trendy Rhino was releasing 42 of its practice exams in a Google drive of almost 1500 trial tests to members of the Facebook page.
Defendant Charlie Franklyn, for Trendy Rhino, posted on the Facebook page: “One of our beliefs at VCE DiscussionSpace is that resources should be free for all. So we don’t care about sharing resources that may be copywrited (sic).”
The VCE DiscussionSpace page was taken down by Facebook for copyright breaches in July.
Trendy Rhino undertook to keep the matter confidential and refrain from making defamatory comments about TSFX, court documents reveal.
However, almost immediately a new Facebook page called ‘VCE DiscussionSpace Backup’ was set up and on August 29, Shanaka Jayakody posted to 11,000 members a ‘teaser’ threatening to name the education business that “took the group down”, labelling it “sneaky” and driven by “their own ego and self interest”.
One day later, it did name TSFX, called on followers to “reclaim the group that is rightfully ours” and posted a poll asking ‘Who Will Win’ featuring a heart emoji representing VCE DiscussionSpace and an angry face emoji representing TSFX.
Members of the page then posted they would “spam them” and called on others to “go to the TSFX page and change the tags from education and organisation to public toilet”.
Another then wrote, “Ha I just googled it, the name isn’t there anymore but the main photo is of a toilet Good job”.
Google reviews were also found describing TSFX “as a brothel and a public toilet” while apparent replica websites referred to the business “getting gangbanged by hundreds of students”, court documents show.
Justice Dixon ordered defendants Trendy Rhino, Mr Franklyn, Himasha Fonseka and Mr Jayakody be restrained from publishing further derogatory or defamatory comments about TSFX or anyone associated with it, take down offending material and be restrained from breaching confidence.
The matter is listed for a further directions hearing in the Major Torts List at the Supreme Court on November 8.
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