US has crazy copyright laws, but Australia wins the biscuit for their vigilante search warrants:

UPDATE: MIPI raids Sharman Networks, Brilliant Digital Entertainment: ZDNet Australia: News: Business: "Music Industry Piracy Investigations this morning raided the offices of P2P companies Sharman Networks and Brilliant Digital Entertainment, along with the homes of key executives and several ISPs. MIPI obtained an Anton Pilar order – which allows a copyright holder to enter a premises to search for and seize material that breaches copyright without alerting the target through court proceedings – yesterday from Justice Murray Wilcox, and began raiding premises in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria this morning searching for documents and electronic evidence to support its case against the peer-to-peer companies. In addition to the offices of Sharman Networks and Brilliant Digital Entertainment (BDE), MIPI raided the residences of Sharman Networks’ CEO Nikki Hemming, Brilliant Digital Entertainment Chief Executive Officer and President Kevin Burmeister and Phil Morle, Director of Technology at Sharman Networks. Monash University, the University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales were also raided, as well as four ISPs including Telstra.

Why was the MIPI allowed to raid Universities and ISPs? According to the article, "The ISPs and Universities were raided to gain evidence about the operators of the Kazaa network." Does this mean that the Anton Pilar order allows them to raid any and all premises which might have useful information in a copyright dispute? Is it not limited to the home or business of an infringer? Could the MIPI raid the phone company with the intention of siezing the phone records of Sharman Networks? (Actually I guess they did raid the phone company -- it's Telstra down there). I can just imagine how computer business would grind to a halt if this were permissible in the US. We'd have SCO thugs raiding the offices of anyone with revenue. Perhaps they'd be "siezing" disputed contract documents while they were at it... God, what a stupid law. Somehow, every time I think US law has gotten ridiculous on some subject, the Australians show up with some totally unexpected, assinine legal gizmo that hugely overshadows whatever we're doing wrong.