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EFA Claims No Illegal Material On mp3s4free.net
An anonymous reader writes "Electronic Frontiers Australia (www.efa.org.au) claims that the raids organized by the music industry on mp3s4free.net have come up with nothing. Only links to other sites and not copyrighted material have been found.
The music industry is now saying that just
linking is in itself illegal. This does not appear to be supported by Australian law." Update: 10/29 15:26 GMT by T : This story originally referred to "mp3s4free.com," while it should have said -- and has been corrected to read -- "mp3s4free.net."
Yes! Google, I have you now...
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
> Electronic Frontiers Australia (www.efa.org.au) claims that the raids organized by the music industry on mp3s4free.com have come up with nothing. Only links to other sites and not copyrighted material have been found. The music industry is now saying that just linking is in itself illegal.
MP3s, WMDs, it's all the same...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If you ask me where Fred lives and I tell you he lives next door, that's fine. If you ask where you can hire a hitman and I tell you that Fred can do it for you and he lives next door, I could be an accomplice to murder.
Same with linking. If a site posts links to other sites and one (or more) of them contains something illegal, but the illegal content was neither the overt or covert reason for the link, then that should be fine. But if the purpose of the link is solely or primarily to help you do something illegal then the person posting the link should be regarded as an accomplice.
Obviously this requires discretion on the part of law enforcement agencies and, specifically, judges.
It's mp3s4free.net, not mp3s4free.com.
Rank Presidents by th
I would hardly equate downloading music with drug pushing. That's the sort of FUD that got the DMCA and PATRIOT Acts passed in this country. Don't be so quick to piss away your rights.
blog
If Australian law is anything like US law, in order to obtain a search warrant the lawyers for the music industry had to provide affidavits to the court giving their reasons to believe that the web site contained infringing material. Since the site in fact contains only links, either they lied in their affidavits, which would be both perjury and a fraud upon the court, or they didn't even bother to look at the site, which would be grossly negligent.
Am I missing something, or are they in very deep legal trouble?
While I agree there are moral implications beyond the law (law != morality is one of the first things you learn in legal units), you analogy is somewhat flawed in that buying drugs is an offence (depending on substance and jurisdiction) mainly because of the harm it causes to the user. I've yet to hear of anyone suffering chronic psychosis from listening to illicitly copied MP3s (though I could probably see it happening with some of today's more popular artists)...
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Linking per se is not illegal, but linking to infringing material will be, especially when you have reasonable belief that the material is illegal.
In the case of google or a search engine, they have a good defence: file a DMCA take down notice to have the infringing material unlinked. It is unreasonable to expect that google would self-police their content, it's just intractible.
But when you have a site set up, specifically to provide references to infringing material, largely for the purpose of allowing people to access that material, then I'm afraid you probably don't have a strong case. It's already looking bad "in principle", despite any technical issues.
Attempting to "beat the system" by using this approach is really not the way forward for any advocacy over rights. It's effectively trying to cheat around the technical points while in principle supporting copyright infringement.
It is what you get when you crush the screen on your cellphone and snort it up a rolled up $20 note ;-)
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
Does this mean linking a site with links to illegal material is also a crime? Where does it stop? A link of a link of a link? Can you prove that they were purposely attempting to provide aid to gain illegal material?
Your analogy is harsh, your logic surely missing a couple key points. Assisting access to illegal materials requires proof. At least some sort of proof that they were purposely providing aid for illegal services.
To use your brutal analogy. You can't pay your tutition. An old friend lends you a couple hundred that you'll pay back. Later you tell your best friend about this great loaner. Your best friend goes to 'loaner', who ends up being a crack dealer. You are the link. Are you guilty?
This would be one hell of a brutal world if intent is no longer required to be proven.
And please don't use analogies involving drugs. If you can't see the moral difference between crack and mp3s then you are in poor shape morally. And the kids won't believe a word you say.
Guy: Hey man, do you know where the drug dealers on this block are?
Me: Um, there's a sketchy guy that hangs out on the corner over there who might know about it.
Cop: FREEZE!! You're under arrest for drug dealing!
Me: Damn you DMCA! Now I'm a drug dealer cause I know where the sketchy people hang out!
It's hardly fair, but the DMCA already has a positive track record in this area; 2600 was forced to remove a link on their webpage to a separate page which hosted the crack that disabled DVD copy protection.
Consider the chilling (abbusable) effect of making linking illegal or conspiritorial act.
You have a problem with a person or organization. You link to their site as an example of the problem you have with them. (Say you link to the Debold site because they are "election fraudsters".)
If your problem is that they can (a) persue you because you linked to their stuff or (b) change the page you innocently linked to to an infringing content site (you infringe their content, but they don't, so clearly you meant others to infringe their property.)
Plus there is a proof-by-induction problem. You link to a friends page because you like him. Unbenonst to you, he links to infringing material. An over-zealous RIAA decides that the "only possible reason" for you to have linked to such a malcontent was that you must share his every view.
How many link steps does it take to wash an outgoing link?
Suppose you have a bunch of links lying fallow on your friends page that you haven't bothered to clean out for a while. A new user takes over an old firends equally fallow account and posts kiddie porn. Your link reads (and always had read) something innocent like "A young lady who's company I enjoy" but "margrets-life.com" now takes you to naughty-margret the hottest little 12 year old in siagon...
Its a mire.
You sould be able to link to anything. Essentially when you link you are in a crowded stadium and you are pointing your finger across the crowded field (at a possible stranger). Such pointing should not make you responsible for the actions of the person you are pointing at.
Its just too much "who guesses what whom intended where? We'll let the prosicutor who is up for reelection decided... he should be impartial..."
(And yes, this goes for a link that says "crack and murder-for-hire at franks house" because when you wrote it, it might have been a joke. How do you *really know* what frank does in his off time anyway?)
Don't sacrafice your life on the alter of "seeming reasonable".
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
They say knowledge is power, but knowledge isn't grounds for a lawsuit.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
"Electronic Frontiers Australia (www.efa.org.au) claims that the raids organized by the music industry on mp3s4free.com have come up with nothing."
How much nothing did they find? No matter--whether it was 4 minutes 33 seconds or only a minute, nothing is still a copyright violation, and John Cage's publishers will have something to say about the nothing that was found!
The question is, how do you remove it?
So when Bush said Iraq had WMDs, he really meant to say that they LINKED to WMDs... :-p
It might be that the site just had a list of MP3's that are in the public domain. Just because something is in MP3 format doesn't mean that it isn't legal
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
> The U.S. government is tired of invading poor countries. Since Australians are possibly doing something that is annoying, the U.S. will invade tomorrow.
> Don't worry Australians, it will be less than a year until you get your $87 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for reconstruction, government corruption, and to help make the Halliburton company richer.
Coming to a theatre near you soon...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I always understood it to be more the lines of intent. If you intend to stand at the corner of a school and get kids to buy crack by telling them to go to the store then it is illegal. If you tell them where to go buy ice cream ral cheap and it just so happens that the place also sells crack then it is not. Or at least that is what the founding fathers meant - which we have drifted quite a bit in the last 50 or so years from that.
I do not know what aulstailian law says on this, or if this is even the case anymore in the US.
It is clear that the site was linking to copyrighted MP3 websites for the purpose of downloading them. I would imagine under US law this would be illegal. Google, OTOH, only runs a bot to index things and isn't trying to peddle in music piracy. Though once more I have no idae about aussie law (and not being a lawyer only what I understand it to be in the US, which could be wrong). Deep linking with the expressed intent of music piracy is also wrong (saying "Hey, go look here for a list of sites" isn't really different from "here is a list of sites" and would get you no place ih the courts)
If it is illegal to pirate music then what they did should be illegal (though I am among the crowd that doesn't think it should be illegal, that is different from what the current laws are).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Hi all,
:)
trying to make linking illegal is sneaky, because here they are trying to take advantage of a subjective matter (illegal MP3s transfers). This issue is controversial ; thus, trying to enforce a ban on linking will be easier on a subject where people are not focused primarily on this concern. But it should appear much more clearly as a dangerous thing if applied for instance on content shifting trough time etc.
Pardon my English, but the Frenchies still can't admit that they are supposed to speak any other language than this of Napoleon the GRrrrreat...
JDif
Let's overcome our weakness.
I have a copy of that CD. Fortunately, the track to which you're referring is of hip-hop silence, which contains a two-second sample of Cage's original 4'33" repeated many times.
Listen to it again and you'll agree that the first two seconds sound exactly the same as the next two seconds, and so on. Actually, I'm surprised you didn't notice it before!
Him? He's harmless. Back in the '60s he was part of the peace movement at Berkeley. I think he did a little too much LDS
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Libraries too contain information on how to access illegal things, does that make them liable too? Use your imagination before you dispute my claim.
.smell my feet.
More and more money and time in the UK is spent chasing "mostly honest" individuals for the slight slips, why?
Because they don't run, they don't hide and they pay up.
Expect this trend to spread.
Great time and money are spent trapping motorists who speed by as little as 10% such that around speed cameras motorists now take their eyes off the road in order to check their speed to the meter.
Someone will be harrassed by local youths and when provoked to right back, get arrested - why - because they didn't run away.
Expect more of this as law enforcement agencies have to meet their targets they pick easier targets.
Not all law enforcement are like this, I know some who like to target the truly criminal.
However...
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I would think that sites like this would be to the advantage of the music industry. Don't bother going after the site, just go after all the links to illegal music that they have ever so nicely collected for you.
kiwi
buying drugs is an offence... mainly because of the harm it causes to the user
I realise this is off-topic, but I feel the need to vent anyway. I have never understood why it is illegal to do harm to yourself. After all, you own your body, is it as least once thing that isn't licensed to you (Does God have a EULA?), and so why shouldn't we be allowed to do whatever we want to it?
The only arguments I can think of are:
Intentional damage to yourself will cost the state money when you check yourself into a hospital. This applies in countries like mine, the UK, but not the USA, where healthcare is not funded by the government. Even in the UK, I wonder how hard it would be to limit the free healthcare to those who did not cause intentional damage to themselves. (It would also be very handy to lump smokers into this category.)
The other argument I can think of is
Being under the influence of drugs may prompt you to cause harm to others. This, surely, can be solved in neater ways than banning drugs outright. Ban them in public places, but allow them at home.
I don't take drugs, I don't even smoke, but banning them does seem unfair.
Anyway... </rant>
This does not appear to be supported by Australian law.
And why should it be? Just because i know theres a drug dealer down the road and may direct the odd pot head to him. I dont think im breaking the law. Just helping someone feed their addiction.
Immoral as it is, its not illegal.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Uh, yeah, the CRACK STORE. That's where I buy all my crack. When I feel like some heroin, I go to the HEROIN STORE.
You may want to read up on logic as this is what is refered to as an ad-hominem attack. If I said "the street corner where they buy crack" vs "crack store" it doesn't make a difference.
I must have been asleep in civics class when the covered how Ice Cream fits into the Bill of Rights. Which amendment was that? The "right to bear double scoops" one, right?
I would suppose that the right to express where to purchase cheap ice cream would be covered by the first amendment. At the very least if it was made illegal to say where to purchase it, the first amendment would pretty much cover that. There is no right to express the cheapest places to purchase crack in an attempt to sell the controlled substance - hence intent is important.
Is it clear? Wouldn't it be funny if you actually went to the site and found out it wasn't what you thought it was?
Wouldn't it be funny if you had an actuall argument? So far we have seen that I didn't use the correct slang for the place to purchase crack, that there is no right to bear double scoops, and you think the article says something else. All of which has little to do with the central thesis that intent is supposed to be relevent in these types of cases (which was a direct repsonse to the parent post). And lastly you throw in some name calling without any substance (which is once more ad-hominem) to prove some point that you never express.
The only way you could have made a more malformed argument is to accuse me of being wrong because I mispelled many words.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Realizing that drug using/selling is a voluntary act of trade like any other, there is only one possible argument (although government would never word it like this): You don't own your own body. Government owns your body.
Sound far-fetched? Not to me. If you were the owner of your own body, then logically, you would be the only individual on the planet who could possibly decide what is acceptable behavior and what is unacceptable behavior for your body to engage in (so long as you don't violate the same rights of any other individual). But as we already know, you do not hold this power -- government does. How can an individual both (1) own their own body and (2) not hold complete and soverign rights over their own body? The answer is that it's not possible -- the individual does not, in fact, own their own body.
I think you skipped right over the "so long as you don't violate the same rights of any other individual", that's a very important moral principle.
Wrong analogy. Of course it would be illegal for you to attack another individual with your frying pan -- that would be a violation of the other individual's rights to ownership of THEIR own body. A better analogy would be whether it is "legal" for you to attack yourself (your own body which you supposedly own) with your frying pan. (The question is whether the individual actually possesses ownership over their own body, not whether the individual posesses ownership over another individual's body.)
Ahem. (Best revival preacher's voice)
I think that it should be clear by now that the solution to the vast social problems of today is the internet. Where else do we have LINKS to Weapons of Mass Destruction? Where else to do we have nudity and violence galor? Were it not for the violation of our public decency caused by the intrusion of this vile satanic entity, the internet, we would be a peaceful people strong and secure in the bliss of ignorance.
Ignorance of the sins of the internet. The porn. The violence. The pedophiles sitting at their glowing screens temping the virginity of the children. Think of the children and the unlimited amount of smut, porn, nudity, violence, and crime that they are exposed to every single moment they are on the internet. The internet is everywhere. In your schools, in your homes, in cafes and parks, and in every businessplace in the world.
Yes, friends, we must petition our legislators to outlaw this vile corruption that has been visited upon us by the very forces of Hades; whose sole purpose is to consume the souls of our children and turn this blissfully ignorant world into a Hell on Earth.
I tell you now, brothers and sisters, that the root of all evil is money. And the internet's most profitable businesses are crimes against humanity: the violation of women and children who are hapless porn victims, the teenagers temped to steal billions from poor, starving musicians because that theft is merely a mouse click away. Click. Click. Click. Another poor musician starves to death.
We must empower the magnificent defenders of our blissful ignorance to protect us from these might forces of iniquity. The RIAA, The MPAA, our brothers in congress--yes children, you know the ones who share the views of our defenders; those tireless public servants who like the dearly departed Mr Sonny Bono-author of the copyright extension act that prevents Mickey Mouse from being turned into a vile star of pornography, crafted the DMCA, the COPA, and other valiant legislation. But we must have more. We must have an end to this internet thingy. Now. Before it is too late for our children.
Thank you and good night. Please donate heavily to our cause to protect our precious children.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
I don't get it.
Am I infringing copyright if I say "Leopold Stokowski and Mickey Mouse shake hands in Walt Disney's Fantasia?"
Am I committing an indecency if I say "Grove Press created a sensation when they published Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer?"
Am I committing a terrorist act if I say "Nuclear weapons information which the government, in the eighties, claimed was classified, appears in the Encyclopedia Americana?"
I don't think so.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Others have written infamatory posts about sending people next door to a hitman. Links are nothing like murder and the person making the link has no idea what the person next door really has in his house. The situation is more like fining the phone company for listing a hitman's telephone number. Copying files hurts no one and associating that act with murder is only done to wip people up into a frenzy to do real harm.
The music industry really does hurt people. They really wants to RAID YOUR HOUSE AND PUT YOU IN JAIL. That's physical harm. In this case the search order was for obtaining a copy of the website. How stupid is that? They turned a man's house upside down to obtain something they could have gotten without leaving their offieces. They wanted to put him and his friends in jail and they are going to ruin him finacially as they try to put him there. That's real harm. The music industry has been composed of thugs since Gilbert and Sullivan got publishing your own notes to someone else's song outlawed and their thugs swept London breaking presses and legs.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A quick google search turns up a few. However most municipalities don't distinguish between dui by alchohol or drugs.
I E2 0
I E3
http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20010116
http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20010117
Also don't forget the increased crime rate from addicts stealing, robbing and murdering to get their next fix.
If you honestly think marijuana/ or any other drug for that matter is a harmless drug, then your are horribly naive, My wife and I do foster care for the state and I've seen first hand the affects these harmless drugs have on these addicts children. Not just the absolute physical torture that being born addicted causes, but the severe emotional damage caused by living in a house where mommy's more concerned with getting her next joint. Some of these parents who "just use pot" are just as bad as the ones using meth, or crack.
Maybe you can handle smoking pot, but many of them can't. And after seeing the carnage it causes to society by the those that can't, it definitely worth it to me to keep it illegal.
That's because the laws are written with the grand-fuzzy of 'intent' built into them. The problem isn't intent, the problem is that the laws are so vague that intent matters.
The brutal world is the one where my supposed intent might make me guilty. I have 'hackers tools' (A Codewarrior CD), I have 'weapons' (a model rocket engine and a hunting knife), I have 'drugs' (unidentified dietary supplements), I have 'pornography' (baby pictures of my sister), and depending on the DA's spin, I could be branded a social terrorist of the worst order.
Imagine a world where the only 'crime' is property crime. A social 'you break it, you bought it' system. Talk about bombs, drugs, money, or music all day long. Link to others' talks all day long. Hell, go ahead and make bombs and drugs all day long, just don't use them against others. The brutal world is one where information or ideas are punishable.
If this country still believes that it is preferable 'to let ten guilty men go free rather than imprison one innocent' then we cannot infer intent. We must judge the potential criminal only on their actions.
Oh, and linking isn't a crime, it's advertising.