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."

Comments

The linking is in itself illegal?

[Empiric]

Yes! Google, I have you now...

The more things change...

[Black Parrot]

> 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...

Linking should and shouldn't be illegal

[Andy Smith]

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.

Re:Linking should and shouldn't be illegal

[surprise_audit]

Take it a step further - turn yourself in for living next door to Fred-the-hitman. You're obviously "linked" to him by virtue of living in the same building (apartment block) or on the same street (separate houses). If enough people did that, maybe the police/courts would get the message that some level of linking is ridiculous.

Note: You might want to make sure the police/judge have some sense of humour before trying it.

Re:Linking should and shouldn't be illegal

[Pseudonym]

That analogy works for criminal cases, but what about in a civil case, such as is the case with copyright infringement?

Let me put it this way: You want to break a contract that you signed. You ask me who can help you with that and I say "Fred can, and he lives next door". Should that be illegal?

Re:Linking should and shouldn't be illegal

[IBitOBear]

So I have this friend fred and everybody is always making jokes about how honest he is. I make a link on my site "cheap crack and murder-for-hire at freds house" because that is the last thing I or anybody who knows me would beleive of fred. It is, in fact, funny.

But the joke is on me because frank is just really good at hiding his darker nature and he does sell crack and kill people. Whoops, my bad. Made a joke, spend life in prision as an accessory to murder.

Or even worse, franks "frank.com" gets taken over while I'm not looking by a less honest frank. And I am screwed again.

Sound far fetched? Its not. It is simply likely outcomes which are "no more extreme" than your extreme example.

Consider you hate $cientology, and you link to their site on your site, as an example of how screwed in the head you think they are. They change the contents of the page you link to so it contains some of their intellectual property and then get your site and your ISP taken down.

Unlikely? Nope, actually a near-certian outcome.

Since the linked-to content is out of the control of the linker, it is too easy "become guilty" as a result of your innocent act when a target page changes.

Allowing prosecutors and complaining parties to "posit theroies" about your intent is always a bad thing. Consider the "Intent to Sell" clauses of drug laws in the US. The state doesnt have to proove any actual intent, as after "intent to sell" was made a criminal condition, they (re) decided that having more that a certian raw weight of drugs prooves that intent. Sounds clear and obvious and "ok"? Turns out it isn't. Consider that the statute says how many milligrams of LSD is one dose. Then they measure the LSD-soaked paper (the paper weighs several hundred times "one dose") so you have five doses and you go to jail for intent to sell because the raw wight of the innert material takes you over the limit. No abuse there. No sirreee.

You simply cannot trust "the state" to do the right thing. If you could, then you wouldn't need the Bill of Rights (or non US equivalant where you live).

That is your baby in that bathwater. Who do you choose to decide what gets thrown out and how? If you are smart you don't give that power to random strangers.

Re:Linking should and shouldn't be illegal

[Reziac]

The other thing is, when someone mentions how much better life would be without those annoying creditors, and you mention your neighbour Freddie the Knife, there is presumed a specific intent in the initial act and response.

I think they're trying to imply that a pageful of deliberately-aggregated links is exactly the same sort of criminal intent and participation. But what about search engines? the user inputs a parameter ("hitman") and out comes the desired, ah, hit ("Freddie the Knife", "Guido the Strangler", etc). In fairness in the light of the first example, the search engine would have to be indicted on a co-conspiracy charge, just for providing the links.

And such an insanity has no logical stopping point. Pretty soon the coder who wrote the search engine is in the shit for aiding and abetting... the bandwidth provider for providing the access channel... glah. My brain hurts.

Re:Linking should and shouldn't be illegal

[pla]

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.

Well then, I guess we can all rest easy that my dog ate my collection of top-40 boy-bands, and sites like this exist only to allow me to make use of my protected right to a backup.

I know I sure feel better that sites like this have a legal reason to exist.


A tad more seriously, though, I've really grown quite tired of this topic. The RIAA sucks, the BSA sucks, the MPAA sucks. Some people will buy, and some people will pirate. Trade groups need to accept that the pirates wouldn't buy their products under any conditions whatsoever (short of giving stuff away), and treat them as the free advertising (rather than "criminals") they serve as.

If I see my pirating friend Steve playing a cool new game, I may go out and buy it. He might never have plunked down a penny for software in his entire life, but some of his friends have and will.

Industry groups only need to worry about this sort of "advertisement" if their product sucks. I have little doubt that the RIAA knows all-too-well the complete crap they push on us, thus their fear of try-before-you-buy. Those who actually have quality products to sell love free advertising, and do their best to get people to check it out.

I seem to recall reading a SciAm article once upon a time that mentioned that, since we've all had to grow filters against advertisements, the single best way for a company to sell products consists of recommendations between friends. So sure, it make perfect sense that the RIAA would sacrifice the single most effective form of advertising - since in this case, it mostly ends up negative.

Okay, I've gone a tad OT here. I just wish the world made a bit more sense. Real, law-abiding people getting screwed by the RIAA (or its AU equivalent) legal machine does not make sense. People wonder why I feel so strongly anti-corporate. I need point no further than the RIAA, and you'll either get it or not, end of discussion.

Re:Linking should and shouldn't be illegal

[flamingmoose]

"Freddie the Knife", "Guido the Strangler", etc

You left out Jack the Ripper. Both a dangerous killer AND a distributor of illegaly encoded music.

RTFA

[Texas Rose on Lava L]

It's mp3s4free.net, not mp3s4free.com.

Re:Pull the other one - it has bells on it

[brianosaurus]

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.

Australian raids on link site

[belmolis]

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?

Re:Pull the other one - it has bells on it

[lafiel]

Surely this is like hosting a list of places you can buy illicit drugs. You do not actually possess said drugs, but you are party and complicit in assisting access to illegal materials.

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.

2600

[SupeRobot Ninja]

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.

"Linking Is Bad" is BAD thinking

[IBitOBear]

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".

They found NOTHING? Then they ARE guilty!

[Tsar]

"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?

MP3's

[rf0]

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

Re:Pull the other one - it has bells on it

[tetro]

Libraries too contain information on how to access illegal things, does that make them liable too? Use your imagination before you dispute my claim.

How are links different from citations?

[dpbsmith]

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.