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Norwegian Student Ordered to Pay for Hyperlinks to Music

Posted by michael on from the aiding-and-abetting dept.

Stephan writes "The AP reports that Norway's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a student whose Napster.no homepage (no relation to the U.S. Napster, apparently) had links to free Internet music files must compensate the music industry. The around 170 links to mp3s will cost its creator $15,900. In a summary of its ruling, the supreme court said the music was clearly published in violation of copyright law. An unofficial English translation of the Court of Appeal decision (earlier in the case) provided by the lawyer of the defendant and more information on the case can be found at the Links & Law Website."

4 of 580 comments (clear)

  1. Re:*Bang* by wankledot · · Score: 4, Informative
    Except that the torrent tracking sites don't expressly know that the files represent a copyright infringement. In this case the person was linking to files he knew (and evidently could be proven that he knew) would be illegal to download.

    The torrent sites have a very slim chance of pleading ignorance the same way that any community message board or service can plead ignorance to what's being posted. Of course, the **AA will come back and say that they need to make a reasonable effort to make sure copyrighted material isn't posted.

    --
    My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
  2. Norwegian law by halftrack · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those wondering; the following was still true the last time I checked:

    - It's legal to aquire publically avaiable copies og music, paintings etc. (IIRC not software) for personal use. This makes downloading music from any site (or network) legal. However this law is probably going to change so that the source must be legal, (as in copyright holder agrees to publication (like radio or TV.))
    - It's legal to copy music from family and _close_ friends. Thus uploading to a P2P network is illegal.
    - It's also legal to reverse engineer legally aquired software, alter its contents, and learn from your findings.

    Some of these things may change (INFOSOC??) and som things may already have change so anyone with any updated information are welcome to correct me.

    --
    Look a monkey!
  3. The actual cost of the fee isn't that much by lune+tns · · Score: 3, Informative

    After doing some quick calculations, the actual amount he's being fined is 100,170,- (NOK).

    This is comparable to a typical down payment for a Oslo apartment, which many students actually buy while still in college.

    Minimum wage in Norway is equal to about $12.70/hr USD, and goes up by age (among other factors), so a 25-year old would be making a minimum of $19.84/hr USD.

  4. Re:He only gave LINKS by russotto · · Score: 3, Informative

    Soldier of Fortune won both Braun and Eimann. They lost Eimann at the district level, but won it on appeal.