Norwegian Student Ordered to Pay for Hyperlinks to Music

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."

Comments

Re:*Bang*

[wankledot]

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.