Slashdot Mirror
Australian Man Found Guilty for Hyperlinking
An anonymous reader writes "Major record labels are celebrating in Sydney, Australia today. It took almost two years but they've finally won a legal battle against a Queensland man and his ISP for alleged music piracy. Amazingly, Stephen Cooper didn't even have to host the alleged pirated files. All he did (allegedly) was to hyperlink to a few sites that had infringing sound recordings. His ISP didn't escape either. Even the ISP's parent company got sued. No jail time but all parties will have to pay costs."
Hi.
It should be hard to prove he did it... I mean, his machine could have been compromised
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
If he was found guilty, then the charges are proven. They are no longer alleged.
A man in Queensland was found guilty of pointing at a stolen car in the street....
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
Napster did the same thing. Is this supposed to be new and interesting because it happened in Australia?
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Now in the US, the DMCA would have let the ISP off the hook scott free. Yay for safe harbors!
to put it politely... just too stupid for words... how, exactly, did he "pirate" the works in question??? Looks like we need to slap some judges upside the head with a cluestick... Google et al, had better watch out... they'll now have to filter out possible copyrighted works in any links produced in searches... this is a very dangerours legal ruling.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
You know, google hyperlinks to a whole lot of sites, someone in austrailia should start suing them over it too.
Google, for linking to illegal music, texts, pictures and videos...
How far can this go? If you can be guilty for linking to a site, what about linking to a site that links to a site? And so on ... there needs to be a point where you can't be expected to have control.
Life is the sport of champions. Those who lose, die.
Why did we ever let the lawyers and the corporations on in the first place? They obviously will not stop until the balance of the producer-consumer relationship is restored.
Yeah, maybe we all don't think he pirated, but couldn't this still be aiding / abetting? He was encouraging other people to pirate music, and giving them the means to do so.
This seems a bit broken... I mean, If I tell someone that someone *over there* is a drug dealer, do I get arrested? How can he be held responsible for the content of other sites?
Nya nya...
Some of the judges here have been a little slow on the uptake...the Sony mod-chipping debacle is but one example, as is the whole lack of "fair use" right for electronic works...
Was the man found guilty of linking to a list of pirated mp3s? Or did he link to a site which contained, among a lot of other things, pirated mp3s? In the case of the latter, I don't see how you can argue that he was intending for them to pirate material...
Seriously, has anybody thought about the ramification of this for free speech? The recent debacle with record companies whining about the BBC releasing those free tracks has some echoes of this...
cya, Victor
I know someone who copied a music CD ... should I go into hiding or turn him in & claim a bounty ?
"Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin."
It seems to have been proven...
And what else do you expect to happen when you host a site named "mp3s4free"?
I give men fish.
in other news "australian man gets sued for browsing the internet...." what is this world comming to????
- - - - - .
Does this mean they can sue Google, since Google links to pretty much everything? I'm gure Google has a lot more money then some spare guy in Australia.
It's the land of the brave, and the home of the free
Where the less you know, the better off you'll be.
As far as I know a guy who points to bad guys is a snitch.
With Great Power Comes No Love Life! - Samit Basu
...kinda
Googling May Break Copyright in Canada3 14242&tid=95&tid=17/
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/13/2
There is nothing more practical than a good abstract theory.
I think Neptune is still relatively safe.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Mr. Shmuck: All I said was: "I know of a hit man called mister X"
Judge: Mr. Shmuck, You should now get a lawyer since you've just implicated yourself.
----
Later that day, the Judge helps someone to find the bathroom. That someone slips and falls on the way. The judge is now a defendent in the "slip and fall" suit.
------
It IS retarded because it never ends.
The Piratebay.org on google.
But lose the war..
Morons. It will be a good thing when the war is finally over, and the entire entertainment 'industry' is out of business.
Perhaps then we can line them all up against the wall.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Frankly, the guy deserved it. mp3s4free.com was created solely to link to unauthorised copyrighted material, and for the purpose of boosting traffic on the ISP. That (summarised by me) was the courts finding.
The article doesn't make clear whether it boiled down to intent. I hope that the finding was because he intended to link to the material - such a finding would protect those who inadvertantly had dodgy links (such as chat room hosts, etc...). If the finding sets a precedent that anyone hosting hyperlinks to infringing material, without intent, is a criminal, then that is a bad thing.
Some have said that this is akin to being arrested for pointing to a drug dealer. Rubbish. It's more like running a bulletin board, the sole purpose of which is for dealers to list their contact details, and available drugs.
www.google.com
Search for "Filetype:torrent example album"
Now what i have just done is give people the skill to find their own files and commit copyright infringement or of course search for legal downloads.
What i have just done is far far worse than a guy linking to a few warez sites.
Show a man a download link and he will download one file , Teach him to use google and he can warez himself for life
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Chances are, they ruled based upon the outcome of the Grokster case (and what they're trying to get Bram Cohen with):
;) ] for his portal page is perfectly in line with the Grokster ruling though (whether it's right or not) in that he provided a set of links to music piracy sites with the intent of helping others infringe upon copyrighted works.
Intent
Cases for p2p were won originally because they only had the ability to allow users to infringe upon copyrights, but the programs were not themselves, infringing. What got Grokster is that the intent behind the entire program was to trade infringing material. And that's how they have ruled this link site.
What's stupid is that even the ISP is being punished for it. Like everyone else has pointed out already, next in line could be the company that pays the 'infringing party' for the work they do for a living, which is used, in turn, to commit a crime.
However, the fact that the website owner got sued [for not having a narc label on his banner
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Why didn't the guy just say that when he posted the link in the first place, there wasn't any pirated material on the site?
I'm pretty sure they would have a hard time proving that the site was illegal at the TIME of posting.
I mean even if the linked text was suspicious, he could have argued that the text of the link was changed AFTER the linking occurred.
Anyone know the statute of limitation on illegal hyperlinking?
God needs to implement HTML tags in life so we can pull a </DUMB PEOPLE> and rid the world of stupid things like this.
From a user's perspective, a site with links to pirated files is the same as a site with pirated files. If I say click here to download Star Wars RotS, it doesn't matter where the file is located...I've enabled piracy. Obviously that was this guys intention.
What if I create a web site called www.stolencreditcardnumbers.com, and using DHTML or PHP, list credit card numbers from some other source (a cracked bank site say, or someone who has a bunch of stolen numbers), shouldn't I face some kind of penalty for that.
This has nothing to do with "Your Rights Online," by the way. Stealing is a crime. Aiding someone in the commission of a crime is also a crime. Criminals should be caught, stopped and punished.
Never tell anyone that there are drug dealers in the park down the street, even for their own safety.
You had also better never report a crime to authorities. That is also providing information on how to locate illegal activity.
Someone should print out the web address of a stolen copyrighted work that's freely available online, go into a court house in Australia, and stick it to a bulletin board. Then they should sue the government for hosting that information, citing this case as precedent.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Right, if I name a site like this, I can expect to attract the lawyers of the music industry. Because they think that "all recordings of sound are belong to them."
Howeevr, this is not true, there is even quite some music out there for free that's entirely legit.
There's plenty of things to do in life besides support a music industry. Screw all the labels. I haven't bought a CD in two years and still find plenty of ways to get into mischief without music. There's always radio.
This is my sig.
Wow, it's so nice not to be the assbag country of the world for a change, even if it's just one small area. We can point to at least one country with more over-reaching and gestapoesque copyright rules than we have. Thanks you guys!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Having read about this case, the person in question was linking to the site with the intention of showing people where to get pirated materials from.
I'm not saying it should be illegal, but this is clearly different from either a) automated searching (like google) or b) linking to a site which happens to also contain pirated material.
Should it be illegal to tell people "Hey, you want some pirated stuff? He has it, that guy over there!". I'm not sure, but that is what this case rests on.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
...posted warnings with his links - stuff like: The links here are provided as examples and evidence of online music piracy. If you are not a member of the recording industry or conducting an investigation, you shouldn't be using these... :)
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Australia needs a few judges who are well educated in reality. Obviously, they seem not to know what a computer does. People down there are being convicted of "computer crimes" -- some of their "crimes" being completely legal here in the U.S.A.M.P.A.A.R.I.A.A.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Are they supposed to inspect every single link on webpages on their server in case one points to illegal material? You know what the astronomical costs are? I would highly doubt it could be done via automachia, but would require someone to check each link - and once they are done checking, go back and do it again. It would also require the ISP to go into secured sites that might be "pay only" and have proprietary information. So how is the ISP involved other then hosting the site? (which they probably have thousands of)
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Mr Shmuck didnt implicate himself, he did not tell where to find mister X or how to get in contact with mister X. He simply stated he knows mister X. Now if the guy just said he knows this song called X which is copyrighted, and did not link to it he would not have been guilty.
-
Second scenario you presented isn't murder
-
A lot of people in the music industry have a taste for drugs and young girls, even the legal people (coke). Perhaps it is time to make them conform to the law too? The evidence is not hard to collect. ;o)
Hmmm... ok, so google indexes a site with pirated files, I search for it and google returns a page with links to these files! That lawsuit just made every search engine out there illegal (hehehe... including msn:)
-- I see dumb people
I've seen sites that have links to pages that show you how to draw and quarter a human body. Now IANAL but I'm pretty sure that cutting up a dead body is illegal. Should those sites get dinged as well?
What about links to legitimate news sites that happen to run a story on "how easy it is to steal an oldsmobile with a screwdriver" only to see the theft rate of oldsmobiles increaseed sharply in the next 5 days after the article? That happened to my parents some time ago. Now I'd bet a small amount of money that the person who stole their car saw how to do it (in some great detail I might add) on the news. Shouldn't the news station be responsible for that?
The fact that this happened in Australia comforts me slightly, but only slightly. I'm waiting for some RIAA executive to put a bug in a congressman's ear about the same type of thing here. The part that really scares me is things like that can become law easily by tailing it onto the back of some sure-to-pass appropriations bill or other popular piece of legislature....
Which leads me to a slightly offtopic but (IMO) a completely legitimate idea:
Congress should pass a law prohibiting bills from coattail-riding on other unrelated bills. If its important enough to pass a law about, its important enough to deserve its own vote.
Ok, rant over. *whew*
And they said zombies weren't real!
Good thing the BBC isn't in australia. Otherwise we would see them found guilty of telling where the terrorism happened.
That's gotta be worse than telling where illegal copying and distribution of music happens.
You had it right, and had me agreeing with you right on up to the point you called it "stealing". Copyright Infringement is just that- infringement. It's not theft as defined in legal circles as you're not depriving the parties involved of anything execpt potential profits. If I infringe on somebody's Copyrights, the Work in question is still there and they're not deprived of it's use. The value of the Copyright may be diminished, but overall, they can still sell copies until they're blue in the face. If I steal something from you, you are deprived of it's usage.
If you're going to discuss this, please, please, please use the proper terms instead of the mis-used concepts the media companies have used to frame this discussion- they're dead wrong and they're relying on the "tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth..." principle to dupe you into thinking that it's the same thing.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The US courts had long ago ruled that contributory infringement applies to copyrights. It is no surprise, therefore, that Oz courts accepted the same legal theory.
Contributory infringement for copyright is a court-created theory. It was never passed as a law. The law does refer to contributory infringement of patents, and court decided it should be applied to copyright violation as well.
You may be guilty of contributory infringement if two tests hold:
1. Specifity: the information you provide must be specific, and detailed enough to enable the reciever of the information to make and infinging copy of a copyrighted work.
2. Intent: you provide the information with an intent to promote copyright violation.
Disclaimer: IANAL
While normally I would jump on the bandwagon and shout how it would be very wrong to find someone convicted guilty for linking to copyrighted files(hell, even Google would be guilty of that), I find it more than logical a site which is so obviously hosting links to (copyrighted) works, to get convicted.
Imo, the Grokster case in the US, set a nice, and imo fair, precedent.
How come no one goes after that? Have an undercover cop follow a entertainment industry lawyer or executive around for a week. You'll have enough to put the sack of shit away for life.
I suggest he pay by telling them the street address of a bank that contains money.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Next thing you know, a journalist is going to do a report on music file sharing/copyright issues/DRM, innocently including a factual statement such as, "Sites such as 'mp3s4free' make copies of songs from CDs available over the web," and she'll get sued for it.
And based on this precedent, it wouldn't be far-fetched for her to lose.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A friend of mine was approached by an undercover cop. He asked if she had any drugs. She said she didn't, but he should talk to "that guy over there." They were both arrested.
If someone started a website the provides a filtered search of Google and other search engines' results of bittorrents to pirated content, could Google (and others) be held responsible?
Granted, this is a bit different than this case, but if I had a bunch of Google search links to find a certain "favorite" bittorent file, who's blamed - me or Google?
There's of course the issue that the site you linked to could totally change without you as webmaster realizing it. Especially if the site is hacked...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
The whole /. community should add those links to their personal web sites. Everyone.
http://thepiratebay.org/ is legal in Sweden.
But is it legal to link to it from Australia? Or from Denmark for that matter! Maybe I should hide. Or blame Slashdot for autolinking URLs.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
putting up a link to a "stolen" song is very similar to selling/giving a stolen stereo to someone... you're still involved in the theft if you transmit, sell, buy, or receive stolen goods.
Of course, that's assuming acceptance of the musical copyright in the first place, which for some reason people don't want to do. I think if the song's good, and the band wants to sell it, you shouldn't steal it from them. If the song's crap, though, you should get your money back if you paid for it w/o knowing what it sounded like (i.e. good song on bad album). At least that would be an incentive for the RIAA to stop sponsoring crap bands with awesome producers for one-hit albums.
stuff |
because sarchasm has the potential to be very large in a print medium, The Register proposes a solution.
More music, fewer hits
Back in 2003 there were, like, a metric arseload of these sites. I'm also not sure that the end user would even get at the MP3s. If no one could actually access the tunes, then he wasn't linking to squat.
Why should I bother with anything from the major record labels?
They're as bad as NewSCO: They'll sue you're tail, given half a chance. Just give 'em a reason. Given this case, though, all they are looking for is half a reason.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
The problem with the Internet is that it's popular and mainstream, and used by the general public. This attracts the attention of lawmakers, bureaucracies and big companies, who think they should completely take over and/or regulate the net to death.
If you were running a site called findadealer.com and were getting some revenue from that site then you could probably be up for conspiracy charges.
I mean the guy's site was called mp3s4free.com, not simply a home page that happened to link to a few mp3's that he thought were cool.
The ISP's are on the hook because they allege that they ISP's actively worked with him to drive traffic and ad revenue for the business.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Mental note:
never move to Sydney, Australia.
something in the water making poor ozzies crazie.
The thought police have taken Sydney.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031010135440/http://w ww.mp3s4free.net/
It is pretty obvious he was acting as a filesharing hub pretty much as Napster did. This was not coincidental linking it was linking to copyright infringed material for the express pursuit of aquiring advertising revenue. He knew exactly what he was doing. No sympathy here.
Again the slashdot moral majority starts having a blabbering fit over thier rights being infringed and all that but this is a pretty simple case. He was actively using his website to encourage a very specifical criminal activity not a few coincidental links in a sea of other detail.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
Surely this man who is being prosecuted should be given a financial reward for finding all the free mp3 sites for the authorities without them having to spend ages trawling Google?
He saved the taxpayer money!
What if someone links to a site, and later on that site puts up something illegal? Does this mean that I have to monitor my links daily to see whether they're suddenly doing something illegal?
Alternatively, can I get my "referers" in trouble now by posting up mp3s? Ridiculous.
Well look at suprnova. All they did is provide a place where people could post links that point to servers which pointed to torrents, which pointed to trackers, which pointed to peers.
Thats got to be at least 5 degrees away from anything that *might* be illegal, and they still got shutdown. I'll probably never forget the wave of nausea that swept over me when I found out.
So, is it time for specialist judges?
The legal code is so enormous that we you rarely see a "general practice" lawyer these days. Propoerty law, criminal defense, tax law, etc. are all widely accepted specialties for lawyers, so why not judges?
Perhaps they could be certified in specialty areas of law, so that driven and exceptional judges could have multiple specialties.
I understand that the legal system is bogged down with too many cases, but maybe some of these cases wouldn't be brought to court if companies knew that judges had a clue.
I'll grant that the individual in this case obviously had the intent of directing people to illegally copied music, but a judge without knowledge of how the web works is at a severe disadvantage in making an appropriate ruling in a case like this.
Next thing you know, libraries will be shut down because all of the reference librarians will be in jail.
If anyone else reads howstuffworks.com, they have several articles on lock picking, safe cracking, and other illegal activities. They describe methods and have 3d visuals to show how to pick a lock, along with linking to sites to get lock picking kits. They have over 1,000 articles in their database on all subjects, but I could see them getting in trouble for hosting this kind of material. The thing that could save them was that at the beginning of the article they said "you should only do this to pick your own lock or crack your own safe." Sierpinski, did the news program say "this is how the criminals do it so you can do it too!", or did it say something like "this is a method of stealing a car"?
The voice of the next generation. "In this tower, in my mind..." Babble - Tower
Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin.
Although Cooper didn't host pirated recordings per se, the court found he breached the law by creating hyperlinks to sites that had infringing sound recordings.
This is the first such judgement against hyperlinking in Australia.
Tamberlin found against all other respondents in the case, namely ISP Comcen, its employee Chris Takoushis, Comcen's parent company E-Talk Communications, and its director Liam Bal.
In October 2003, the record companies, which included Universal Music, Sony, Warner and EMI, alleged that Cooper cooperated with Bal and Takoushis to increase traffic to the ISP, and aide advertising revenue.
Subsequently, the court was told Cooper was unaware he may have infringed copyright law, while E-Talk and Comcen argued they didn't know of Cooper's actions.
In handing down his judgement today, Tamberlin said: "I am satisfied there has been infringement of copyright.
"I won't make formal orders as yet. But since there's been infringments ...the respondents must pay the applicants' costs."
Outside the Sydney court, Music Industry Piracy Investigations general manager Michael Kerin said the verdict sent a strong message to ISPs.
"This is a very significant blow in the war against piracy.
"The court has found against all the respondents. It sends the message that ISPs who involve themselves in copyright infringement can be found guilty.
"The verdict showed that employees of ISPs who engage in piracy can be seen in the eyes of the court as guilty," Kerin said.
Cooper was not present in court. His legal counsel, Bev Stevens, said the verdict was "extremely disappointing".
The parties will only be required to pay costs -- which will be decided in 14 days once the music industry serves short minutes of orders in reponse to the judgement.
This really doesn't give a $amount, just a warning to ISPs and those who dare f%@k with the music industry. As long as you don't try to be so damn "out-in-the-open" about trading music and such, these guys won't bother with you. But go try to be a bad-ass, and this is what you'll most likely get. But really I'd be suprised if the fine is over $1,000.
"All he did (allegedly) was to hyperlink to a few sites that had infringing sound recordings."
First line of the story - Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin.
So now even the Slashdot editors aren't reading the articles, apparently.
#DeleteChrome
In this case, here in Germany, you are then suspected to be from Poland.
Famous wording here in Germany before Poland became part of the EU (translated): Stay your holidays in Poland, your car already is there.
despite the grave implications in freedom of speech, and how aberrant the "law" has become, here's a hint regarding copyright infringement:
Don't promote unlawful activities in public.
- Where the people are watching you.
- Specially when some of those are the police officers.
- And very, very important: If you're still crazy and do the above, NEVER, EVER EVER do it while wearing a T-Shirt with your name and phone number.
The isp's should post a list of the ip's of all riaa employees at any given time we set up a script on are web servers that can update from that list from time to time and bam 403's for them all.
Arrest everyone who points or talks about crime, weapons, download sources etc.
;)
Then obviously you get rid of all crime
Sue Google, then!
Presumably, in their filing and in the court transcript, the plaintiffs mentioned the location of the defendant's Web site, mp3sforfree.com. In providing a direct reference of where on the Internet to find purportedly illegal content, they are themselves providing a link to what is, by their own testimony, a bad, evil site. So why should the plaintiffs be allowed to state the location of dubious Web content, but not the defendant?
Also, couldn't the precedent that you are guilty by association just for mentioning where something illegal is going on have a chilling effect on journalism? If the paper runs a story that says "nearby residents, tired of drug-dealing and prostitution on Maple Street..." could somebody say "OMG they just told everybody where to find drug-dealing and prostitution!" and launch a successful lawsuit againt the newspaper? Or is this like patents, where everything is magically different because it tacks on "on teh interweb"?
So this Queensland man called attention to websites which provide access to copyright infringing materials and haven't done the necessary steps to prevent the users from actually reaching these.
You can still reach some of the older pages of this mp3s4free website with its links in the internet archive. The internet archive would have taken it off had the Court asked them to do so. They obviously didn't. By making the judgement public the Court (indirectly) advertised the website as one providing (indirect) access to downloadable music hence encouraged people to check it whether they can still reach the the copyright infringing material throught the site via Wayback. Thus Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin should be sued for the same reasons he sentenced this guy. (If it is a question whether the Court should have heard about this widely known technology it also needs to be a question whether this guy should have heard about the widely known technology of clicking on hyperlinks. Who draws the boundaries of "widely known"?)
BTW the Catholic church have seen this problem few hundred years back when they included the title of the Index - the book containing the titles of forbidden books - within the Index.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
Democracy dead in yet another country.
Somebody really needs to get working on that martian colony soon.
You might know where the red light area is in a large town or city. Does that mean you are a pimp or prostitute ? I think not.
I believe that each bill should be looked at individually. We pay our lawmakers big money and work as much in a year as i work in 3 months..Maybe if they didnt have so much free time on thier hands, they wouldnt be able to be bought out by all these major corparations..(ok i know they still will be bought out) Make them pass one bill at a time, and force each rep to read each bill...There were major problems for a while with reps not even knowing something had been added to the bill. Things like national ID card and Patriot Act come to mind on why we should force this process..Sure it might take a bit longer but i guarantee that bills that should not be passed that ride on coattails, would not be passed..Like they said about the National ID card, its guaranteed since it was coattailing on the back of a wartime spending bill...That my 1 cent...wheres my change!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
* Australians don't drink water they drink beer
* Australians have decided to out USA the USA on all points including stupidest head of state and most mind fscked legal system
realkiwi
This is interesting for 2 reasons:
1. The music industry is wasting a fairly impressive amount of resources on seemingly frivolous lawsuits.
I would think they would have a better use for the exorbitant amounts of money charged for CDs. Such as marketing, or maybe even lowering prices, (hell I'd settle for slowing the amazing rate the prices are increasing).
2. Linking to someone else's site may now be legally incriminating. I suppose the next step is to start suing people who have heard pirated music played.
Disclaimer: IANAL and this is not meant as a troll
But with the arrest of a wardriver in Florida, now the prosecution of those who are party to, or induce copyright infringement, not to mention the *AA's seemingly bottomless pocket to pay copyright lawyers and investigators. How long will it be before governments are actively regulating use of the Internet and adjudicating on the legality of how we use any part of it?
I can't see how any of these violations actually fell outside of standard laws and practices, but because they were done using the Internet, it gives a foothold for governments and worse (good intentioned polititians) to intervene in the Internet world and commerce on behalf of the happless millions that don't know how to use an anti-virus program or not to open suspect emails.
Has anyone found anything (news reports, comment, blogs etc.) that gives serious and credible thought or research into this and its likely outcome, with relevant examples of prior legal and political activities relating to similar situations?
I have tried to find relevant information, but can't seem to find it. Just looking for some hints / help in getting more information.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Some court cases end up being dropped where the evidence against the accused is overwhelming, but a procedural error/blunder/etc (lack of warrant, not reading rights, etc) has the case dropped.
I'm not paying for radio if I'm listening to it.
This is my sig.
Isn't this pretty much the same as "aiding and abetting", or would there be a charge of a different name (for say, if somebody posted a 'Go to 123 Smith Street to get cocaine' ad).
It's obvious he didn't "allegedly" link to those sites. He was found guilty of it, thus the allegedly needs to be removed. It's only alleged that someone did something until they are proven guilty of it. It's a legal term saying "you might not have done it, but we're accusing you of it." Some people really need to get a grasp on the english langauge...including the editors for lettings crap like this get to the front friggin page.
So I can get sued on court for any of the following offenses of providing people access to:
- child pornography
- materials for terrorist activity
- copyrighted software
- copyrighted music
- and more...
only because I provided people with a single search box on my home page where you can enter your query and get any of the results from the list above because Google indexes such sites? Remember, all you had to do, to go directly from my site to hardcore-illegal site, was entering some text and one click on "I feel lucky" button on my home page.Is it only me or does this sound absurd but plausible at the same time?
I guess from now on instead of linking to things where I could get copyrighted I'll have to start cleverly instructing you on a google search!
australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
Probably because the mod thought it should be at 0 or -1.
yeah but the modifier 'overrated' is for posts that you consider have been OVERRATED (note the word rated) by other mods. if it just plain starts on a 1, it hasnt been rated it just 'is'
Don't forget: teach a man self-cannibalism, and he eats for a lifetime.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The major point that should be taken away by this lawsuit and others recently, is that the judges and lawyers have almost no technical knowledge to even understand if a crime has been commited. How can a judge who can barely use his wordprocessor undertstand complex technical protocols? I wrote about this 5 years ago when Napster was on the hotseat. Napster: History Repeats Itself
http://www.idrop.com/Notes/HistoryRepeats.asp
Never take legal advice from anyone who can't spell "judgment."
"Man found guilty for encouraging unauthorised downloading of copyrighted material" more like it.
The day you have to worry about Google falling foul of the law is the day it puts up a link above the search box next to Web, Images, and Groups saying Illegal downloads. The courts aren't THAT stupid.
Put it another way, if I run a site that hyperlinked to kiddie porn what would you think of me?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
for example, i link to google's search results for "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams". i may have wanted someone to find lyrics or info about Green Day, but some of the links may point to an actual mp3... can I be convicted then?
HD Trailers
The 2600 case?
d raws_supreme_court_appeal/
h ttp://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/ >
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/07/04/2600_with
If you're a hacker magazine, you can't even describe how people can find DeCSS via search engines.
But if you're a professor trying to make a point, you can host DeCSS itself. ahref=http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
2600 magazine was convicted of exactly this for having a link that pointed to a location providing code to allow linux to run commercial DVDs.
What is it with Australian law? seriously we need to take them over properly and sort this mess out. Although what with EU and all its not like the UK is perfect either.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
That's exactly what is wrong with the world today. The people have become less important then some band of money grabbing modern robber barons. Wanna bet this would never happen to the son or daughter of a major shareholder?
I mean, doctors, morticians, medical students do it every day, and if the body is legally obtained - you can presumably do what you like within reason.
Can anyone point to any specific laws that forbid cutting up a human corpse?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
FTA, Free Trade Agreement? shit I thought it was Yank speak for 'fuck the aussie'
You never catch me alive
Replace your hyperlinks with DHTML code that dynamically generates them as, like, Flash animations or something -- except said flahses would be hosted on some different, arbitrary server. :-D
How is it possible that YEARS after this debate began, people (especially people on
Once and for all people: COPYING OR DOWNLOADING FILES IS NOT "THEFT" AND NEVER WILL BE.
Ok that felt good. Sorry for screaming. Carry on.
If you knowingly and deliberately facilitate the commission of a crime, you can be held legally responsibly for it. Why is that difficult for slashdotters to understand?
You could be arrested for telling someone that "the guy over there is a drug dealer" if the police thought that you were aiding and abetting the drug dealer. In this case, the guy made a huge list of links to pirated music and stuck adds all over the web page. It seems pretty clear that he was trying to help people commit the crime of copyright infringement, and was profiting in the process.
Yes, believe it or not, the context and intent of an action can affect its legality. If you give a detailed plan on how to get away with a bank robbery to a bank's security officers with the intent to help them improve security, it would be legal. If you gave the same plan to a gang of bank robbers with the intent of helping them rob a bank, it would be illegal.
No to IP.
This wording is ugly but not nonsensical.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
A link is not a copy.
This should be appealed. There is no way you can infringe copyright if you don't actually make a copy in the first place.
A link is not even a quote, it's just a pointer.
A review in a newspaper contains more information (and may even quote from the work), and yet that isn't copyright violation. If a review - a second level of indirection - isn't violation, how can a third level of indirection be violation?
And what about this: "Google for 'allofmp3', but don't go there"
That's not a hyperlink, but it contains the same information. Is that copyright violation?
And since it's just reportage and tells you what not to do, has the freedom of speech suddenly become dependent on my intent?
if the guy put links to sites that he knew contained illegal content then he should be guilty.
if a person shows another person where they can but illegal guns, then they are a party to the crime when that person buys guns, in fact they are commiting a crime by directing someone to buy the illegal guns even if no purchase is made!
now if he posts a link to a site with no intent to deliver illegal software or media, and did now know that illegalities exsisted at the end of the link then i don't see how he commited a crime.
the fact is that helping other people to commit crimes with full knowledge of the illegal activities they are promoting or allowing with full knowledge of providing the means is illegal.
and it should be.
The hyperlinks, i presume would have been held to be authorisation of copyright infringement under Australian law.
The Commonwealth of Australia Copyright Act 1958
S36: The copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is infringed by a person who, not being the owner of the copyright, and without the licence of the owner of the copyright, does in Australia, or authorizes the doing in Australia of, any act comprised in the copyright.
This would be the head of action that would have been brought against the defendant.
Furthermore, the court can consider a number of factors in whether the authorisation was in fact an authorisation under subsection 1A(a)-(c):
Power to prevent acts concerned
Nature of the relationship between the defendant and the linked site
reasonability in the prevention of such breach.
It is very odd however, that the ISP was pinged, becaue under s116AA CRA, ISP's are taken not to have infringed copyright, if they have recieved notice of the defendant's alleged breach, and providing notice to that defendant of his or her breach. The ISP must have refused to remove his website - costly indeed.
This analogy is flawed.
If I were to post up a public sign saying that there is a guy selling copied CDs from his apartment at 58 Court St, and such a person did exist, what should I be prosecuted for?
What if the guy was selling automatic weapons?
Or offering to kill people for money?
What should I be convicted of in this case? The crime the party I pointed to committed? Maybe if I had profited in providing the referral, but otherwise the charge should be less.
The full charge has been levied because of intent to rebuke the system, which is theoretically in place for the public good. This is kind of like distinguishing between murder and manslaugther. If I point someone to a hitman, knowing that he is going to take out a contract on a mutual enemy, should I be charged with murder once that contract is executed? That would probably be the case.
Whether intent should count against the hyperlinker here depends on whether he mentioned that the source offered copyrighted work. If he simply linked to a file sharing service then things get a little murkier.
Starting at 1 is a rating in and of itself (look at my initial rating, for example). If I see a post at 1 (or even 0, for that matter) and I feel that rating is ovverrated, I *will* mod it as such.
well thats your interpretation but it doesnt match what the FAQ says about the use of overrated. it has to have been actively rated up by another mod not just than the simple +1 of a regular poster.. and not jkust the opinion of a mod that it should be modded down *without giving a reason for the modifier*
Oh, I'm quite aware of the same thing going on here too. I didnt mean to say it was *only* Germany.. It was just an easy example.
Its still wrong too. Banning expression of ideas is wrong. Be them 'hate' or 'love'. Religions have plenty of hate in them, where does the line get drawn?
---- Booth was a patriot ----