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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."
If he was found guilty, then the charges are proven. They are no longer alleged.
"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.
Only if the ISP took down the site as of the first notice sent by the RIAA. Their safe harbors are only available if they play by the industries rules. The industry would probably offer such an agreement with ISPs even if it wasn't in the law. They don't want to hurt business unless they think those businesses are encouraging the "piracy". They're more interested in getting individuals to make examples of, like the college students that did little more than make search engines that didn't specifically exclude music files. This guy was an example to the rest of us that if we link to sites committing infringement the industry can and will find a legal loophole to get at us.
Though, this is a bit dated. The "Bow-tie" theory holds that the Internet is significantly less connected than once thought. Only about 30% of the web is symmetrically linked.
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/almaden/webmap_press.ht ml
Actually there was an article up yesterday with exactly your complaint. Apparently a law just got passed in Canada and that was one of the worries; now using Google to search for pirated works in Canada makes Google break the law.
No, there has been a bill presented to parliament for first reading that may have this unintended effect.
That's why I prefer US IP law.
The misreading above makes me wonder if you have any idea what it says?
The law has NOT passed. It is an early draft of a *proposed* ammendment to the copyright law. It's in the early review stages, so that these types of implications can be investigated and (hopefully) adjustments can be made. Please check your facts before posting so as not to spread FUD!
Here's the link to the original article in yesterday's post: link to article in question
I chose to end my comments, not with a rim shot, but a long decaying F#7sus4
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
Australia's been banning books for years. Some friends got some nastygrams from Customs or similar when they tried to get some drug related book shipped in to the country. The timing fits in with this:
l ia
http://www.ecstasy.org/books/australia.html
I think the book in question in the case of my friends was TiHKAL, as noted here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/censorship-in-austra
It was pretty random as to whether your copy would slip through customs.
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...
No, it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. There's even been attempts to bring what are really copyright cases under the Stolen Property Act, and they've been shot down in the courts. The exclusive remedies for these actions are those in the Copyright Act.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Actually, if you go to Kinko's, Office Depot, etc, you can copy pretty much any copyrighted work as long as you're using self-service machines; they have standard disclaimers regarding those.
Now, if you were to go in with a copyrighted work, you have to supply some sort of proof that you're allowed to copy it, be it something showing the material is being used for educational purposes, or evidence that you're the copyright holder.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
IANAL, but a case might be made for aiding and abetting. Presumably, the Aussie judge felt something similar applied to this case.
Of course, the question in my mind is why the litigants didn't let this guy keep going for a while, and use his site as a list of targets to sue; get him as an acessory AFTER you have all of the other cases. I guess filing costs would be too high, probably.
Even with this, it's not clear that the ISP should be held responsible -- it was NOT clear that such hyperlinking was in fact a violation prior to this case.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Intent is important, not even in degree of a crime. New York law states that it is Misdemeanor offense to carry a knife, dagger,etc. WITH intent to use it unlawfully on another individual. The legality of you carrying a knife is based SOLELY upon intent. If you didn't intend to use it unlawfully, carrying it is legal. If you did plan to use it such it is illegal to carry. Look at NY's Legal code. Intent can make all the difference in whether something is legal or illegal. Likely if his intent was to host links to ILLEGAL activities his activity of hosting links becomes illegal. If his intent was to post to interesting MP3's assuming that they were legit, and doing some work to check if they were legit, it wouldn't be illegal.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
"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?"
w ww.mp3s4free.net/
Goto his website and have a look for yourself
http://web.archive.org/web/20031010135440/http://
And this was what he was offering as *Popular Downloads* on his front page.
White Flag
by Dido
P.I.M.P
by 50 Cent
Me Against The Music (CDS)
by Britney Spears Ft Madonna
Baby Boy
by Beyonce ft. Sean Paul
Someday
by Nickelback
Stand Up (Radio Edit)
by Ludacris Ft Shawnna
Right Thurr
by Chingy
Shake Ya Tailfeather
by Nelly ft. P. Diddy
Unwell
by Matchbox 20
Get Low
by Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz
Cut and dry case it seems to me.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
There is a difference between being able to see a site and being able to link to it. In this case, the defendent was just linking to the site. It begs the question of how many degrees of separation is required before a link isn't infringing. And what if it isn't a link, but just the text (so you would have to cut and paste to get to the site), or a link to a google query that brings up the site in question.
Getting back to the point, there has definitely been instances where cease and desist letters have been sent because of deep links to content, and I have seen sites that have very specific rules about how links to content should appear.
Finally, I never said that viewing copyright material is illegal, just linking to it.
Sue Google, then!