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."
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.
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
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
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.