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Australian Man Found Guilty for Hyperlinking

Posted by Zonk on from the dark-day-for-the-rebellion dept.

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."

4 of 439 comments (clear)

  1. Linking can be taken to several levels by Lockz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. His crime by TildeMan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Teach a man to fish by FidelCatsro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  4. Consult a lawyer before each breath by Phat_Tony · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Never mention to anyone that they sell fake watches on Canal street in New York.

    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.

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