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Australia Rules Linking to Copyright Material Also Illegal
An anonymous reader writes "A recent ruling in Federal court upheld the ruling that the operator and ISP that hosted the site 'mp3s4free.net' were guilty of copyright infringement violations because they provided access to the copyright material. From the article: 'Dale Clapperton, vice-chairman of the non-profit organization Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), explained the ruling as follows: "If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act."'"
Sorry Australians, no more internet for you. As soon as legal departments look at this, expect all your big ISPs, Yahoo, Google, MySpace, etc to all flee Australian shores.
[1] Although frankly, with a site called mp3s4free.net what the hell did he expect?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Admin knows that most of the illegall stuff I downloaded i found through google...
Isn't this like preventing a news reporter from referring to a book, because someone might go out and photocopy it illegally? If this layman's analogy was given, how many common people would think this ruling to be idiocy?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Another crazy decision from judges who haven't a clue. It is unrealistic to expect Telcos and ISPs to actively manage and oversee websites. If they have to devote resources to anything, it should be locating websites hosting things that are way beyond the pale like child pornography.
I don't know how this sort of ruling will last. Where does this leave search engines? Google.com.au for example? They are just as good at finding infringing material without directly providing links, however, they might have a database where this info is stored, so how legally different is this sort of data which can provide such links, and how do judges advocate that they're any different? Other than the simple fact that the site under question clearly has a purpose for the distribution of mp3's, one wonders how far it could go?
Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act.
I wish I had that much money to pay for such statements when I go to court myself...
How is linking on a web page any different than the references and citations that have been in printed material, and probably hand written before that, almost forever? The only difference is that it automates the procedure of 'going to the appropriate stack, finding the referenced book or article, and opening it at the appropriate page'.
I am going to kill my neighbor. Every one here is guilty of not stopping me. Well, at least all Australians.
Well both the text of the article and the legal document make one thing very clear: By linking to any copyrighted material in Australia you are encouraging someone to download and use that material illegally.
Since almost everything published is protected under copyright almost all hyperlinks are illegal! The web as a whole is nothing but one great big collection of pirates and must be shutdown to protect the record industry!
chown -R us
Quick, jettison all common sense and everybody do the freakout!!
Thank you Australia for showing us there is a nation in the "free world" with it's head *just a little" further up it's ass than America when it comes to copyright law. Remember, every inch counts.
http://www.demonoid.com/files/download/HTTP/272244 /242796
Last torrent I downloaded. So sue me.
If memory serves, didnt some student write a seach and index/catalog tool to allow easy 'stealing' of music, deployed it on the campus network and was promptly creamed in court?
And yes I am too lazy to look it up.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This kind of thing means no more internet for more than just Australians.
There is a concerted effort to turn the internet into cable television. The entertainment/military/industrial complex is working with the big telcos to make sure Slashdot becomes a quaint throwback to the days of open internet. Sure there will still be geeks pining about the days when any old body could put up a web site that could get the same attention as one put up by Sony, and a couple of nobodies could come up with a Google, but face it, that's just not the way of the world.
Don't get fooled by the $12.95 per month DSL. Forces are working overtime to put ISPs as we know them out of business. When they finally put the last nail in the coffin of Net Neutrality, watch how fast things change. Then, get ready for all of the internet to look like myspace, and watch for the articles about how great it is that we're free to choose our own "friends". We're already seeing more and more of magazines like Wired dedicated to the joys of the mercantilisation of what's left of the Web.
Remember, Google became a phenomenon without adverts, and existed for years that way. Could that happen today? Think it will happen when there's no "neutrality" about the Web? Freedom never gets easier to defend.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act.
Hey, I like the way this guy thinks! So, if you give someone permission to do something that is illegal, you're actually guilty of that act! Fun! There are so many great ways this could be exploited... Let me think...
That annoying bloke in accounts is soon going to find he's been sending emails to people giving them permisison to commit murder!
So, how about this Google search query?
e t+mp3
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=site%3Azshare.n
Google provides easy access to a lot of copyrighted material...
:wq!
``Australia Rules Linking to Copyright Material Also Illegal''
So, basically, linking to almost anything on the Internet is now illegal in Australia. After all, the vast majority of what is on the Internet is copyright material.
And what if you're not the one doing the linking? For example, your site is a forum and other people post the links there? Apparently, you're guilty, too. Even if you're the ISP hosting the site and had nothing at all to do with its content, you're guilty.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
If you link to a resource that's not local, you have to keep revisiting your own links to make sure the contents are in the same spirit as the ones you linked to. This is not just a problem for ISPs, but also for everyone creating content for the web, because you are suddenly responsible for something that's not yours to control.
What if someone posts links on a forum (or other site that allows user comments). Would the site owners be responsbile? This could be a great (awful) way to blackmail people.
Philosophy.
According to TFA, he's guilty because he had the power to stop the exchange of copyrighted materials. He must be one powerful guy, to be able to do what governments around the world are trying to do and failing.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Mind boggling stupidity seems to abound in the courts and tech politics of both Australia and New Zealand. Are your governments and judiciary taking their lead from China or are they really such complete morons?
One word is missing from all the comments it's "intent". For one to be breaking the law for linking you have to show clear "intent" to infringe copyright or assist in infringing copyright. The ISP in this case "clearly knew" that this service was "intentionally" infringing copyright. I hate DRM and all the copycrap just as much as anyone else but these guys were first class idiots and Im far from surprised from the decision. I doubt Google will face the same issue because there is little if any intent to infringe copyright they merely want to catalog the web.
We are seeing too many of those laws and court rulings that treat "cyber" crimes as something different from "real world" crimes. They are not. There is such a thing as being an "accessory" to crime, and every crime should be treated equally in this respect.
If someone creates a facility specifically designed for an illegal action, then that's a violation. If someone uses a facility created legally for an illegal purpose, without the knowledge of the owner, then the owner shouldn't be an accessory, unless he was grossly negligent. Having a chop shop is illegal, however if you rent a garage and use it to take apart stolen cars without the knowledge of the garage owner, then the owner shouldn't be considered an accessory to the crime.
The real cause of this is that this "intellectual property" thing has been so distorted from its original purpose. The reason for copyrights and patents is to give an incentive for the creation of new intellectual works. It's not the intention to create mega-corporations that manage a few "super stars" for marketing while exploring the works of thousands of artists who are forced to sell their works for very little. It's not the intention to eternally perpetuate the ownership of works from artists who are long dead. It's not the intention to create a monopolistic network of distribution for films and music where the artist must comply with the monopoly's rules if he wants to survive.
Faced by such a monster as the existing system for marketing music and films, the people are reacting. They are realizing that not all is as it should be. I for one do not agree to pay a tax to a singer such as Mariah Carey, who got $50 million from the recording company as severance pay because people wouldn't buy her "music". I do not agree to pay the expenses of other millionaire rock stars every time I buy a record from my favorite artist. The price of music and films is steadily up because there is no real competition, everything is handled by a handful of corporations who feel like they must decide what we want to watch and listen.
Now they want to move the burden of maintaining their inviable system to us, the people. That's why they are buying so many legislators to create draconian laws. In the end the current system has no chance to survive. They must realize that they cannot keep an unfair and unjust system just by declaring "illegal" any attempt to fight it.
Gimme a break. The guy's site was mp3sForFree.net or some such. If this site is linking to copyrighted material (and you accept that such material is an infringement [which btw I do not]) and that is all that it does then the ruling is not as draconian as all the jerking knees here might suggest. The purpose of a common law barrister is to distingush MyHomePage.com and Google.com from the subject of this case and the power of the common law is for judges to accept that distinction and therefore make the context free "black letter law" a bit more sane. As we say in Australia "pull your head in".
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
I'm just guessing, no expert at this, but...
Maybe a workaround would be to not provide the link itself, but only the url.
That is... no using of the a href tag.
Then, it could be considered as citing, just as books cite authors... you see the name, book, editorial, etc... and you have to manually search for it to buy it. In this case, you'd have to copy the url and enter it in the address bar.
What about the landlord of the ISP? He is the one to blame for permitting all these filthy copyright violating web-sites. He should never have allowed them over the doorstep in the first place!
send + more == money?
I'm too lazy to do a search, but I remember that too.
The USA's DMCA apparently extends to linking to information that can be used to defeat copyright protection schemes, as upheld in the 2600 case.
Also, people in the US have been arrested and jailed for giving presentations that indicated weaknesses in copyright protections.
And what if I link to someone who links to something illegal? (:
Maxim
This is a problematic law with very little thought applied to the nature of the medium in which it operates.
What is not covered there is the very distinct possibility that you link to a site that does not include any infringing material, and over time, some leaks onto the linked pages.
By the act of someone else modifying content outside your control, you become guilty of Copyright Infringement.
It would be interesting to see what extent that leads on to. For example, a governmental site links to an external address. The domain owner of this site changes, take the destination of the link and serves a redirect (or hosts) a warez repository at that link.
Unless this link is monitored exceptionally well (and none of those governmental sites ever have a stale link do they!), the government would then be guilty of Copyright Infringement, and thus performing illegal activity.
Bet I'm not the only one that sees this coming.
Having a law that states linking to something is committing copyright infringement is unworkable. If the intent (which needs to be proved) was to provide access to infringing material hosted elsewhere, then this should fall under 'accessory to' legislation. But intent needs be proved that the intent was to infringe copyright, not provide access to legitimate resources that may become contaminated by an external source (in which case, the external source should be identified and dealt with by the correct bodies).
You surely do have a point about ISPs fleeing Oz.
But this also may ease even further the suits against common people by those who made a business out of squeezing people in court (you know who I mean).
Besides, how easy is to deem a powerless surfer guilty while corporations get away with promising support and never delivering -- unless, of course, "a sufficient number of people asks for it"!
Now, the "mp3s4free". What's wrong with that? Do you think all music is paid? Have you haver heard of Indie music? Did you know that a large share of paid music is absolute crap, promoted ad nauseam till a lot of dumb teenagers start using T-shirts with said music titles?
Yes, Virginia, mp3s4free is a possibility. But now I'd like to ask, how the f* am I to differentiate a site offering illegal copies (the so called "piracy") from a legitimate one with authentic free music?
You know what? It's time we have a GPL for music -- so that, if an author decides to copyleft her/his music and someone gets in the way, this someone will likewise be punished with, e.g., paying for distribution and marketing costs of all the songs which would be distributed without such interference...
This is about getting other nations' money. Nothing less than that. I was always fond of hearing English-language songs. Now I wish my radio would play European and Asiatic music, just to get rid of these leeches.
Try putting up a link to the Olympic Games website sometime. For an event which is supposed to be about inclusion of all people in sport it has some bizarre ideas about the website. The olympic group sent take down notices to all kinds of people for linking to the site, that is well before this decision and I doubt that their perspective on linking would only be intra Australian.
How do you authorize infringement? If I leave my car on my drive have I authorized theft? If I pin an advert for a supplier of decorative samarai swords on a public notice board, am I authorizing theft, murder, seppuku? Where does the madness end?
Here it is, straight from the possums anus, clause 101 of the Australian copyright act:
Obviously this was written when copyright infringement meant xeroxing a book and was probably intended to make the owners of the Xerox machine liable for contributory infringement. How quaint and undesirable in todays interconnected digital world, where syndicating a feed could make you guilty under this badly worded clause.
Suppose I let a friend borrow a few of my CDs. That's legal, right? But now, what this judge is saying, is that (at least in Australia) what's illegal isn't letting them borrow the CDs - it's telling them that it's okay with me if they make copies.
Funk dat.
Do I condone racism when I report about a nazi gathering? Do I condone murder if I report about one? Do I condone stupid laws when I report about this BS?
It's the same problem as "intent". Who may say what my intent is, besides me? When a music industry exec talks about $tool and how it is used to circumvent DRM, does he promote it? How is it different from when I talk about it? Who is telling what our "intent" is?
Generally, that law holds about as much water as an incontinent dog.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While it's easy to get sad, this kind of behavior is leading to a counterculture. Lots of stuff is being released using Creative Commons, GFDL (Wikipedia, etc), or even public domain. And the great thing is that a lot of it is much better than the next Pop Idol/American Idol song.
I have to wonder whether this sort of publishing would be anywhere near as successful, if the content industry weren't such bastards. I guess there is a market for good old customer service.
Welcome to the United States of Australia.
IANAL btw.
I have no problems with the idea that knowingly linking to illegal material should also be illegal. For example, if I start telling people "go talk to bob, he can sell you some illegal drugs", that would be illegal because I am telling someone how to commit an illegal act. Same deal here, linking to a webpage containing illegal material is equivilant to telling someone how to obtain that illegal material. Human edited directories such as Yahoo should also fall under this. Search engines like google that do not monitor or filter their content should not be liable for linking to illegal content unless they are specificially notified and asked to remove the links (or whatever).
The part about ISPs being liable is totally wrong. Say I own a hotel. I rent a room to someone (who pays me for it). That person then uses the room to conduct an illegal act. Does that mean that I am liable for the illegal use of the room? Only if I am specifically notified (e.g. by the police) and fail to take appropriate action (e.g. ejecting the person from the hotel). The same should apply to ISPs and content providers. They should only be liable for illegal content if they have been specifically notified and fail to take action (be that removing the illegal content, shutting down the account, providing account details to the appropriate authorities or whatever).
Making ISPs legally liable for content stored on/hosted by (and potentially even passing through) their networks and forcing them to activly police content would send a number of ISPs out of business and cause a great many more to stop offering any kind of hosting service. (although just like the "stonecutters" in that simpsons episode, there is a big group of vested interests who want to see the internet as we know it today disappear or morph into something much more controled and difficult to publish on)
That may be well and good for static HTML sites (but who makes those anymore?), where the website 'administrator' manually types in the links, but what about dynamic content?
So let's pretend that they allow search engines to provide those links. Who would then be 'guilty'? Anyone who accidentally uses the search engine to generate those search results? Or any site that uses the google or yahoo search apis to do searching on their site? Again, is it the person typing in a search, the site that embeds the search engine api, or the search engine company?
Or maybe this law wasn't really thought through well enough. Maybe it really is only the person posting the copyrighted work.
It's a question of intent. The judges wrote:
The same cannot be said of Google.(IANAL)
What about sites that link to sites that link to copyrighted material?
In most countries supply and possesion of certain drugs is a criminal offense, buying them isn't.
What is illegal material? Child porn maybe but copyrighted material certainly isn't "illegal material".
Finally your stance on ISP's is just bizarre, if you had read the actual ruling you would be aware that:
You are a blogger or other web content publisher. You write an article which cites non-copyrighted content by way of a href URL, say http://www.somedomain.com/link.html, for example. Later the owner of of that web page changes it to contain copyrighted material. You do not notice, and do not remove the citation in your content.
Are you still violating copyright ??
Yet another idiot who simply does not understand the subject matter he is making pronouncement upon.
I condone the downloading of all RIAA content by all slashdotters.
:() then I don't know what does.
Guess I just infringed on a lot of copyrights, right?
If this doesn't kill free speech (which isn't constitutionally protected in Australia
This does NOT mean that the Internet will be shut down here. For one, they only refer to copyrighted material that you don't have permission to use. You can use hyperlinks, just not to illegally posted mp3s, or pages/files that you simply aren't meant to see. For two, just because they ruled this way, doesn't mean that everyone will start taking advantage of the technical holes in it. Besides, if anyone actually had the motive and the short-sightedness to attempt that, I'm sure the ruling would be changed quick smart. I know it's not the best solution to a crappy law, but at least it works.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I'll take that bet. My money's on the world.
Historically, it has been common for industries, laws, and other Big Systems to favour the corporations in new endeavours. Twice armed is he who knows his cause is just, but thrice armed is he who gets his blow in first, and all that. Let's face it, corporations with their huge financial and lobbying power tend to be pretty quick off the mark at stealing an advantage over the public. Perhaps more to the point, until they try it, the public don't know what they have to protect themselves against.
But a little further down the line, perhaps 5-10 years for the things I can think of off the top of my head, the public always win. The next big swing I'm expecting is for DRM, when the public start to realise that they've been had. DRM is relatively safe as long as it doesn't annoy the average person and only geeks see what's wrong with it, but it's been getting serious for a few years now. As people's first MP3 players start dying or they upgrade their PCs and they realise they can't take their music collection with them, as people who spent a fortune on early HDTVs get told they can't watch HD discs they paid a premium for at any better resolution than a normal DVD because of something called HDCP, as people whose legitimately purchased software starts deactivating itself in a case of mistaken identity and costing them or their business time and money... Then the people will cease to accept it, DRM will become a political timebomb, and the politicians and lawyers will turn on the tech and media companies who advocate DRM like piranha in a frenzy. It always ends this way, when something good is corrupted by corporate interests; it's only a matter of time.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
They provide machines that allow people to copy copyrighted material!
Sends a poor message about Australia's system of law and/or protection of civil rights. Perhaps it'll be reversed at a higher level.
So, with this logic used in this ruling... ...does that mean copy machine manufacturers are liable for people using their products to copy books, magazines, photos, money? does that mean computer manufacturers are liable for people using [i] their [/i] products to infringe on copywright? where is the line drawn? blank CD companies? CD recorders?
This ruling seems to encompass just about anyone on earth since most products can and may be used for facilitating copyrigbht infringements.
How can you give someone "permission" to infringe a copyright, patent, or other IP that you don't own? I could see that being considered fraud, like selling the Golden Gate Bridge or the CN Tower, but contributory?
If you have a group of people discussing ways to infringe restrictions or bypass IP laws, you might have opportunities for collusion or some variant on racketeering. But as a society, how can you afford to make it illegal to discuss such important issues and avenues for bringing about social change when the *AA and such get out of hand? There would have to be significant allowance for the freedom of speech in many jurisdictions; certainly I wouldn't expect the legislation around the world to be too consistent given the variety of viewpoints on the issues of IP.
Take the US patent database, for instance. Several attempts to push that database of junk patents on the EU have been rebuffed.
Those who try to create business patents forget a few key points:
The US patent database is stuffed to the brim with such junk. My favourite example is trying to claim a patent over linking a user action to triggering a sale. Whether it is a single mouse click in a GUI, web browser, menu item, popup list selection, or other user interaction is irrelevant. The basic user interaction techniques and algorithms have been discussed, designed, prototyped, and implemented since Alan Kay was at Xerox PARC.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If you give someone permission to do something that infringes on the copyright, it's illegal? Isn't that like saying that those who sell guns are liable for the crimes the buyers commit?
By the way, the copyright situation in this article probably falls in a grey area. I don't know enough details about it to make a decision over whether the judge was right or wrong.
Here's a though: How much trouble can a hotel get in if they allow a group of individuals to illegally gamble in one of the rooms they are renting to them?
If you think that is nasty, Try this
Sharon is going to get really pissed off I guess...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
NO!
It should NOT BE ILLEGAL to tell someone how to do an illegal act. The censorship committees are already getting to you, I see.
Like it was already mentioned, deciding that linking to copyrighted material is indeed illegal is the same as saying the vast part of the whole Internet is illegal (and should be prohibited). I can't seriously consider a judge who concludes that qualified to take on a case like this, really. Today it's widely recognized that tine Internet is a vital invention for this era of history! We talk about the information society, well, guess what's the whole pillar holding that idea up. This just shows, once again, that legislation isn't up for the task of mapping the Internet, and that this whole copyright and patent war has to stop, it's fucking childish.
I recently bought a book that shows me how to hack and break Windows in lots of ways, with an accompanying CD full of viruses I could easily just use against anyone. This is a real non-digital, very tangible product. Why is that legal then?
IANAL (nor have I played one on television)
It turns out that part of the DMCA anticipated and addressed this very issue in the United States a long time ago...
Despite all of the flack that section 512 of the DMCA (takedown notices, etc) gets around here, it is that very section that immunizes ISPs from this kind of "secondary" liability (things such as inducement, which Grokster got nailed for). As long as ISPs follow the procedures set out in the DMCA, they have certain safe harbors that protect them from these kinds of suits. Those procedures include things like having a copyright policy, handling takedown requests, and putting things back up if the user is willing to vouch for it in certain ways.
DMCA != EVIL all of the time (just MOST of the time)
A few weeks ago Fox threatened Quicksilverscreen (and Quicksilverscreen's ISP) with a takedown notice. Not because Quicksilverscreen served any infringing material, but because it linked to it on YouTube (amongst others).
http://quicksilverscreen.com/is-linking-illegal/
So is Australia setting the precident for the US? I hope not.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
"Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act."
If you CONDONE someone else doing it, you're an accomplice. You don't even have to explicitly condone it, just "more or less".
No, no dangerous precedent there at all.
-Styopa
If you are an Australian ISP please block it.
I'm sure at least one of the links in this Google search links to unauthorized copies of copyrighted material. The RIAA is already up in arms about such material.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
>> Australia Rules Linking to Copyright Material Also Illegal
That really had me wondering at first. I have over 30 CD's on my website. All the content on my website is Copyright. So did Australia make my own links, internal and extermal, which point to my own website illegal? What gives them the right? I am the copyright holder, so how can they make linking to copyright material in and of itself illegal?
Then I RTFA and found out that the title, much like AP our Reuters, has nothing to do with the actual story.
The idea of copyright is already becoming obsolete, most of your ideas are not original but are mostly based on some thing yo have already observed. you can not say just because you got there first you own this idea, do you really think you came up with that idea all on your own, with out the rest of humanity? the only reason for copy right to still exist is to place materialistic value on ideas and thought. by making linking illegal then yeah as said b4 you just basically said you cannot access any existing information in the system because we don't like to share; which is just plain stupid. the corporations are failing to realise the old system of controlled distribution and monopolization cant no long be enforced when it comes to information based content.
...since linking to anything copyrighted is now illegal, unless the page specifically tells you that you that you have the right to link to it or unless it is specifically stated that the page is not copyrighted, you can't link to anything other then pages you own the copyright to without getting express permission from the holders.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I agree, Anonymous Brave Guy.
My money is also on the desire for free expression, free exchange of ideas and information.
But it's important to remember that the forces of greed have massive resources and, increasingly, the power of government. And because of the technology (see:Money) required to keep the internet running, it's fragile. We'll soon start hearing that a free internet is a haven for terrorists, so it has to be locked down.
If it comes, the end of the Internet as we know it will take the form of "Homeland Security".
As that old Greek dude said: "This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs: When he first appears, he is a protector." - Plato
You are welcome on my lawn.
This ruling is simply a logical extension of the Napster case.
Napster's servers contained nothing but links, some of which pointed to infringing material. Ergo, Napster should be shut down.
Google's servers also contain nothing but links, some of which point to infringing materal. Ergo, Google should be shut down.
In its own twisted way, the logic is totally consistent.
In order for laws to change, you have to disagree with current law. If condoning a different system of law is violation of law, then anyone who wants to change a law is a criminal. Therefore, all legislators in Australia are criminals, since their job is to change laws. Thus, the law in Australia is, there is no law. I think we have a rational grounds for anarchy there. Awesome!
Furthermore, I'm sure most Australians have disliked a law at one time or another. Thus, everyone on Australia is a condemned criminal... oh... wait. (sorry guys, I couldn't resist that last bit)
"..but we are absolutely not a police state." - db32
Buddy, I count 23 video cameras on my 25km bike ride from home to work. That's not counting the still cameras on major intersections looking for speeders and people running the stop lights.
You and I can be held indefinitely without charges. There was just a story about a guy who was picked up, bundled up and shipped off ("renditioned") to Egypt where he was tortured for a couple of years. The only reason we heard about it was because he was THE WRONG GUY.
The government no longer needs a warrant to tap our phones or a reason (habeas corpus) to arrest and hold us. The number of documents that the current Administration has declared "Classified" has gone up by over 5000 percent, and the GAO has estimated that only about 5 percent of those secret documents relate to National Security, allowing the government to operate in near total secrecy (and better, with the appearance of openness, thanks to a complicit media).
What do you think a police state looks like?
You are welcome on my lawn.
NOTHING illegal about making a site called mp3s4free.net.
In the United States, Grokster was decided in large part because of the overall effect of Grokster's marketing of its service. The "inducement to infringe" was proven by Grokster advertising, which compared it to Napster and in effect said, "Hey, Napster is illegal and got shut down, but you can do the same stuff at our wonderful site that you used to be able to do at Napster!" Many legal commentators have noted that if Grokster hadn't so obviously stepped on its crank, the US Supreme Court might have decided the case differently. Instead of begging to be sued, they should have touted the non-infringing uses of the service, such as sharing public domain content.
People jump all over courts for being "stupid" when they don't see the obvious. The mp3s4free name in itself obviously isn't illegal. But it seems that mp3s4free was engaged in rather obvious and stupid inducement to infringe, and the "we're just linking to other sites" argument is a poor smokescreen for the fact that it was a clearinghouse for infringing activity. Your repetition of the word NOTHING doesn't change that.
Filesharing services need to get smart about the law if they want to win these cases. They need to build the services carefully, bringing in partners (such as Archive.org for example) who can provide a wide range of files (think academic uses, archiving of public domain works, sharing of user-created materials). The more a P2P service can show that it is really about distribution of useful content, rather than mere inducement to infringe copyrighted works, the easier it will be to de-stigmatize P2P services in general. In the mean time, the courts and the public at large will look at P2P as a technology used primarily to infringe on copyrighted works.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
From here, here, and here, FOR FREE!
Oops.
This law is *stupid*. Providing links to material that is copyrighted is routine, and there is no way to easily tell whether the people following those links are *actually* infringing or not. For example, if someone downloads a copy of copyrighted material that they have already purchased, is that still infringement? What if the particular usage falls under "fair use"?
If the copyright owners want to prosecute people to protect the rights they get under copyright, then the obvious targets are the people who A) actually host/distribute the files, and B) people who actually download them. Links to material are like providing a list of books in a library -- somebody could use those to find them, borrow them (all fine), and then photocopy them (probably infringing). Should the library then be sued as a contributory to the act?
How about if I link to infringing MP3's and the Australian equivalent of the RIAA on the same page. Does this make them guilty of copyright infringement?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
(See my sig line. It's not just a cutesy blurb, I really was there!)
Libraries are now illegal.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
"The part about ISPs being liable is totally wrong. Say I own a hotel. I rent a room to someone (who pays me for it). That person then uses the room to conduct an illegal act. Does that mean that I am liable for the illegal use of the room?"
Perhaps not, but in some places and for some wrongs, the room may be liable and may be fined of confiscated. Right? Or would that only apply to something loaned and not to something rented?
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Make sure that every page on your personal web site is tagged with a Creative Commons license. The day will come when the only links that the copyright collectives will allow you to have will be links to sites with Creative Commons licensed or public domain content. And the burden of proof will be up to you. Clearly labeling every single linked page as CC will be our only protection against their armies of bloodthirsty lawyers.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
1. Create some copyright work and post it to YouTube
2. Find an Australia-based web forum
3. Post a link to copyright work on YouTube in web forum
4. Sue ISP
5. Profit!
Without agreeing or disagreeing, I must simply say: contorted arguments like the above are exactly why "intellectual property" must die. It's just such a wasteful concept. IP was conceived as a way to benefit society, and it has been tried and it has failed. IP is instead serving as a vehicle of oppression. And of self-aggrandizement for people who think they're so special that nobody else ever would think of the same thing they thought of, or produce something similar of equal worth. What a bunch of fools.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Almost everything on the web is copyrighted?
Even if something is freeware, it's still copyrighted.
Open source like Firefox is copyrighted too.
This just get a big WTF from me.
This random image (warning, illegal link!?) is copyrighted unless the photographer explicitly released his rights and placed it into the public domain, which is a quite rare thing to do. All created material is copyrighted the owner, even if the owner doesn't claim so, right?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Another example. I own a hire company that hires chainsaws. Someone hires one of my chainsaws and uses it to cut someones head off. Am I liable for the illegal act committed using my chainsaw? Since the person who used my chainsaw to cut off someones head did it without my knowledge or concent, the answer is probobly no (again IANAL). On the other hand, if the police find out that the persons head was cut off with one of my chainsaws, they can require me to hand over details of the person who hired the saw in question. If I dont, there are laws that apply to it (obstruction of justice I think it is).
The same should apply in the case of illegal activities online. If someone is using webspace I provide, I should not be liable for any illegal content hosted on that webspace (child porn, RIAA MP3s etc) unless I actually knew the content was there (e.g. RIAA told me to take content down and I did not). Again, if the police find out that one of my customers is using my webspace to host illegal content, they can require me to hand out customer details for that customer (i.e. if they have a court order/search warrent/whatever). And again, if I do not, there are penalties that would apply.
As for your comment, the room could get in trouble if:
A.They knew about the illegal act and failed to take steps to stop it or catch the people who commited it (e.g. cops ask them to hand over details for the customer who rented the room and they do not do so)
or B.it could be reasonably expected that the room was being used for illegal activities (e.g. if the hotel specifically advertized that drug dealers could use their rooms to deal drugs in, that would get them in trouble or if the majority of people using the hotel were using it for illegal acts that could also get them in trouble)
Now, in this particular case the content provider knew full well that the links were to illegally copied content and is therefore liable for it. But the ISP had no idea (presumably until advised by law enforcement or whatever) that the hosted page had links to illegally copied content and therefore should not be liable.
Put simply, making ISPs liable for illegal content on their networks that they are unaware of sets a dangerious precident. For example, could an ISP be liable for hosting child porn even though they had no idea that their customer was using their networks to spread it?
So basically... no google since it links to sites that link torrents.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
what's next are you going to charge all chemistry teachers because the course involves materials which when mixed toghether can make a bomb? how about charging all libraries for carrying said books or how about suing cities for providing roads which facilitate driving which in turn killed a relative of yours, or charging all martial arts instructors because they facilitated some hoodlums to bully your kid. this law makes so many assumptions it's ridiculous, everyone can be guilty of something, the fact that it's "restricted" to copyright does not make it any less scary.
I give EVERYONE in the world permission to infringe copyrights. Go Forth, and Infringe!
.AU?
Does that mean I'm now in line for extradition to
Thanks,
WhiteWolf666
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
That attempt at writing was so bad it made my head hurt to read it. Perhaps they should go into the torture business instead. They'd be clearer if they'd just type "infringment" on 800 pages while in a hotel in the Colorado mountains.
Fast forward to the 21st century. No, I'm no expert on things Internet, but I was there. In an outsider's kind of way, I remember all of the testing in the early 80's to get this "inter-network connection" thing working - I remember the programmers beating each other on the back because they had successfully gotten data off the MF at Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN. Maybe it was pr0n, but I couldn't tell ya what kind.
Amazing, considering what DARPA had to work with back then - funny thing is, they could never really get their own telephone systems (autovon, autosecvon) to work very well, but I guess the heavy involvement of University resources in the early phases of internetworking made the difference there. Too bad, really; but of course, wired telephony is going the way of the horse and buggy nowadays, so it's no big loss to the military.
technicaly, all torrent sites that only run the .torrent files could also be illegal in australia, since they (in some way) link to copyrighted material.
portfolio
"As for your comment, the room could get in trouble if:
A.They knew about the illegal act and failed to take steps to stop it or catch the people who commited it (e.g. cops ask them to hand over details for the customer who rented the room and they do not do so)
or B.it could be reasonably expected that the room was being used for illegal activities (e.g. if the hotel specifically advertized that drug dealers could use their rooms to deal drugs in, that would get them in trouble or if the majority of people using the hotel were using it for illegal acts that could also get them in trouble)"
Are you sure about this? Are you sure that things can't be confiscated on drug related issues in essence for "possession"...???
I seem to recall stories of vehicles and houses being confiscated when it is clear that the owners themselves are innocent.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Just about everything on the internet is copyrighted. Hell in the US anything anyone creates is automatically copyrighted. The article /. linked to has a copyright notice attached to it. If I cut and past this article and put it on my web page (I assume this would violate the copyright attached to this article) Would /. be liable? I know this is a bit extreme but we have seen laws abused for radically unintended uses before.
Specifically I'm thinking of printer company's including a bit of crypto on their toner cartridges and them claiming that any third party toner manufacture is in violation of the DMCA. (Yes I know this is Australia and the DMCA is USA but I think the point is still valid)
I know this will look like a troll, but hear me out.
Maybe it's time to cut .au off for a while. All of the .au businesses and consumers, just cut them off the 'net until the idiot judge's decision is overturned or overruled. Except for throx. He can stay. I like his sig. (I do know his kind of fear.)
But anyway, just cut them off until they fix things. Having no access to the rest of the 'net would certainly satisfy that judge's decision, and it would show everyone just how much of an impact that decision has.
Then, when that judge is removed from a position in which he is clearly incompetent, and when his decision is struck down, we can bring back our .au friends and all wil be right with the world.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Some MP3 files have been released into the public domain by their auhors and are no longer copyrighted. And "copyrighted mp3s" is short for "mp3s copyrighted by someone important who has the time and inclination to protect their copyright." Finally, not all countries that are signatory to the Berne convention have the same exact rules. To be safe, use the phrase "Copyright [date] by [author]. All rights reserved." Even though not strictly necessary in most places, it will help you win and recover more damages in court.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I wasn't around in what could be considered the golden age, so I can't make any sort of authoritive or even realistic comment about the relative health of the net because I never saw it in what is held as its prime. Perhaps that is part of the problem. An entire generation of people are growing up interacting with the internet as if it was simply an appliance or a service much the same way power is a service. The interactivity is lost on a great number of people so they have no problem thinking of it as just another appliance. The idea of ownership becomes important. /. folk tend to think of the internet as...well...ours. Not in the sense of our property per se, because that seems like an absurd notion, but more of a heritage that anyone can take part in. We take care of it because of this, if a core concept (such as a protocol being made somehow "illegal", or Net Neutrality Being Under Fire) comes into view, we jump to defend it like a bear defending its cubs. Yes this vigilence often makes us look like complete and utter wackjobs, but a lot of people would consider the bear to be overzealous as well. What the telcos/ISPs are trying to do is make people think that the cables, the routers and the servers are "the internet". This is bullshit. While "The Internet" would not be what it is without the infrastructure, it would also be bland and dead without its users, without the innovation driven by the people who just want to make something nifty and see if it works. (YouTube...Google...Slashdot...Digg...Webcomics... hell Instant Messaging was a project by some MIT students basically for the hell of it to make collaboration easier on projects...um....LINUX). ISPs, whether they realize it or not, are only around to deliver this content. If they kill off the natural innovation in people, and I would argue that most people are just too run down to innovate like they're able to and wish to, then they are choking themselves.
If it comes down to it, the internet is a technology. The ability to network networks is an ability and an understanding, not a bunch of copper, fiber and metal. If it was neccessary, a new one could be made. Yes this sounds ludicrous, no I am not just thinking "oh, we can build a new interwebs!". The first network was also modest, with fewer than 15 nodes if I remember. The collection of networks we have now forming the internet is only formidable because of the amount of money put into it. Routers, servers and cabling cost an absolute ton of money. Would you rather have a very high speed link to the same bland useless content on almost every page (with small differences inserted to keep people thinking they hold various "points of view") and services that used to be offered for free that are now A) crippled and B) pricey, or a slower connection (perhaps much slower) where there is intelligent conversation and debate, a greater degree of freedom for information, and the ownership of that network to either be a monolithic ogre or a number of absurd little fiefdoms?
I choose the latter, I don't care if I have to use a 14.4K Modem.
(hell...we can compress porn...right?...)
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Banning the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature?
OK, so don't provide "permission".
You the web user do NOT have my permission to click this link to obtain a copy of the movie Talledega Nights. Nor do you have permission from the copyright owners to click this link to download a copy of their movie. You are a very bad, evil, and unpleasant human being if you click this link to download an mpeg4 of the movie to your hard drive, cook some popcorn, get a nice cold soda or beer, and watch the movie while sitting in your comfortable recliner chair. You definitely do NOT have anyone's permission to do that, especialy not mine, and especially not my ISP's permission.
So now there will be an Australian Rules Internet. I thought the deviation from soccer or American football was bad enough ...
Doesn't this make teaching people to read illegal? After all, you're just enabling them to participate in a violation of a copyright on written material?
It's been a good thirty years. Time for the Queen to send someone down and reboot the Australian government again.
I break into a bank and steal all the money, would then the owner of the land upon which the bank sits be also responsible since it is 'hosting' the bank building, therefore giving me access to it? Am I completely wrong? or am I onto something here?
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
The entire justice system in Australia is on crack.
Does this mean that if I give someone directions to an electronics store and this person steals a TV set that I gave them "permission" to steal the TV set, and that I am guilty of theft?
I'm wasting my time posting this of course, as slashdot automatically assumes that anyone without an account has nothing of value to contribute.
Libraries typically have photocopiers available so clients can make copies of copyrighted material. Hmm, come to think of it I would think a library should be illegal in Oz because it would enable people to have access to copyrighted materials which they might them cart of to photocopiers. And what of the records, tapes and movies found in the libraries...
Oh... then we have Blockbuster and other movie rental outfits. Surely they must be guilty as well because someone might cart off the tape or DVD and copy it.
What is clear is that the courts do not understand the net. Neither do the pollies. On the one hand we have the livihood of programmers being threatened by software patents and on the other hand we have scapegoats held to blame when the public misuses what a website offers. In all cases it is the IT folks who are paying the price. We are under attack.
Oh... and we have yet another abuse. Companies like Telstra pay for access to copyrighted internet content flowing from and through the USA. Telstra, of course, charges their customers for access to this content. Telstra's customers include bigpond, but they also include all the smaller ISP's in Oz. These ISP's pay heafty fees to Telstra.
While Telstra pays for access to content which originates and flows through the USA, Telstra at the same time refuses to pay anything to access content which originates within Oz. An exception is made however to certain newspapers which have "converged". This is when they did a share swap and so they became partner businesses. The insiders in the game do get paid for access.
The publishing industry also realizes it does not have the balls nor lobbyists to enforce these whims on the world. They cannot change legal deposit. They cannot close down the Library of Congress. They cannot kill Gutenburg.org. They cannot stop Google and Harvard and Amazon and Yahoo from scanning books. And yes Virginia, they do get a special stipend from Library purchases, and annual fees for copying provisions. (At least in Canada. Dunno what you Yanks do except allow school teachers to show commercial videos in classrooms. Scandalous!!)
The issue with these slippery slope "where's my money?" arguments is they never know whom to blame. Is it Xerox for letting me photocopy? Is it HP for letting me scan? Is it the security guard for not tasering me as I approach the photocopier? Is it the bus driver for taking me downtown to commit a felony? Is it the library for buying a book I never heard of, which made me decide to go out and buy the entire series to read over and over and over again? "You only paid once, that's not fair!"
Four hundred years ago the publishers complained because it was too hard to sell obscure books, and now they complain because there are so many obscure books people aren't buying enough of theirs. Libraries are the only customer that actually want one of everything, and they actually enable citizens to purchase more for themselves. Libraries grow the economy across the board. If all knowledge or literature had to be purchased before it was read... well where would all these starving authors go to get their ideas? You've hit the big time when every city in the country promises to make your words available for 50 years, not when someone pays $5 for a PDF with a click-wrap agreement.
Information wants to be free. If you want to make money and become famous, stick to paperback thrillers. Just don't complain when some less successful author sues you for having read their ideas too.
This doesn't strike me as being all that different from suing to get an injunction to prevent a site from linking to a piece of software the "IP" cartels don't like.
I don't care why you're posting AC
This really is a bit mad. Most people in cities know where the red light areas are, so are they engaging in prostitution because they know where it goes on and might tell someone?
Get a grip Aus.
Umm he expected free mp3s... There are tons of legal ones out there.. How is the average joe supposed to really know the difference?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In Judge Branson's judgment he states: "When an internet user clicked on a particular hyperlink, the music file in question was transmitted directly to his or her computer from a remote server." And there's the rub. To illustrate, even if Sony music makes available free MP3's (that it has copyright permission to) to be downloaded from its website as a traffic and brand building exercise this does not confer permission to others to bypass Sony's website by linking to the mp3's directly i.e. acting as a direct distribution mechanism.
I imagine if instead the defendant had simply linked to the copyright holder's websites where the MP3 could therein be downloaded there wouldn't have been any case to answer.
For me, the primary aspects of this case had lose/lose written all over it.
IANAL.
I think the scary part was that the infringing offense was providing a link to a publicly accessible file on the web.
So, if I see a person on the street and this person asks me where Jane Smith is and kills her after I point her out, I'm guilty of murder? That doesn't make any sense. Maybe I need to read the article again, because the idea I got was that this guy posted a list of links to mp3s that were ripped from copyrighted material and is now being charged with violating copyright. Makes no sense. He may be guilty of conspiracy to violate copyright, but I'm not sure that makes any sense either!
It gives a somewhat more accurate perspective on the case than the SMH news article referred to above.
Dale Clapperton
EFA Chair (not Vice-Chair!)
Holy Shit! I'm moving to another planet.
Military telephony has always been a bit of an issue, even more so on the tactical side. The concentrated efforts to make all of the telephony stuff work together kinda came a little too late.
Anyways...you have a duty to the world to find out what kind of porn! This is of huge historical importance! I mean...we need to know if the internet was shaped by good ol normie porn, or if it was shaped by something like goatse guy!
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
My question is why was this submitted by an anonymous reader? Why doesn't the submitter want credit for this? Could it have been submitted by someone who wants Australia viewed in a negative light?
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