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."'"

Comments

Re:Bizarre.

[LiquidCoooled]

Whats the problem with advertising drug dealers?
If I walk up to a policeman and tell him there is a drug dealer over there will I be arrested?

Remember, a link takes you to a location - if a user can follow the link, so can the investigator.

kill the tyrants!

[Anonymous Coward]

"You know Robin, I was just wondering:
Are we good guys or bad guys?
I mean, aren't we robbing the rich to feed the poor?"

"Rob! That's a naughty word.
We never rob.
We just sort of borrow a bit from those who can afford it."

Re:What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every one here is guilty of not stopping me.

I am a mandated reporter. I have forwarded your post to the local law enforcement. Slashdot should expect a request for server logs and registration records soon.

YUO FAIL It

[Anonymous Coward]

the point 8ore

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

And now slashdot does too!

USA

[noz]

Welcome to the United States of Australia.

Re:Google anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing.

Re:The really scary part of this ruling....

[f_raze13]

Whoa, this is Slashdot, he probably didn't even read the tfa, and if he did, he definitely didn't get to the bottom.

Re:What next?

[Tesen]

I am going to kill my neighbor. Every one here is guilty of not stopping me. Well, at least all Australians.

I know your post was meant to be funny, but duuude! In some countries even joking about killing your neighbor is considered a death threat and/or conspiracy to commit murder or very least, conspiracy to commit a felony.

Yes I know, it is sad times when I can't walk down the road, yell at people that I am going to gut them and wear their skulls as a hat while I drive state to state, eating KFC and getting 9mpg in my huge ass pickup truck!
Tes

Re:What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open threats disguised as humour are still threats and most people will even defend such threatening behaviour. Government should not be legislating against communication. Threats (including death threats) are a part of how human beings communicate. Embarking on this slippery slope makes me want to tickle legislators to death with a feather plucked from a chickens ass.

Re:Not a police state?

[Ana10g]

Okay, I'll bite on this one.

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.

I can absolutely guarantee that none of those cameras are owned by the United States Military (unless you're biking through Baghdad). Sure, the police own the red light and Gatso cameras (the city in which I live seems to have recently put them on every friggin street corner), but no, again, not the military. And, last time I checked, police != military.

I'm not sure what city in which you live, but I can also guarantee that the other cameras of which you speak are not owned by the military. Here's a good example of non-traffic cameras not being owned by the military, from the U of Wisconsin (of which I have no affiliation, it's too cold there): http://badgerherald.com/news/2003/11/20/overhead_c amera_help.php

You're being a bit paranoid here, don't you think?