File-swapping 'hobby' man in $500m lawsuit

[Lord_of_the_Dense]

FOR six years, Stephen Cooper ran a song-sharing website from his modest brick home in Bellbowrie, in Brisbane's west, that attracted 190 million visitors a year and allegedly earned him up to $64,000 a month.

Now the world's record companies have put the former policeman on their hit list - with a $500 million bullet.

His website, which began as a hobby while he looked for a job in the computer industry, has also made him a star defendant in a landmark civil lawsuit.

Read entire story here (http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11103594%255E421,00.html).

[ScorchedEarth]

This stinks. What does this mean:

More than 10,000 song files - including the best of local and international artists - were hidden in websites and internal operating systems that included the Australian Defence Force Academy, Queensland Police, the department of the NSW Premier (Bob Carr) and various universities.

Are they trying to say he stored mp3's in all those places, or was it really that those were places people downloaded files to that they found on his site? Was he actually hosting any files or just "indexing" them like edonkey sites like shareconnector? I find the estimate of $64,000 per month income really interesting considering a number like that was tossed around for sharereactor's owner by the local version of the MPAA when his site went down in March, also a "hobby". Is anyone familiar with the site in the article and how it actually worked? I'm not going to trust what the media says about it.

[crackerjacker]

This stinks. What does this mean:

More than 10,000 song files - including the best of local and international artists - were hidden in websites and internal operating systems that included the Australian Defence Force Academy, Queensland Police, the department of the NSW Premier (Bob Carr) and various universities.

Are they trying to say he stored mp3's in all those places, or was it really that those were places people downloaded files to that they found on his site? Was he actually hosting any files or just "indexing" them like edonkey sites like shareconnector? I find the estimate of $64,000 per month income really interesting considering a number like that was tossed around for sharereactor's owner by the local version of the MPAA when his site went down in March, also a "hobby". Is anyone familiar with the site in the article and how it actually worked? I'm not going to trust what the media says about it.

if you get the information post it back seems interesting.
on a side note *where do you wanna go today?
*pizzeria* dam i want some pizza

[hawkburn]

If I could make $768,000 a year off of a hobby, I think I'd do it too. Besides, the guy only got into it because he couldn't find a job elsewhere.

[sitech]

Yeah but they don't mention how much he had to pay in bandwidth fees.

You can see the site here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20001109151200/mp3s4free.net/index.html

[black_magiic]

in his discalimer it states that he is linking to remote files and not actually hosting anything

[ducttapeBigSexy]

i'm sorry, but if you're hosting a site with mp3s (or even linking to them), you're just asking for it. p2p is pretty safe, but running a web server is a bad idea - considering a simple whois will give you more then enough information to start an investigation

[Lord_of_the_Dense]

in his discalimer it states that he is linking to remote files and not actually hosting anything

Gee...that almost makes it sound like a file sharing portal...

[nasrules]

Ah yes, but there's a difference. This site was actually providing the location of the files. Sites such as PeerWeb only provide information about the files ;-)