It took almost two years but major record labels in Australia have finally won a legal battle against a Queensland man and his Internet Service Provider for alleged music piracy.
Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin.
Although Cooper didn't host pirated recordings per se, the court found he breached the law by creating hyperlinks to sites that had infringing sound recordings.
This is the first such judgement against hyperlinking in Australia.
Tamberlin found against all other respondents in the case, namely ISP Comcen, its employee Chris Takoushis, Comcen's parent company E-Talk Communications, and its director Liam Bal.
In October 2003, the record companies, which included Universal Music, Sony, Warner and EMI, alleged that Cooper cooperated with Bal and Takoushis to increase traffic to the ISP, and aide advertising revenue.
Subsequently, the court was told Cooper was unaware he may have infringed copyright law, while E-Talk and Comcen argued they didn't know of Cooper's actions.
In handing down his judgement today, Tamberlin said: "I am satisfied there has been infringement of copyright.
"I won't make formal orders as yet. But since there's been infringments ...the respondents must pay the applicants' costs."
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This whole hyperlink argument is stupid. If I told someone where a gun shop was and they went to it and bought a gun and killed somebody with it....does that mean that I am responsible for what they did with the gun?
All hyperlinks are doing is providing links to places that have content .....they do not contain the content within themselves!
Good point
what if we hyperlink his site, and he hyperlinked another pirated software or music. Am I held accountable what that person had on that link to the pirated material.
it really is becoming bad news 4 us all in every aspect
there new law'a etc, new codes
however they better leave us brit's alone
honk honk
WE MUST WEED OUT THE BOMBER'S
SEEK N DESTROY
Originally Posted by boogiedan
you just know that "bomber" and "software pirate" are going to become synomonous. they have already tryed a few things recently here in the US (as you all prolly know from reading our news).
A country more anal about copyright than the USA did not think that was possible
The Australian authorities must be crooks or morons, they sound worse than the US!
I'm not surprised P2P is so popular in Australian given how backward the media organisations there are.
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