The impartiality of two of the judges who ruled that Dutch website Mp3search.nl broke the law by posting links to copyrighted files has been called into question.
Last Friday, an appeals court in the Netherlands ruled that facilitating MP3 downloads through a search engine, even when those files are not hosted by the search engine itself, is in violation of Dutch law. Every Dutch search engine that links to illegal MP3s is affected by the ruling.
The appeals court overruled a decision by a lower court, which in 2004 sided with the owners of the site and concluded that MP3 search engines in general do not constitute copyright infringement.
However, reader comments on the Dutch news site Webwereld, which reported on the case, pointed out that two of the three judges involved in the decision are members of organisations that support professional musicians or (music) rights holders.
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