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Australian Man Found Guilty for Hyperlinking

Posted by Zonk on Thu Jul 14, 2005 07:51 AM
from the dark-day-for-the-rebellion dept.
Government The Courts Media Music Patents The Internet News
An anonymous reader writes "Major record labels are celebrating in Sydney, Australia today. It took almost two years but they've finally won a legal battle against a Queensland man and his ISP for alleged music piracy. Amazingly, Stephen Cooper didn't even have to host the alleged pirated files. All he did (allegedly) was to hyperlink to a few sites that had infringing sound recordings. His ISP didn't escape either. Even the ISP's parent company got sued. No jail time but all parties will have to pay costs."
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  • lovely (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:53AM (#13062024)
    Hi [allofmp3.com].

  • If he was running windows (Score:5, Funny)

    by farker haiku (883529) on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:53AM (#13062025) Journal
    It should be hard to prove he did it... I mean, his machine could have been compromised

      • Re:If he was running windows (Score:5, Funny)

        by ObiWanKenblowme (718510) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:35AM (#13062337)
        Windows will even warn you if your machine has committed an illegal operation and shut it down for you - that's how good it is.

        • Re:If he was running windows (Score:4, Funny)

          by Harangutan0n (873532) on Thursday July 14 2005, @09:13AM (#13062645) Homepage
          When I was 11 or 12, my grandmother picked up a copy of Windows 95 for us the day it came out. She must have read about it in the paper, or something, because to this day, neither she nor my grandfather has even been able to figure out how to play Solitare, much less check email, despite my best efforts to tutor them.

          I had great fun, playing around with this pretty new interface. It was quite a step up from programming LogoWriter on our Apple IIGS (we had that computer for quite a while). But my tomfoolery didn't last too long, because I eventually made the computer do an illegal operation, which shut it down.

          I freaked out, because I thought I had broken the law and someone was going to come arrest me. Oh Windows 95, how you let me down!

          (this is just after I had gotten busted by the Man for burning down a Port-a-Potty (it was an accident, I swear), so I was a bit skittish about such things)

  • Allegedly? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:53AM (#13062026)
    If he was found guilty, then the charges are proven. They are no longer alleged.

    • Re:Allegedly? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:22AM (#13062232)

      If he was found guilty, then the charges are proven. They are no longer alleged.

      Err... the charges are proven from the court's perspective. The submitter apparently doesn't agree with the court, and so for him/her the charges are still alleged.

    • Re:Allegedly? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jtpalinmajere (627101) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:42AM (#13062391)
      This is somewhat a misnomer. Many crimes can be set up in such a way to implicate an innocent person. When this innocent person is convicted because all (or most / the most influential) the evidence points to him, does this still mean that it is "proven" that he did it? In the same instance, what happens when a criminal gets caught red handed doing something, but because of a foulup in following procedures the criminal actually gets off. Does this mean that the criminal has been "proven" to not have committed the crime?

      In all cases, any judgement is based upon the 'evidence' at hand... in some cases not all 'evidence' is actually admitted for one reason or another as well as the occasion where irrelevant / false 'evidence' is actually admitted into the case. At best, a verdict can be considered a very educated hypothesis.

      Proven implies that the judgement is made upon facts that are incontrovertible... like the fact that 1 + 1 = 2, arithmetically speaking. Since the vast majority of 'evidence' submitted to the court rarely fits this criteria, there almost always exists room (even inside the room of "without reasonable doubt") for the verdict to be flawed.

      Therefore, it would still be correct to consider the crimes alleged even when a person if "found guilty" of committing them.

          • Re:Allegedly? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Munra (580414) <slashdot@@@jonathanlove...co...uk> on Thursday July 14 2005, @10:36AM (#13063412) Homepage
            Lucky for us, at least in this country (US), the # of innocent people being convicted of crimes is remarkably low.

            That seems a fairly ridiculous statement to make, as it's impossible to determine it one way or the other. Even measuring the number of people subsequently found not-guilty (or acquitted) is hardly likely to be accurate.

            Manta

  • In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dr_labrat (15478) <spooner@@@gmail...com> on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:54AM (#13062028) Homepage
    A man in Queensland was found guilty of pointing at a stolen car in the street....

  • This is retarded... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by advocate_one (662832) on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:54AM (#13062036)
    to put it politely... just too stupid for words... how, exactly, did he "pirate" the works in question??? Looks like we need to slap some judges upside the head with a cluestick... Google et al, had better watch out... they'll now have to filter out possible copyrighted works in any links produced in searches... this is a very dangerours legal ruling.
    • There is a slight difference between this case and Google.

      In this case, the person knowingly and willingly put a link up and made them a willing accessory to a crime.

      In the case of Google, they are unknowingly doing so, and if you point out their mistake, will quickly remove such offending links from their database to avoid getting sued.
      • Google has smart people. Those people are smart enough to know that Google indexes copyrighted material. I could see a lawyer for a major label arguing that Google knows that copyrighted content is indexed on a regular basis - intentional or not Google is helping people find whatever copyrighted material people want to find.

        I imagine this would actually be easier to argue in a court than the mentioned case, now that hyperlinking to "bad" sites is a no-no.
    • If I were running a search engine company and this started happening on a semi-regular basis, I'd probably say screw it and put up a special page for Australian IPs telling the people they need to do something about their laws. I'll bet if Australia scares off Google people are going to take notice and put some heat on their representatives. I mean come on, even a company the size of Google can't be expected to filter the entire Internet of any possible copyrighted content that is displayed on public web sites.
    • If you take a deep breath and think about it, it's really a slam-dunk case. If he knowingly set up his site with links to copyrighted material, then he obviously facilitated the copyright infringement. Depending on the specifics of Australian law, he may or may not be as culpible as the people downloading material.

      I mean come on, it's obvious what the site was intended for. The legal challenge would seem to be in proving that he knew the linked sites had infringing material, yet he posted the links anyw

  • Next in line... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by laetus42 (899781) on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:56AM (#13062046)
    Google, for linking to illegal music, texts, pictures and videos...
    • Don't forget Samsung, Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital for allowing their storage. And CTX, iiyama, Dell for making monitors to watch pirated movies on.

      I expect Tim Berners-Lee to be arrested any day now for enabling so much piracy. Along with pretty much every operator of a web proxy.

  • Linking can be taken to several levels (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lockz (556773) on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:57AM (#13062048)
    How far can this go? If you can be guilty for linking to a site, what about linking to a site that links to a site? And so on ... there needs to be a point where you can't be expected to have control.

  • His crime (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TildeMan (472701) <gsivek.mit@edu> on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:57AM (#13062050) Homepage
    Yeah, maybe we all don't think he pirated, but couldn't this still be aiding / abetting? He was encouraging other people to pirate music, and giving them the means to do so.

    • Look at his site using the wayback machine (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kotku (249450) on Thursday July 14 2005, @09:45AM (#13062975) Journal
      http://web.archive.org/web/20031010135440/http://w ww.mp3s4free.net/ [archive.org]

      It is pretty obvious he was acting as a filesharing hub pretty much as Napster did. This was not coincidental linking it was linking to copyright infringed material for the express pursuit of aquiring advertising revenue. He knew exactly what he was doing. No sympathy here.

      Again the slashdot moral majority starts having a blabbering fit over thier rights being infringed and all that but this is a pretty simple case. He was actively using his website to encourage a very specifical criminal activity not a few coincidental links in a sea of other detail.

      • Re:His crime (Score:4, Funny)

        by AtariAmarok (451306) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:32AM (#13062308)
        "Do you arrest the owner of a shop that sells slim jims(tool for breaking in to cars)?"

        Oh....I thought those plastic-wrapped pieces of ridiculously hot psuedo-meat at the 7-11 were for eating, but that never seem quite right. How do you use them? Do you unwrap the meat, and then set it on top of the car, and wait for it to melt a huge hole through?

  • Eh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Corun (899780) on Thursday July 14 2005, @07:57AM (#13062051)
    This seems a bit broken... I mean, If I tell someone that someone *over there* is a drug dealer, do I get arrested? How can he be held responsible for the content of other sites?

  • Not surprised really.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by victorhooi (830021) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:01AM (#13062077)
    As an Australian, I'd have to say this isn't entirely unexpected...

    Some of the judges here have been a little slow on the uptake...the Sony mod-chipping debacle is but one example, as is the whole lack of "fair use" right for electronic works...

    Was the man found guilty of linking to a list of pirated mp3s? Or did he link to a site which contained, among a lot of other things, pirated mp3s? In the case of the latter, I don't see how you can argue that he was intending for them to pirate material...

    Seriously, has anybody thought about the ramification of this for free speech? The recent debacle with record companies whining about the BBC releasing those free tracks has some echoes of this...

    cya, Victor

  • Thought police .... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alain Williams (2972) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:02AM (#13062080) Homepage
    I know someone who copied a music CD ... should I go into hiding or turn him in & claim a bounty ?

  • Alleged? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Niello (572850) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:05AM (#13062096)
    From TFA:

    "Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin."

    It seems to have been proven...

    And what else do you expect to happen when you host a site named "mp3s4free"?

  • The intent is relevant. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:14AM (#13062171)
    Frankly, the guy deserved it. mp3s4free.com was created solely to link to unauthorised copyrighted material, and for the purpose of boosting traffic on the ISP. That (summarised by me) was the courts finding.

    The article doesn't make clear whether it boiled down to intent. I hope that the finding was because he intended to link to the material - such a finding would protect those who inadvertantly had dodgy links (such as chat room hosts, etc...). If the finding sets a precedent that anyone hosting hyperlinks to infringing material, without intent, is a criminal, then that is a bad thing.

    Some have said that this is akin to being arrested for pointing to a drug dealer. Rubbish. It's more like running a bulletin board, the sole purpose of which is for dealers to list their contact details, and available drugs.
    • Is there a law against running a bulletin board for dealers and their available drugs? I'm sorry, but in order to be guilty, there has to be a law to be broken. When last I checked, there were no laws against listing information in any country. Of course, now it seems that Australia may be the first, and we've all just gone a little further down the Orwellian slippery slope.

      Intent is only used to measure the degree of a crime, not the crime itself. In order for linking to have been illegal itself, the
  • www.google.com
    Search for "Filetype:torrent example album"
    Now what i have just done is give people the skill to find their own files and commit copyright infringement or of course search for legal downloads.
    What i have just done is far far worse than a guy linking to a few warez sites.
    Show a man a download link and he will download one file , Teach him to use google and he can warez himself for life
    • Good point, Mr. Catsup. Google is far and away the predominant tool used to seek out such copyrighted material, and even to seek out tools to download copyrighted material, or to seek out "how-to" articles.

      Could be worse: this guy could have linked to Google :)

    • Tut tut! This was a ruling in Austrailia, so I think that www.google.com.au would be more appropriate.

  • Consult a lawyer before each breath (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Phat_Tony (661117) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:25AM (#13062258)
    Never mention to anyone that they sell fake watches on Canal street in New York.

    Never tell anyone that there are drug dealers in the park down the street, even for their own safety.

    You had also better never report a crime to authorities. That is also providing information on how to locate illegal activity.

    Someone should print out the web address of a stolen copyrighted work that's freely available online, go into a court house in Australia, and stick it to a bulletin board. Then they should sue the government for hosting that information, citing this case as precedent.

  • Is the problem linking or intention? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chris_Jefferson (581445) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:28AM (#13062278) Homepage
    Having read about this case, the person in question was linking to the site with the intention of showing people where to get pirated materials from.

    I'm not saying it should be illegal, but this is clearly different from either a) automated searching (like google) or b) linking to a site which happens to also contain pirated material.

    Should it be illegal to tell people "Hey, you want some pirated stuff? He has it, that guy over there!". I'm not sure, but that is what this case rests on.

  • What about other sites... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sierpinski (266120) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:38AM (#13062361)
    I've seen sites that have links to pages that show you how to draw and quarter a human body. Now IANAL but I'm pretty sure that cutting up a dead body is illegal. Should those sites get dinged as well?

    What about links to legitimate news sites that happen to run a story on "how easy it is to steal an oldsmobile with a screwdriver" only to see the theft rate of oldsmobiles increaseed sharply in the next 5 days after the article? That happened to my parents some time ago. Now I'd bet a small amount of money that the person who stole their car saw how to do it (in some great detail I might add) on the news. Shouldn't the news station be responsible for that?

    The fact that this happened in Australia comforts me slightly, but only slightly. I'm waiting for some RIAA executive to put a bug in a congressman's ear about the same type of thing here. The part that really scares me is things like that can become law easily by tailing it onto the back of some sure-to-pass appropriations bill or other popular piece of legislature....

    Which leads me to a slightly offtopic but (IMO) a completely legitimate idea:

    Congress should pass a law prohibiting bills from coattail-riding on other unrelated bills. If its important enough to pass a law about, its important enough to deserve its own vote.

    Ok, rant over. *whew*

  • It is called: Contributory infringement (Score:5, Informative)

    by sela (32566) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:51AM (#13062466) Homepage

    The US courts had long ago ruled that contributory infringement applies to copyrights. It is no surprise, therefore, that Oz courts accepted the same legal theory.

    Contributory infringement for copyright is a court-created theory. It was never passed as a law. The law does refer to contributory infringement of patents, and court decided it should be applied to copyright violation as well.

    You may be guilty of contributory infringement if two tests hold:
    1. Specifity: the information you provide must be specific, and detailed enough to enable the reciever of the information to make and infinging copy of a copyrighted work.
    2. Intent: you provide the information with an intent to promote copyright violation.

    Disclaimer: IANAL

    • Re:See, the DMCA isn't so bad (Score:5, Informative)

      by bedroll (806612) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:06AM (#13062107) Journal
      Now in the US, the DMCA would have let the ISP off the hook scott free. Yay for safe harbors!

      Only if the ISP took down the site as of the first notice sent by the RIAA. Their safe harbors are only available if they play by the industries rules. The industry would probably offer such an agreement with ISPs even if it wasn't in the law. They don't want to hurt business unless they think those businesses are encouraging the "piracy". They're more interested in getting individuals to make examples of, like the college students that did little more than make search engines that didn't specifically exclude music files. This guy was an example to the rest of us that if we link to sites committing infringement the industry can and will find a legal loophole to get at us.

    • I'm gure Google has a lot more money then some spare guy in Australia.

      So no, Google isn't going to be sued. Why attempt to sue when they can afford decent legal defence?

    • Dont laugh, that is coming. Google already has to filter out stuff for places like germany:

      "we cant have nazi stuff available to our citizens... nope... history is bad".

      The 'media' is going to destroy what is left of our freespeech.. Its amazing..

    • Re:Sounds right to me (Score:4, Insightful)

      by skyshock21 (764958) on Thursday July 14 2005, @08:59AM (#13062530)
      No, your analogy is off. If he'd created a website called www.stolenCDs.com where you could place an order for a box of stolen CDs, then it'd be another thing. Chances are these people purchased these CDs legally before posting the songs. Therefore nothing is stolen by simply publishing the contents of a CD that you rightfully paid for. It's not until someone actually downloads a track that the RIAA (falsely) claims a song is "stolen".

      If there were a site where people voluntarily put up their credit card numbers for everyone to use, then your analogy would be accurate. You see the difference?

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