mp3s4free’s Cooper nailed
p2pnet.net News:- The Big Four music cartel has finally secured a court win against Australia’s Stephen Cooper, who ran mp3s4free.com.
Cooper didn’t host downloads on his site. Rather, he had links to them. Nonetheless, in the first Oz judgement against hyperlinking, federal court justice Brian Tamberlin has found Cooper guilty of copyright infringement.
“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,” says ZDNet Australia, going on:
“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.”
Tamberlin said he wouldn’t make “formal orders as yet” but since he’d found “nfringments, he ordered the respondents must pay the costs, “which will be decided in 14 days once the music industry serves short minutes of orders in reponse [sic] to the judgement,” adds ZDNet.
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See:-
mp3s4free.com – Big Music scores in Australia, p2pnet, January 15, 2005
ZDNet Australia – Judge: MP3 site, ISP breached copyright, July 14, 2005
July 14th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
So what does this mean for the substantial number of “music” blogs which post links to full albums and tracks located in personal webspace and avaible through yousendit.com and similar file senders?
July 14th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Well, this means that Ford Motor Company is an accomplice in the bank robbery as they built the get-away car. The Judge might as well find against Stephen’s mother for having him while he’s at it.
July 14th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
Might as well go after Google, yahoo or any other serach engine for that matter. These type of narrow focus judgements are blown way out of context and proportion. They get more creedence than they deserve.
July 14th, 2005 at 11:58 pm
I haven’t seen such blatant bias in a ruling since the “separate but equal” standard was set in the US supreme court. There is no way to get a worse ruling, and now this judge has brought this man powerful corporate allies who will fund his defense out of enlightened self interest.
I hope he wins his appeal, and the telecoms countersue.
July 15th, 2005 at 12:27 am
Yet another judge making decisions on technology which he fails to grasp at all.