Matthew Levinson

Australia cuts its links

Published on 21/12/06
by matt

The Australian record industry has scalped mp3s4free.net in a landmark case that could have implications for a whole generation of bloggers, myspacers and webmasters of whatever stripe. The Federal Court report suggests the decision was tied to the website’s commercial focus:

“Mr Cooper [the defendant and operator of mp3s4free.net site] benefited financially from sponsorship and advertisements on the website; that is, that the relationship between Mr Cooper and the users of his website had a commercial aspect. Mr Cooper’s benefits from advertising and sponsorship may be assumed to have been related to the actual or expected exposure of the website to internet users. As a consequence Mr Cooper had a commercial interest in attracting users to his website for the purpose of copying digital music files.”

But when you consider that a lot of blogs make a (miniscule) income from advertising these days, the quote from Music Industry Piracy Investigations general manager Sabiene Heindl (in the SMH report on Tuesday) makes for disconcerting reading:

“We don’t make any distinctions between big websites or small websites [MIPI would consider individual blogs on a] case-by-case basis as to whether it would be appropriate to take action … If you are linking to copyrighted material in an unauthorised fashion, then you can be held liable for copyright infringement.”

That's it. What Next?

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