Be careful while hyperlinking

Here is the news which talks about a person being jailed because he was providing hyperlinks to music websites which offered illegal MP3 downloads. It is brought under infringement of copyright rules. So next time, be careful while linking to any illegal website although I know some blogs which offer only illegal crack, pirated contents but then it is the risk they thought worth taking!

 

Here is the excerpt –

 

Copyright ruling puts hyperlinking on notice

 

A court ruling has given the recording industry the green light to go after individuals who link to material from their websites, blogs or MySpace pages that is protected by copyright.

 

A full bench of the Federal Court yesterday upheld an earlier ruling that Stephen Cooper, the operator of mp3s4free.net, as well as the internet service provider that hosted the website, were guilty of authorising copyright infringement because they provided a search engine through which a user could illegally download MP3 files.

 

The website did not directly host any copyright-protected music, but the court held that simply providing links to the material effectively authorised copyright infringement.

 

“Mr Cooper had power to prevent the communication of copyright sound recordings to the public in Australia via his website,” the judges said.

 

“He had that power because he was responsible for creating and maintaining his mp3s4free website.”

 

Ms Sabiene Heindl, general manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), said similar action could be taken against individuals who, like mp3s4free, used the internet to link to copyright-protected material.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.