While the litigation brought by the Australian music industry against Kazaa continues to works its way through court, the country's record labels have scored a legal victory in an unrelated case. A judge at Australia's Federal Court in Sydney has ruled that the owner of a website that provided links to pirated music was guilty of copyright violation, even though he himself did not host any of the pirated music. The internet service provider that hosted the site was also found guilty.
The site in question was MP3s4free.net, which provided links to websites that provided pirated music. The ISP hosting the site was Sydney-based Com-Cen. Announcing his ruling, Justice Brian Tamberlin said MP3s4free.net's owner, Stephen Cooper, had broken the law by "permitting or sanctioning and facilitating" copyright infringement through his website, while the ISP were liable because they could have done something to stop that infringement and chose not to.
The ruling is important, in Australia at least, because it confirms that people can be guilty of copyright violation just by promoting the location of pirated music and, crucially, it extends that liability to the ISPs who host sites promoting pirated music. While people who run similar sites might be willing to risk litigation, the ISPs they rent webspace from are likely to be more cautious about the possibility of facing new litigation based on the precedent set in this case.