The Federal Court in Sydney has found that hosting a website that links to illegal MP3s means you are liable under copyright infringement laws.

In the decision, Justice Tamberlin found that the website, www.mp3s4free.net, and its owner, Stephen Cooper, had breached the Copyright Act by “permitting or sanctioning and facilitating” an infringement of copyright by providing links to music files that had been copied illegally. Disclaimers that were published on the site were not deemed sufficient to provide protection against liability.

In an Australian first, the host of the website Com-Cen and parent company E-Talk Communications were also judged to have no defence under the provisions of the Free Trade Agreement with the US because it had no policy preventing copyright infringements and had also gained financially from free advertising on the site.

Owner of the ISP, Liam Francis Bal and technical officer Chris Takoushis, the hosts of the site, were ruled to be personally liable for the infringement.

“I do not accept that Bal and Takoushis were unaware of the contents of the site,” Justice Tamberlin wrote.

“The repeated evasiveness of Bal and Takoushis under cross-examination, their lack of frankness, and their failure to acknowledge an acquaintance with some basic matters of terminology such as ‘webmaster’ and ‘MP3 files’, support a conclusion that they were both involved in and aware of some problems with the operations of the website” said Justice Tamberlin.

General Manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) Michael Kerin has said that all five respondents in the case, brought forward by a coalition of major record labels, where found liable and would be pursued further for damages.

“It confirmed that linking into infringing music is illegal,” and “it exposed the commercial role of internet service providers in internet piracy and holds them to account,” he said of the decision, adding that that mp3s4free.net had now been recognised as one of the world’s worst copyright offenders and that this was a huge blow for pirates.