Copyright ruling puts hyperlinking on notice
`[An Australian] 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.’
