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Norway's Supreme Court Outlaws Linking to Unauthorized MP3 Files

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on January 27, 2005 - 6:16am.
Oslo, Norway -- The Supreme Court of Norway on Thursday upheld the conviction of a student who published a website that featured links to other sites where users could download unauthorized MP3 music files, the Associated Press reported. The student created his Napster.no site (not related to Napster) in 2001 as part of a school project, linking to 170 free music files. Norwegian record label trade group Tono and the Norway units of Sony Music, Universal Music and others then sued for copyright infringement. A lower court found for the music industry, while an appeals court cleared the student; the high court's reversal will result in the student paying $15,900 in compensation to the labels. "The supreme court decided the case based on responsibility for abetting (an illegal act)," the court said in its ruling. While no U.S. court ruling has specifically outlawed simply publishing links to third-party sites that host MP3 files for download, a high-profile case found that a man who published links to a code that can crack the anti-piracy technology on DVDs aided copyright infringement and banned such links. The Hollywood studios also recently launched a legal campaign against European operators of servers for file-sharing services like BitTorrent and eDonkey, which provide links to available files on the peer-to-peer networks.
tags: Norway's Supreme Court | Unauthorized MP3 Files | Outlaws |

Canada Outlaws Unauthorized 'Net Retransmissions of U.S. TV Shows

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on January 21, 2003 - 6:15am.
Hull, Quebec -- Canada's version of the Federal Communications Commission issued a ruling on Friday making it illegal to offer Internet video retransmissions of TV programming originating in the U.S. to Canadian Internet users. Several start-ups, including JumpTV, had hatched plans to take advantage of a "loophole" in Canadian law that would have allowed them to offer U.S. TV shows to Canadian users without the permission of U.S. networks, so long as they ensured the retransmissions were only viewed by Canadian users. In its ruling, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission said that, "at present, there is no completely workable method of ensuring that Internet retransmissions are geographically contained." The U.S. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) lauded the ruling. "We are gratified with the CRTC's conclusion that Internet retransmission of broadcast signals should not be permitted without the consent of the broadcaster and its program suppliers. We regard this decision as a major victory for consumers in the protection of free, over-the-air television signals and programming," said the NAB, in a statement.
tags: Canada | TV Shows | U.S | Outlaws | Retransmissions |