StrongBad used our news submit to tell us "The RIAA has stooped to a new low. If they continue down this path they are going to face some serious consequenses."
Until now, the music industry was simply trying to put off home users from sharing music and sending out subpoena's threatening to sue. Now, three men fromSydney face jail after pleading guilty last week to breaking copyright laws. The Australian recording industry believes this to be the world's first criminal prosecution for online music piracy; at least against users running off a home connection.
Following an investigation with the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), the police arrested the three men in April after raiding their homes in Sydney. They face up to five years in Jail and $ 60,500 (Australian $) in fines for distributing up to 60 million dollars of music linked from their website "MP3 WMA land".
|
Until now, legal action against music websites such as Napster have relied on civil law and record industry representatives. The criminal case sent a powerful message that music piracy would face the full force of the law. Tommy Le, 19, Peter Tran, 20, and Charles Kok Hau Ng, 20, last week pleaded guilty to infringing the copyright of music giants Universal Music, Sony, Warner, BMG , EMI and Festival Mushroom Records. Police arrested the trio in April after raiding their homes in Sydney following a joint investigation with Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), a record industry-funded watchdog. They face up to five years' jail and 60,500 dollars (39,325 US) in fines for illegally distributing up to 60 million dollars' worth of music on a website called "MP3 WMA land". MIPI investigator Michael Speck said his organisation would ask the court to ensure the punishment meted out to the three reflected their crimes, although he declined to say whether this meant MIPI would push for a custodial sentence. Speck told AFP it was believed to be the first criminal prosecution of its type in the world. |
The number of websites hosting MP3 music has declined quite a lot in the past few years due to the increasing popularity of Peer-to-peer tools such as Kazaa. In most cases, the websites did not host the music on their servers, but were set up by organisations or home users that provide links to those sharing MP3's on their FTP or HTTP server. These sites were normally crippled with advertisements and pop-ups to make money from also. When these were shutdown, the website's owner may have been fined, but this is the first time I have seen music file sharers face Jail.
Source: Yahoo Technology News
