In courts in various countries all over the world, it is generally held that linking to illegal material isn't illegal. After all, the people clicking on the links are committing the illegal act, not the person pointing to the material. It's similar to saying that guns don't kill people, people kill people. I think it is fitting, though, in this case, the gun is the link.

mp3s4free.net is having problems in Australia because it seems some lost dingos have stolen the courts' common sense down under. The owner of mp3s4free, Stephen Cooper, were guilty of authorizing copyright infringement because they provided a search engine through which a user could illegally download MP3 files. The high courts in Australia have backed lower court rulings.

Cooper and his lawyer argued that the site was simply a search engine, only more focused than Google. Google can be used to search for copyrighted material, though it takes considerable patience. mp3s4free makes it a bit easier as it catalogues things to make it easier to search.

The Aussie RIAA (MIPI) have no plans to go after Google because "What Cooper was doing is basically the exact same thing that Google does, except Google acts as a search engine for every type of file, while this site only acts as a search engine for MP3 files."

In regular speak it means that Google's billions in ready cash scares the bejesus out of them.

Australias EFF, the EFA have come out against the ruling. "If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act." That's pretty scary.