Three Sydney men face jail after pleading guilty last week to breaking copyright laws in what the Australian recording industry believes is the world's first criminal prosecution for online music piracy.
Until now legal action against music Web sites such as Napster have relied on civil law and record industry representatives said 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 US$39,325 in fines for illegally distributing up to US$60 million worth of music on a Web site called "MP3 WMA land."
MIPI investigator Michael Speck said his organization 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 said it was believed to be the first prosecution of its type in the world.
"This is an important copyright case for industries all over the world because it confirms the view that you can be found and you can be prosecuted even though you hide behind the anonymity that the Internet offers," Speck said.
Le, Tran and Kok Hau Ng will be sentenced on Nov. 10.
Speck, a former detective with the New South Wales state police, said the case also showed police were now taking online copyright infringement as a serious crime.
MIPI estimates online piracy costs the Australian music industry up to US$200 million dollars in revenue every year.
"It's one from being perceived as a very low-level, almost innocuous, activity to being part of a portfolio of professional criminals," he said.
"It's become increasingly sophisticated and the profits of pirates have skyrocketed."
MIPI estimates online piracy costs the Australian music industry up to US$200 million dollars in revenue every year.
Speck said the meth`ods used to track down online pirates were improving and his organization had a global monitoring system that could detect online infringement of Australian copyright.
"The sleuth work is becoming increasingly easy to do, it's almost impossible to wipe your fingerprints off a digital crime scene," he said.
Speck said the Internet service providers who hosted music pirates Web sites could become the industry's next target.
"They're clearly not immune from prosecution," he said.
"They spend a great deal of their marketing effort exonerating themselves or distancing themselves from responsibility for this activity and increasingly courts are recognizing the connection between this activity and their benefit," he said.
Copyright lawyer Adam Simpson said the view of online pirates as teenage geeks operating from a back bedroom was outdated and organized crime was muscling into the area.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion