Hyperventilating over hyperlinks

Guambat fears the following, foregoing and everything about this blog is illegal. Guambat is hyperventilating so hard he can hardly blog. Whatever you do, do not click on any hyperlinks on this blog.

Copyright ruling puts hyperlinking on notice Asher Moses

A court ruling [by full bench of the Australian Federal Court] 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.

Ms Sabiene Heindl, general manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), said similar action could be taken against individuals who, like mp3s4free, used the internet to link to copyright-protected material.

Ms Heindl said that this could apply even if a person had embedded a copyright-infringing YouTube clip in their blog or MySpace page.

"We don't make any distinctions between big websites or small websites", she said, adding that MIPI would consider individual blogs on a "case-by-case basis as to whether it would be appropriate to take action".

Ms Heindl's message to Australians is clear: "If you are linking to copyrighted material in an unauthorised fashion, then you can be held liable for copyright infringement."

In yesterday's Cooper judgment, the ISP that hosted the website, E-Talk, was also found to be guilty of authorising copyright infringement.

It's a tanled web we are weaving.