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July 11, 2005
If You Put Your Fingers In Your Ears And Sing "La La La!" Very Loudly...
Posted by Alan Wexelblat
...you might not notice that there are sites on the Web that are offering downloadable MP3s. Some of these sites reside in countries that have different copyright laws, or laxer enforcement of laws, than the US and other Cartel-dominated countries. So everyone pretend you didn't read this blog posting, ok?
One site that is raising the ire of the Germans is AllofMP3. In particular, Web sites in Germany have been asked to take down links to the site. This puts news sites in a particular bind. Take the story from heise online covering this takedown notice. They are, themselves, German. They've been asked to "remove all links to www.allofmp3.com" (sic - no using your copy-and-paste functionality there, kiddies). In the story covering these events they have one hyperlinked word and one literal reading of the URL. Which of these will be considered "objectively supporting the illegal dissemination of copyright protected sound recordings" is anyone's guess.
Next, I'm sure, the Cartel's lawyers will be asking Google, Yahoo! et al to edit their search results not to return hits to these sites. It feels like we keep revisiting this "Is Linking Legal?" question every few months.
Comments (2)
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1. Nicole Simon on July 11, 2005 6:17 PM writes...
love the headline ;)
Just to make sure this is not an translation error - the have not been "asked" but received post from layers to take down the links or otherwhise they will be sued.
Telepolis, the sister magazin to ct made a great point in stating that this might be not so clever move: Because now everybody talks about banning a website where mp3 files are availabel for 10 euro cent.
While the music stores still want to have so much money. :)
Permalink to Comment2. Charles Prescott on July 11, 2005 9:22 PM writes...
In reading the Heiss Online article on this, I can only laugh. While Heiss (et al) is challenging the legality of such a ban on freedom of speech grounds in an appeal, it's really a non-issue. The ban, as it is, only covers links to the site ... not mentions of the site's URL (without a link) that could be easily copied/pasted into a browser's window. In short, this law, even if it stands up, is only "feel good" legislation that will only affect site visitors who don't know how to copy/paste ... yet. What an incredible joke.
BTW, keep your eye on the calendar. This appeal comes to court on the 28th, just a little over two weeks from now.
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