Landmark music download case in court

[sphill]

Downloading music from the internet could get even tougher following a landmark copyright case due to begin in the Federal Court next week.

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) hopes the $500 million lawsuit by Australian and international record companies against a man who ran a song-sharing website will help end music piracy.

Brisbane man Stephen Cooper, whose internet site provided links to download music from around the world, has been accused by ARIA of being one of the biggest copyright law infringers in the world.

His website, set up in 1998, was shut down late last year following raids on his Brisbane home and the offices of his internet service provider.

ARIA piracy investigations manager Michael Speck said the case would allow Australian courts to "once and forever" define the difference between legitimate online services and those which take other people's music for their own profit.

"It's an opportunity for the Australian courts to rule definitively on the impact of copyright law on the internet and thereby effectively deal with the mythology of the internet that allows people to make vast fortunes from other people's property," he said.

He said the myth centred on the belief some people had that if they downloaded songs from other internet users they were doing nothing wrong.

Speck said the court action against Cooper and his Sydney-based internet provider ComCem was part of ARIA's anti-piracy operations and if the decision favoured ARIA it would mean the end of the internet myth.

Cooper told Brisbane's The Courier-Mail newspaper he would never have started the website if he had known he was doing anything wrong and did not have the money to defend the case.

"There are no millions of dollars stashed away anywhere, no secret garages full of Porsches and Ferraris," he said.

The case against Cooper, of Bellbowrie in Brisbane, is due to get under way in Sydney next Monday.

AAP