The head of an Australian music piracy investigations unit has warned that a recent court case in which three young men pleaded guilty to criminal charges over online music piracy has "exploded many of the myths" related to the Internet and copyright infringement.

Michael Speck, the head of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, told ZDNet Australia the case -- which saw Sydneysiders Tommy Le, Peter Tran and Charles Kok Hau Ng plead guilty in the Downing Centre local court this week to breaches of music companies' copyright -- punched holes in the copying "mythology". Some of the tenets in this so-called mythology include the view that online copyright infringement is an expression of free speech, is not against the law, and that the misappropriation of copyright is good for the music business.

He said "increasingly courts here and around the world are seeing criminal offences driven by Internet technologies as no different to other criminal acts".

The three were charged by the Australian Federal Police after a joint investigation with the unit, which is owned by the Australian Record Industry Association and some of its stakeholders.

Speck said the next significant step in the Australian case -- which involved the distribution of pirated digital music via the MP3 WMA land Web sites -- would occur by 29 September, before which the investigations unit would serve evidence to the court about the sentencing, the impact of the crime and the cost of the alleged activity. Each infringement carries a maximum sentence of AU$60,500 in fines and/or five years in jail, he said.

The unit would also be filing evidence about its right to appear in the case, with the magistrate set to decide on 1 October whether the antipiracy unit can appear. Sentencing is scheduled for 10 November.

Speck said "we will be concerned that any penalty reflects the criminality."

The head of the unit added that "at any time" it was conducting a large number of investigations, targeting both physical and Internet activity.

"Pirates are pirates," he added.

Speck denied there was any collaboration between his unit and the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), which is fighting a battle against online piracy on a number of fronts.

The RIAA has issued more than 1,000 subpoenas against individuals in the US it claims are offering copyrighted songs on file-trading networks, while participating in initiatives such as an education and entertainment industry alliance which is trying to limit the file-swapping tide on University campuses.

He attributed the remarkably similar tracks being followed by the industry in both countries to "best investigative practices".

However, Speck lashed the three Australian universities -- Sydney University, Melbourne University and the University of Tasmania -- presently involved in legal action over the music industry's attempts to gain access to records of network usage that may lead to charges for copyright breaches against staff and/or students at those institutions.

"We hold no hope that this case will be settled by negotiation," he said.

The industry is presently engaged in a "preliminary discovery stage" after winning a legal battle with the universities over access to the records. A music industry forensic expert is presently concluding his examination of the material ahead of further to-ing and fro-ing between the parties involved in the action over distribution and access to it.

"Those three universities have resisted providing any assistance at all while the rest of the university population has moved on," Speck said, adding that the music industry now saw no need for a general protocol governing the legalities of access to University networks in copyright infringement cases.

"Over a quarter of universities now have a policy [whereby] a copyright infringers' details can be disclosed to a copyright owner," he said.

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