The case first came to the court system's attention on 17 October 2003, when the music industry's copyright police, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), who suspected Cooper of music copyright infringement, raided his premises under Anton Piller civil search orders.
Music industry lawyers will allege the Web site was first identified in December 2002 after it was picked up by the MIPI's Internet surveillance activities.
According to MIPI, usage statistics for the Web site showed that between November 2002 and October 2003, it recorded a total of 191,296,511 hits to the site, with 7,081,899 unique visitors.
The group's statistics show 2,109,964,514 kilobytes of data were downloaded from the site during this time, (one MP3 file ranges from 2,000-5,000KB in size).
Lead counsel for Universal Music and affiliated music label applicants, John Nicholas -- who is also arguing a separate case against peer-to-peer software distributor Sharman Networks -- said the infringement charges arise out of the "activities of the first respondent, Mr Cooper, who made it his business to distribute for free commercial sound recordings in MP3 format".
"The distribution occurred on a massive scale which was made possible by the power and reach of the Internet," he said. "The scale of copyright infringement that occurred via the mp34free Web site is unprecedented in Australia for an Internet Web site of this kind."
Nicholas said the Web site acted as a "shop" for the supply of unauthorised copies of sound recordings, although "at Mr Cooper's shop, his customers did not have to pay for their music."
According to Nicholas, the site generated money by offering advertising space.
"The music files made available at the Web site were the 'bait' used by Mr Cooper to generate traffic that enabled him to make money from paid advertising posted on the Web site proportionate to the traffic," he said.
However, lead counsel for the defence, Anthony Morris QC, said Cooper could not have abused any copyright material as "all he has done is put in a set of pointers to MP3 sites around the world".
"He has done nothing that Google or Yahoo hasn't...he provided a directory for certain types of content," Morris said. "He only provided a hyperlink."
According to Nicholas, Cooper's Web site provided an "ARIA Top 50 Chart"-style directory that made available "copies of sound recordings by means of hyperlinks...by which Internet users who visited the site were given direct access to infringing files situated on remotely located computer servers".
"Those hyperlinks on his site when activated resulted in music files being transmitted to Mr Cooper's customer," he said. "So far as the user was concerned the transaction was perfectly seamless."
Further respondents to the case include Cooper's Internet service providers, E-Talk and ComCen and the "controlling mind" of both organisations, Liam Bal. Another respondent to the case is the primary business contact for Cooper at the ISPs, Chris Takoushis.
The case resumes tomorrow.
This article is extremely misleading.
Both sides have admitted that there were no mp3 files found on the site in question.
Quote: "The group's statistics show 2,109,964,514 kilobytes of data were downloaded from the site during this time, (one MP3 file ranges from 2,000-5,000KB in size). "
I'd like to see where they get those figures from.
There were no mp3s on the site.
Why are they now trying to mislead us into thinking there were?
If the site was getting as many page views as the article suggests a lot of data would be downloaded from the site just from people just looking at the site (every html page, image, etc is downloaded to the browser and is counted as a "hit" in server logs) and tha amount of data is what you would expect just in page views on such a busy site.
The server logs on the machine where the website was hosted would show the REAL traffic.
The stats they are quoting have to regarded as suspect not only because there were no mp3s on the site but also because they do not explain how they got those figures.
Putting a comparision with the size of a typical song in mp3 format right under it also looks to me like an attempt to mislead the public into thinking people were downloading mp3 files directly from the site.
I have to ask -
Why aren't they going after the sites which actually have the mp3s on them instead of trying to sue innocent third parties such as ISPs.
If they get away with this it sets a VERY dangerous precedent where it may become risky to have ANY links on ANY website to any other website.
What will it mean for search engines or indeed ANY website with a links page if they are to be held responsible for the content of OTHER websites they have no control over?
What will this mean for ISPs or Hosting providers
if they are held resonsible for copyright issues on websites owned by their customers?
What will it mean for independant artists who are not well known who choose to give away some of their own music to promote themselves if everyone is too afraid to link to their site even though their mp3s are legal (how would other sites be able to easily verify that?).
Is the ability of independant artists to promote themselves through the internet what they REALLY fear?
Just to point out how ridiculous this case is: -
Would they sue a postal service if they found that a customer was distributing a newsletter listing addresses of mail order companies and some of the mail order companies were found to be selling pirate cds?
(this would be a similar kind of case)
Advice for any press people reading this:
Small companies like the ISP in this case are not likely to have much money to spare to hire spindoctors to write press releases and this is probably why the media reports I've seen on this case are so one-sided.
Please check out the EFA website for more info on such cases and their possible future implications.
http://www.efa.org.au/