Reuters News Wire (reuters@telecom-digest.org) Mon, 19 Jun 2006 13:31:59 -0500

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A Dutch music website which links to MP3 files had to stop promoting the infringement of artist rights and copyrights, the Dutch court of appeal said in a ruling that overturned an earlier one in favor of the site. The website http://www.zoekmp3.nl , operated by Techno Design, had been taken down on Monday after the ruling on Friday which said that failure to comply with the injunction would lead to fines of 10,000 euros ($12,590) per day, or 1,000 euros per infringing file. Techno Design will also have to pay damages, with the amount to be determined at a later stage. Making mp3 files available on the internet is illegal under Dutch law, where it is done without the permission of the copyright owner. A warning to users on http://zoekmp3.nl not to infringe copyright did not excuse Techno Design from liability. "Such a warning ignores the reality that the lion's share of visitors are looking for unauthorized MP3 files," the court said. "There has been concern that Holland could become a center of Internet piracy, but this decision shows that the Dutch courts will not tolerate websites building a business out of facilitating copyright infringement," said General Counsel Geoff Taylor of the International Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers (IFPI). Other deep link websites have been found to be illegal in Australia http://mp3s4free.net and China (Baidu), according to IFPI. The case was brought to the appeals court by BREIN, a Dutch anti-piracy organization, after an earlier ruling in favor of the website at the Haarlem court in 2004. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html

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