AfterDawn: News

Australian police busts music piracy site

Australian police said on Thursday they had shut down an Internet music piracy site and arrested the three students who were running it. The site, known as MP3 WMA Land, offered free music files and video clips for download, many of which were hosted on university computers. The students running it were aged between 19 and 20. Two of them were Australians, and the third Malaysian. According to the police the site contained links to hundreds of music files.

"It [the shutdown] is a clear message to Internet pirates that they can no longer hide behind the mythology of the Internet. It's now revealed as nothing more than another form of theft," said Michael Speck, general manager of the Australian music industry's piracy investigations unit.



The defendants have been released on bail and will be appearing in court in mid-May. Australian penalties for copyright infringement include up to five years in jail or a $37,000 fine.

Source:
News.com


Written by: Jari Ketola @ 24 Apr 2003 4:04

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• 6 comments

• tribal-t

  NOOO! This was a great website! Not to mention the fact that most of its content wound up on the P2P File- Sharing networks and their stuff was high-quality.

  24.4.2003 13:06 #1

• TVH

  stupid warez boys got busted. Good!

  25.4.2003 06:36 #2

• TVH

  to clarify my previous comment, I meant to say that it was stupid to serve illegal mp3 files, I didn't mean to call anyone stupid as a person :)

  25.4.2003 06:39 #3

• tribal-t

  HEY TVH, Why do you even come to this site, if all you do is bash the people who serve free music to millions of people everywhere? This whole site is based on dvd ripping, file sharing apps, and other trading stuff!

  25.4.2003 14:21 #4

• TVH

  tribal-t, I read about dvd-ripping, file sharing and stuuf here cuz I also do all that stuff except I don't do anything illegal. Actually, I don't care if the big name artist lost any money because of those guys serving their mp3's but still, what they did was wrong.

  26.4.2003 01:54 #5

• Incog

  I know its a lil late but i saw TVH stupid comments and had to reply, he is obviously a total and complete idiot and probably a rat. You ripped the shit idiot so therefore you broke the law by your own standards, dont knock others becuase you are a idiot deal with it and move on rat bastard

  19.5.2009 14:44 #6