July 11, 2005
...you might not notice that there are sites on the Web that are offering downloadable MP3s. Some of these sites reside in countries that have different copyright laws, or laxer enforcement of laws, than the US and other Cartel-dominated countries. So everyone pretend you didn't read this blog posting, ok?
One site that is raising the ire of the Germans is AllofMP3. In particular, Web sites in Germany have been asked to take down links to the site. This puts news sites in a particular bind. Take the story from heise online covering this takedown notice. They are, themselves, German. They've been asked to "remove all links to www.allofmp3.com" (sic - no using your copy-and-paste functionality there, kiddies). In the story covering these events they have one hyperlinked word and one literal reading of the URL. Which of these will be considered "objectively supporting the illegal dissemination of copyright protected sound recordings" is anyone's guess.
Next, I'm sure, the Cartel's lawyers will be asking Google, Yahoo! et al to edit their search results not to return hits to these sites. It feels like we keep revisiting this "Is Linking Legal?" question every few months.
