FOR six years, Stephen Cooper ran a song-sharing website from his modest brick home in Bellbowrie, in Brisbane's west, that attracted 190 million visitors a year and allegedly earned him up to $64,000 a month. Now the world's record companies have put the former policeman on their hit list - with a $500 million bullet. His website, which began as a hobby while he looked for a job in the computer industry, has also made him a star defendant in a landmark civil lawsuit.

After raids in October last year - on his home and at the Sydney offices of his Internet service provider - the father of two is facing a damages claim for as much as $500 million from 31 Australian and international record companies for copyright infringement. The MP3s4free.net website, which Cooper set up in 1998, is believed to have become the fourth-largest source of music piracy on the Internet before its shutdown two weeks after the raids.

More than 10,000 song files - including the best of local and international artists - were hidden in websites and internal operating systems that included the Australian Defence Force Academy, Queensland Police, the department of the NSW Premier (Bob Carr) and various universities. Cooper, who claims he would never have started the website if knew he was doing anything wrong, says the lawsuit is "ridiculous" and that he doesn't have enough money for legal fees to fight it in the Federal Court.

"There are no millions of dollars stashed away anywhere, no secret garages full of Porsches and Ferraris," Cooper said. "This was just a hobby for me while I was trying to get a job in computers and it just grew and grew and took on a life of its own. "I didn't think there was anything wrong with it but, when it was pointed out, I had no problems closing it down."

But documents filed in the Federal Court in Sydney earlier this month show that America's Music Publishers' Association warned Cooper in 2002 that he would face civil action unless he closed the website. Instead, the Australian Recording Industry Association took up the investigation into Cooper, and his Sydney-based Internet provider ComCen. It involved weeks of surveillance, forensic Internet tracking and, finally, the raids last year.

ARIA piracy investigations manager Michael Speck said the civil case, which will begin hearings in Sydney next Monday, is regarded as a landmark case by the world's record companies. It will precede another ARIA-brought case against Kazaa, the restructured parent of pioneering Internet song "file sharer" Napster. But Mr Speck said the action against Cooper and ComCen would test the common defence that, because the downloaded songs originated from other Internet users, the websites were not breaking the law.

"This is the most important Internet piracy case before the Australian courts and the result will have an impact around the world," he said. "The court's judgment will be the definitive answer to the mythology that allows people like Mr Cooper to act as if they didn't know anything was wrong. "If our claims are upheld in the court, then that can no longer be a defence."

Mr Speck said the damages claim would likely run up to "around $500 million" against Mr Cooper and ComCen. He said ARIA, and the international record companies that have joined the action, were seeking the full damages regardless of whether Cooper or ComCen had the money. Cooper said he only began to make money six months before the site closed - through advertising from mostly US companies, "but it was really only an average income".

ComCen refused to comment on the case.

ARIA said their investigations showed his monthly income ranged from $250, in 1999, to $64,000 last year. The website operated as a link to song files and Cooper said he rarely knew where they were stored on the Net.

"Of course the artists have rights to protect their music, but all I was doing was connecting people to the music, I wasn't selling it," he said.

The Courier-Mail
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11103594%255E26462,00.html

Hmmmmm....64,000 dollars a month? Hope he saved some of it for legal fees...

ARIA and the rest are Assholes!

Well, i am not going to get into it about whether what he was doing was wrong, but the 500 million dollar suit, now thats more dishonest!
So they sue him, maybe he has a few hundred grand in his bank account, please let me know where the other 499 million is going to come from?
This suit is absurd, plain and simple!

$500m lawsuits are what large corporations do. The idea of suing for a couple thousand dollars never even occurs to them.

To most oif us it wouldn't matter if you were sued for 500mill or 200,00 .....bank busted Mexico bound

Ill bet if Bush gets re-elected ,first thing on the agenda for Ashcroft will be to get the propaganda machine cranked up aganist the p2p users and label them all as copy right infringers. "operation net sweep" for those copy right infringing pirates YO!

If they win this case in australia, any ISP or webpage in any nation outside the united states can be held accountable for automated processes on tremendously vast sites.

This case has the potential to subjugate ISPS and webpage operators to regulations which make the FCC style gags on broadcast tv look liberal to the point of anarchy.

It will have the same effect on the internet elsewhere that the induce act would here.

I mean.. ISPS dont know what goes on on their networks.. they are completely ignorant of them.

Much like this man claims.

Because of this, the alphabet orgs could go on from this case to threaten litigation against ISPS if they dont implement severe impairment to thier services not unlike the extremely invasive blotting out of vast degrees of functionality which universities are pushing on their students.

I suspect those earned figures are inflated. The guy probably doesn't have much in the line of money and most likely never did.

It is the standard practice of law enforcement to inflate what the actual value of something is so it looks like what they did was far more important than it really was. Sounds to me like someone is trying hard to justify their job on this investigation. If the true scope of money spent, coupled with interagency co-operation and its associated cost were known and printed it could be easily assumed that it is far more than what the poor guy would ever have earned in his lifetime. You will notice that no estimation of what the cost of the operation was put out with the rest of the claims.

But then again the music industry is running scared, preaching the sky is falling, and hoping things will magically get better if they can just scare enough people. What I have seen of the figures presented on this site for their earnings don't say the same thing.

The importance of the great music labels is drawing to a close and with it the big hit money makers and lack of choice for the customer. Since majors are used to everytime a song plays they get paid, it is running them up the wall that not as many folks are interested in what they present as todays music.

They have focused and aimed at the wrong target. To the exclusion of all the rest of the market, they have narrowed in on the teen crowd for the most part. The middleclass, middle aged family has more disposable income but not always is the teen part of the family by that time. The teen has spread his wings and left the nest. The family then has more money than it did before to spend, but they are not part of what the target market is aimed at. The majors have missed the golden goose in favor of the quick buck.

Sure, let's see them try to collect 500 million from this guy, or any else whose last name isn't Gates... It's just a scare tactic.

never gonna happen
what they ask for isd not just improbable
but 100% impossible
mathematically not goinmg to happen even if he settles for 20 million
the riaa has gone too far
fuck them

I am a little disappointed that all codewarrior can do here is lapse to name calling. It must be a little sad that the very thing he/she would rush off and complain about is the best he/she can do when the real nature of on-line piracy is exposed.

Awehr, I have to disagree with you. ISP's often know what is happenning on their systems, especially when they stand to gain some advantage/benefit from it. In any event this case will not impact on the ISP's so called automated systems. It may however impact on those ISP's who take up the opportunity to profit, one way or another, from the traffic in infringing sound recordings.

Finally complaining amongst yourselves is no way to articulate your concerns. I for one am happy to discuss the issues directly and I am sure most in the industry would be the same (I am after all in the book and most people who feel strongly enough about these issues have been able to contact me)

The figures are inflated, no doubt about it. The same thing happened six months later when sharereactor.com was taken down. The anti-piracy people told the police the owner was making 15,000 Swiss francs a month, and told a newspaper he was making 76,000 Euros a month, 2,000 from donations alone. From what I can tell by backtracking on sites that keep track of popularity, this guy's site was less popular than sharereactor.com, at least it was just before it shut down.

profit?

ISPs do not stand to gain anything out of lots people downloading mp3s (or any other large files) from outside their network because they have to pay for that extra bandwidth.

There were no mp3s on that site, (only links to mp3 sites).

The record company spindoctors seem to always play down that very important point.

Why aren't they chasing the owners of the websites that actually hosted the mp3s?