Australian Ruling Could Affect Search

[Steve]

An Australian court has ruled that simply providing Web links to copyright-protected music is enough to make a site legally liable (http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=MjMxNTIsLCxobmV3cywsLDE=). People are now afraid that Google and other search engines could possibly be guilty of the same violations if search results returned links to copyrighted material.

They were accused of authorizing copyright infringement because they provided a search engine whose results linked to songs available for illegal download, even though the Web site did not store the music files directly.

[ferzerp]

And how many layers counts as infringement? If it is broad enough to count search engines, then what about sites that link to search engines? Or what about IE with google search as its search option?

What we have here is another case of laws being made on technology by those who don't understand the technology at all?

[BladeVenom]

The internet is now illegal. At least that's what the RIAA is striving for.