Well, not explicitly. However, an Australian Federal Court decided that linking to copyrighted material constitutes copyright infringement. The precedent set by the court effectively turns every search engine into an outlaw organization, since search engines provide links to material they don’t own the copyright to.

The rep for the Australian MPAA tried to distinguish the site’s activities from those of Google.

“Mp3s4free was different in the sense that it actually catalogued MP3 files that were infringing copyright material - Google doesn’t do that,” she said.

“There is, however, action that is being taken against Google in other jurisdictions, and we’re awaiting that eagerly.”

The media cartels eagerly anticipate the downfall of Google. It’s probably best that they don’t know about this.

I’m personally quite happy with the outcome since it pushes the whole system closer to the edge. The more stuff like this happens, the further the laws get from the actions of innocent people, the sooner it’ll all come crashing down.

Here’s a link to the story in the Sydney Morning Herald. Note that the story is copyrighted by the newspaper, and I’m likely infringing on that copyright by linking to the story. I’ll probably have to be extradited to Australia for this crime. (via)