Record labels target Australian universities in copyright fishing expedition
Record labels have launched legal action against Australian universities in an attempt to prove staff and students are illegally sharing copyrighted works on college networks. It sounds like a fishing expedition: they have no evidence of a crime, so they're trying to force the universities to hand over records in the hope that they find something incriminating.
In the Federal Court in Sydney today, Sony, EMI and Universal will try to seize evidence of song-swapping by students on the computer networks of the universities of Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania. [...] Melbourne University vice-principal of information Helen Hayes said yesterday the university had investigated relevant web pages. She said two websites contained links to other sites that appeared to offer MP3 files for download, but Melbourne University websites had no direct links to illegal MP3 files. Ms Hayes said the university had removed the offending links and the students involved had been cautioned. - The Age, Unis pirating music, say record giants.