A student whose home page linked to free online music files has been ordered to compensate the music industry $15,900 by Norway's supreme court, in a January 27 ruling holding him responsible for abetting copyright violation.
"The ruling will help build confidence in the Internet as a medium for the legal distribution of music," said Cato Stroem, managing director of Norwegian music industry trade group Tono, after the ruling.
The student's Napster.no site – unrelated to the famous Napster originating from the U.S. – was part of the student's computer programming school project in 2001, and offered links to .MP3 music files downloadable for free between August and November of that year, linking to a reported 170 free music files on servers outside Norway.
Norwegian music group Tono plus Sony Music's Norway division and Universal Music filed legal complaints for copyright violation, prevailing in a lower court but losing on appeal. That appellate ruling held the unnamed student's links didn't violate copyright law because those who actually downloaded the music did.
But Norway's highest court ruled – just as the U.S. music industry hopes the U.S. Supreme Court does regarding Grokster and Morpheus – that the student had copyright violation responsibility "based on responsibility for abetting [an illegal act]," calling the student's page and links "premeditated and worthy of criticism."
