Three Sydney men are facing up to five years in jail and/or 60,500 Australian dollars (€35,500) in fines after pleading guilty to what is believed to be the world's first criminal prosecution for online music piracy.
Previous legal actions against internet sites such as Napster have relied on civil law. Australian music industry representatives said using criminal proceedings sent a powerful message that online music pirates would face the full force of the law.
Mr Tommy Le (19), Mr Peter Tran (20) and Mr Charles Kok Hau Ng (20) pleaded guilty to infringing the copyright of record labels Universal, Sony, Warner, BMG, EMI and the Rupert Murdoch-owned Festival Mushroom Records.
The three men were arrested last April after police raids on their homes following a joint investigation with Music Industry Piracy Investigations, a body funded by the Australian record industry.
Using a series of websites, called MP3 WMA land, the men distributed music allegedly worth Aus$60 million to other internet users.
It was alleged that Mr Le, under the pseudonym DJ Ace, provided pirated digital music to the sites, which were run by Mr Ng and Mr Tran.
Because the trio did not charge anyone who downloaded the songs, they were not accused of profiting from their crime.
However, the record companies have asked that their claimed economic losses be taken into account at sentencing on November 10th.
A Music Industry Practices Investigations investigator, Mr Michael Speck, said it would ask the court to ensure the punishment reflected the three men's crimes, but added that the record companies were not trying to make an example of the men to frighten other online music pirates.
"This is an important copyright case for industries all over the world because it confirms the view that you can be found and you can be prosecuted, even though you hide behind the anonymity that the internet offers," he said.
This case showed that the authorities now considered online copyright infringement as a serious crime, according to Mr Speck, a former police detective.
"It's gone from being perceived as a very low-level, almost innocuous, activity to being part of a portfolio of professional criminals. It's become increasingly sophisticated and the profits of pirates have skyrocketed," he said.
The music industry investigators claim to have a global monitoring system that can detect online infringement of Australian copyright.
"The sleuth work is becoming increasingly easy to do, it's almost impossible to wipe your fingerprints off a digital crime scene," Mr Speck said.
Recent civil actions taken by record companies in the US to stop online music piracy have had inconclusive results. Last April, a US district court found the distribution of file-swapping software, the tool used to find and distribute digital music over the internet, by Grokster and StreamCast Networks was not a breach of copyright.
The Australian case differs from the US example in that the relevant sites hosted the actual songs rather than the software used to find the music.
Mr Speck said the internet service providers who hosted music pirates' sites could be targeted next.
"They're clearly not immune from prosecution," he said. "They spend a great deal of their marketing effort exonerating themselves or distancing themselves from responsibility for this activity and, increasingly, courts are recognising the connection between this activity and their benefit."
The record industry estimates that billions of dollars in revenue are lost each year due to declining sales caused by internet piracy.
