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balam - 11:44 am on Jan 25, 2007 (gmt 0)
Marcia have you done any research on this story? If you have, then you are quite aware that the streaming audio NEVER appeared on the website in question. While I agree with your statement above, that is NOT the case here. axgrindr... > The law may not on the books but [...] But - nothing! If there is no law in "the books," then the act CANNOT be illegal. Unethical, bad etiquette, immoral, rude, whatever. But not illegal. Those that are willing to dig a bit deeper into this story may have come across this post on the Google Copyright Blog: Deeplinking in the Heart of Texas, Judge Says No [googlecopyright.blogspot.com]. Allow me to quote a paragraph... Emphasis is mine! What occurred in the above post and on the SupercrossLive site is this: A link to a WMA (Windows Media Audio) file hosted by Akamai was posted. That's it. Nothing more. And not a nibble of SFX's bandwidth is/was used. If you clicked on the links on the ScL site, or the link in the cited blog post, then Windows Media Player would be invoked and the file is streamed directly from Akamai to the end user. The file doesn't go through SFX's server, it doesn't go through Blogspot's server, and it certainly doesn't go through ScL's server. So, claims that SFX's bandwidth was stolen are completely wrong. The SFX site has nothing but a link to a file hosted by Akamai, just like the blog post & the ScL site. Ah, I hear the next argument - "Akamai's bandwidth was stolen!" If that's the case, then why isn't Akamai part of this case? (A rhetorical question, as I don't expect any of us to be able to answer it.) The question I will ask, and expect some answers to, is this: Is posting a link hot-linking?
> No one has the legal right to "play" a movie or streaming video or any other media creation on their own site unless it belongs to them. What happened was that SFX provided a link on its main page to its LIVE! page, which lists Supercross races for which there is an audio broadcast. Clicking on a race link goes to the page for that race, on which there is a link to the audio broadcast. Clicking on the link to the broadcast opens up Windows Media Player and the audio file is streamed. Confused? Click here to listen to the December 9th race from Vancouver. According to Texas, I just infringed SFX's copyright in that broadcast!