EasyInternetCafé in burning hot water

The High Court has found EasyInternetCafé guilty of infringing copyright which a service it offered to customers who wanted to burn downloaded music onto CDs.

For a £5 fee staff at the chain of internet cafes would burn music onto CDs for customers who had downloaded their favourite tunes from the web. However, as is often the case with such matters, the service often infringed the copyright of the artists and record labels who produced the music.

For its part EasyInternetCafé was adjudged to be aiding and abetting such copyright infringement.

In a statement Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who founded the entire Easy empire, said: "Copying music over the net is no different to videotaping a programme to watch later, and that is legal".

The British Phonographic Industry, which was representing Polydor, Sony Music and Virgin Records in the case is thought to be seeking up to £1m in damages.

Charlotte McConnell, a solicitor at Intellectual Property and IT specialist law firm Bristows said: "It seems that with music piracy, the courts, both in the UK and the US are keen to find a commercial entity to blame. As with the Napster litigation in the US, in this case, the primary infringers are the individuals downloading the music. But individuals are difficult to catch, and are generally not worth pursuing commercially. By going after the organisations that facilitate the infringement, the music industry gets its point across."