Canadian Judge Rules File-Sharing Legal

[Champ]

(Article Central) A Canadian judge has ruled that it is not illegal to make songs available for sharing over the Internet – a decision that sends a major blow to the Canadian Recording Industry Association.
The judge determined that sharing files is not an infringement of copyright under Canadian law because the user is not distributing the music. The decision was made following the CRIA's request to have five ISPs reveal the names and details of 29 people accused of putting music online, in order to help build lawsuits against them.

The judge denied the court order, saying there was no evidence that the accused were distributing copyrighted music.

The judge compared the a computer user who puts personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service, such as Kazaa, to a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material.

http://www.thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/story.asp?recordid=841