[Sussex] File-sharing suffers major defeat

[Steve Dobson]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 05:51:11PM +0100, Andrew Guard wrote:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4627679.stm
> 
> Well thats it, Intel will have sack all R&D teams and take on Lawers 
> etc.  It realy this bad, forget about Linux as no one going to write any 
> code for it now.

This may well be a bad day for P2P software developers in the US, but as
far as I know it is still legal to write that kind of software over here
in Europe, or in India, or in China, ...

> Realy is this serious for every thing.

I will wait to see the result of the case where some kid down loads
music from one of Sony's artists using his Sony computer and then
transfers in onto his Sony MP3 player so that he can take it to
school and share it with his friends

Note these quotes from the article:

   In the ruling Justice David Souter wrote: "The question is under
   what circumstances the distributor of a product capable of both
   lawful and unlawful use is liable for acts of copyright
   infringement by third parties using the product."

   He added: "We hold that one who distributes a device with the
   object of promoting its use to infringe copyright ... is liable
   for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

As I understand it most of the main stream content provides are owned
by companies that produce equipment on which the coping is taking place.
So any company that is both the content and equipment provider could
find this ruling biting them in the ass.

Steve

P.S. The fortune was not selected by me.  As far as I know it is 
completely random.
-- 
Linux is obsolete
	-- Andrew Tanenbaum
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