COPYCENSE

"The makers of two leading file-sharing programs are not legally liable for copyrighted works swapped online by their users, a federal appeals court ruled (.pdf) in a blow to the entertainment industry.

"Among other reasons, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., unlike the original Napster LLC, were not liable because they don’t have central servers pointing users to copyrighted material.

"The panel noted that the software firms simply provide tools that let individual users share information over the Internet, regardless of whether that shared information is copyrighted."

Associated Press. Appeals Court Ruling Favors File-Sharing. WashingtonPost.com. Aug. 20, 2004.

See also John Borland. Judges Rule File-Sharing Software Legal. News.com. Aug. 19, 2004.

(Editor�s Note: The Post allows free access to their stories on the Web for 14 days before sending the stories to the paper�s fee-based Archives.)