SHARING music over the internet is not dissimilar to photocopying pages of books in a library, according to a judge in Canada, who has ruled that 29 people had not breached Canadian copyright law by posting music files online.
The Canadian Recording Industry Association had asked a federal court to force internet service providers to release the names and contact details of the 29 people that it accused of file sharing. But in a 23-page ruling on 31 March, judge Konrad von Finkenstein pointed out that none had distributed the recordings or authorised others to take them; they had merely placed them in shared directories. This, he said, was akin to placing a photocopier in a library. He also suggested that there was little hard evidence linking these individuals with file sharing at all.