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Share Responsibly
File sharing
is not illegal so long as you abide by all
relevant copyright laws.
Free-Internet-Downloads.com
does not condone piracy or breaking
copyright laws. The MP3 sharing tools
available on through our members area are
powerful search tools & we recommend that
you use your discretion when downloading
music and movie files.
See News.com
Article:
Federal Judge Rules: File-swapping tools
are legal
Original
works of authorship, including literary,
dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain
intellectual compositions are protected by
copyright law. If a person publicly
performs, reproduces, distributes copies,
or displays works without consent of the
copyright owner could be in violation of
the law. Go to
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/ and
learn more about U.S. copyright law.
Purchasing a membership in
Free-Internet-Downloads.com does not
give you license to download or upload
copyright material. Free-Internet-Downloads.com
implores you to respect copyright laws and
share responsibly.
How can I stay legal?
Stay legal and avoid breaking the law.
Quick steps to stay legal:
-
Make sure there are no potentially
infringing files in your shared folders
- meaning only files that are in the
public domain, for which you have
permission to share or are available
under pro-sharing licenses.
-
Remove potentially misleading files
names that might be confused with the
name of an RIAA artist or song (e.g.
"Usher" or "Madonna") from your shared
folder.
-
Disable the "sharing" or "uploading"
features on your search program to
prevent other users on the network from
getting copies of files on your
computer. Music companies are focused on
finding people who share thousands of
files on their computers with the rest
of the community. If you don't share -
you reduce the risk.
File
sharing has been a hot topic in several
countries around the world. Below are
samples of court decisions from the United
States of America, Canada, and the
Netherlands.
USA Court Decision
Decentralized File-sharing Tools Ruled
Legal
Streamcast and Grokster have won a major
court decision in Los Angeles, shifting
the tides of the on-line P2P legal war.
Federal court Judge Stephen Wilson has
dismissed much of the studios' claims in
their lawsuits against them, stating that
Morpheus and Grokster were not liable for
copyright infringements that took place
using their software.
See News.com
Article:
Federal Judge Rules: File-swapping tools
are legal
The ruling stated loud and clear that
innovating decentralized peer-to-peer
Gnutella-like software is perfectly legal,
and shouldn't be deemed illegal in the
courts. The courts compared the technology
with the innovation of the original Sony
video cassette recorder (VCR).
Fred von
Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) stated the case is far
from over, but that the case sends a
"strong message to the technology
community that the court understands the
risk to innovation" the case could
represent
The Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) and
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
offered no comment, but are of course
issuing an appeal to the ruling already.
Published By Mike Darrah - April 25, 2003
Canadian Court Decision
Canada's
Federal Court has ruled against a motion
which would have allowed the music
industry to begin suing individuals who
make music available on-line. He said that
downloading a song or making files
available in shared directories does not
constitute copyright infringement under
the current Canadian law.
"Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruled
Wednesday that the Canadian Recording
Industry Association did not prove there
was copyright infringement by 29 so-called
music up loaders. Without the names, CRIA
can't begin filing lawsuits against the
alleged high-volume music traders,
identified only as John and Jane Does. It
also reaffirms what the Copyright Board of
Canada has already ruled -- downloading
music in this country is not illegal. Von
Finckenstein said that downloading a song
or making files available in shared
directories, like those on Kazaa, does not
constitute copyright infringement under
the current Canadian law. "No evidence was
presented that the alleged infringers
either distributed or authorized the
reproduction of sound recordings," he
wrote in his 28-page ruling. "They merely
placed personal copies into their shared
directories which were accessible by other
computer users via a P2P service."
With all of the usual caveats about
appeals, this decision makes it
practically impossible to prosecute file
sharers in Canada. von Finkenstein has
gone well beyond the idea that downloading
is legal in Canada. By expressly
mentioning "merely placing personal copies
into their shared directories" does not
constitute distribution he has blown a
huge hole in the arguments which swirled
around the whole question of the legality
of uploading in Canada.
(Published April 1, 2004
http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article.pl?sid=04/04/01/0411227&mode=thread)
European Court Decision –
The Supreme
Court of the Netherlands has thrown out an
appeal by music industry lobbyists who
wanted the popular Kazaa file-sharing
software to be ruled illegal.
The victory for Kazaa, which follows
similar US rulings in favour of
peer-to-peer (P2P) software firms Grokster
and Morpheus, is a huge blow to the music
industry. It has fought a long battle to
close down file-sharing networks and
criminalise the software that makes file
swapping illegal.
The Dutch
decision means that the developers of the
software cannot be held responsible for
how individuals use it.
(Dinah Greek,
vnunet.com 19 Dec 2003,
http://www.pcw.co.uk/news/1151673)
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