GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us that the legal minds in the UK are watching prosecutions in the United States that deal with copyright abuse on the net. They are watching with great interest to see if filesharing lawsuits are successful in the US.
Andrew Curwen, a partner in law firm Rowe Cohen, says that the success or failure of prosecutions in the US could have implications not just for individual file sharers in the UK, but also for companies whose employees share files at work. The UK record industry's body, the BPI, has said that it is monitoring the situation in the US before deciding whether to take any action here. |
They go on to talk about the differing laws that apply in the UK as opposed to the US. They say English law prohibits the wilful downloading of copyrighted material. In a hypothetical defense, they say a person downloading a track of copyrighted material can claim they just want to use it for personal listening at a later time. A sort of timeshifting or VCR type defense.
I guess I am missing the point, as the lawsuits I read about in the US have nothing to do with downloading. It has to do with the fact they are stored in a shared folder, open to the Internet, subject to keyword search and are being uploaded ad nauseum. A sort of virtual distribution network of pirated goods.
Source: pcpro.co.uk
