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This section may contain,, or examples. Please by adding more descriptive text and removing. See Wikipedia's for further suggestions. (January 2011) Australia [ ] A secondary liability case in Australia, under Australian law, was [2005] FCA 1242 (5 September 2005). In that case, the Court determined that the Kazaa file sharing system had 'authorized' copyright infringement. The claim for damages was subsequently settled out of court. In the case of which was fought out in the, an internet service provider was found not to be liable for the of its users.

The case did not, however, create a clear precedent that Australian ISPs could never be held liable for the of their users by virtue of providing an internet connection. And other major Australian copyright holders have stated their intention to appeal the case, or pursue the matter by lobbying the government to change the Australian law. Canada [ ] The legality of is disputed, although in practice, file sharing is tolerated. [ ] In addition, in the 2004 case of BMG Canada Inc.

John Doe, the court decided that both downloading music and putting it in a shared folder available to other people online were legal in Canada. It has led to harsh criticism from organizations like: Canada, practically the only government of a developed country not to have implemented international copyright treaties agreed over a decade ago, is a major source of the world's file sharing. A disproportionate number of illegal sites are hosted on Canadian soil. China [ ] The People's Republic of China is known for having one of the most comprehensive and extensive approaches to observing web activity and censoring information in the world.

[ ] Popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook cannot be accessed via direct connection by its citizens. Mainland China requires sites that share video files to have permits and be controlled by the state or owned by state. These permits last for three years and will need renewal after that time period. Web sites that violate any rules will be subject to a 5-year ban from providing videos online. One of the country's most used file sharing programs, BTChina got shut down in December 2009.

It was shut down by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television for not obtaining a license to legally distribute media such as audio and video files. Alexa, a company that monitors web traffic, claims that BTChina had 80,000 daily users. Being one of the primary file sharing websites for Chinese citizens, this shutdown affected the lives of many internet users in China. China has an online population of 222.4 million people and 65.8% are said to participate in some form of file-sharing on websites. European Union [ ]. See also: On 5 June 2014, the ruled that making temporary copies on the user's screen or in the user's cache is not, in itself, illegal.

The ruling relates to the British Meltwater case settled on that day. Main article: A copyright in the United States consists of the exclusive rights enumerated under 17 USC 106. When having to do with pictures, music, literature or video, these exclusive rights include: 1. The right to reproduce or redistribute the picture, music, lyrics, text, video, or images of a video. The right to distribute the picture, music, lyrics, text, video, or images of a video. The right to produce derivative works of the copyrighted work. The right to perform the work publicly.

The right to display the work publicly. Download Norton Ghost 15 Full Crackle. The right to transmit the work through the use of radio or digital transition. In summary, these exclusive rights cover the reproduction, adaptation, publication, performance, and display of a copyrighted work (subject to limitations such as ). Anyone who violates the exclusive rights of copyright has committed, whether or not the work has been registered at the copyright office. If an infringement has occurred, the copyright owner has a legal right to sue the infringer for violating the terms of their copyright. The monetary value of the lawsuit can be whatever a jury decides is acceptable.

In the case of file sharing networks, companies claim that peer-to-peer file sharing enables the violation of their copyrights. File sharing allows any file to be reproduced and redistributed indefinitely. Therefore, the reasoning is that if a copyrighted work is on a file sharing network, whoever uploaded or downloaded the file is liable for violating the copyright because they are reproducing the work without the authorization of the copyright holder or the law. Primary infringement liability [ ] The fundamental question, 'what use can a P2P file-sharing network's customers make of the software and of copyrighted materials without violating copyright law', has no answer at this time, as there has been almost no dispositive decision-making on the subject.

This issue has received virtually no appellate attention, the sole exception being, a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which held that where a defendant has admitted downloading and copying song files from other users in the P2P network without permission of the copyright holders, she cannot claim that such copying is a 'fair use'. Since Gonzalez involves a defendant who had admitted to actual copying and downloading of songs from other unauthorized users, it is of limited applicability in contested cases, in that it relates solely to the reproduction right in 17 USC 106(1), and has no bearing on the 17 USC 106(3) distribution right. A series of cases dealing with the RIAA's 'making available' theory has broad implications, not only for the subject of P2P file sharing but for the Internet at large.

The first to receive a great deal of attention was Elektra v. Barker, an RIAA case against Tenise Barker, a Bronx nursing student. Barker moved to dismiss the complaint, contending, among other things, that the RIAA's allegation of 'making available' did not state any known claim under the Copyright Act. The RIAA countered with the argument that even without any copying, and without any other violation of the record companies' distribution rights, the mere act of 'making available' is a copyright infringement, even though the language does not appear in the Copyright Act, as a violation of the 'distribution' right described in 17 USC 106(3). Thereafter, several amicus curiae were permitted to file briefs in the case, including the MPAA, which agreed with the RIAA's argument, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the U.S. Internet Industry Association (USIIA), and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which agreed with Ms.

The US Department of Justice submitted a brief refuting one of the arguments made by EFF, but did not take any position on the RIAA's 'making available' argument, noting that it had never prosecuted anyone for 'making available'. The Elektra v. Barker case was argued before Judge Kenneth M. Karas in Manhattan federal court on 26 January 2007, and decided on 31 March 2008. The decision rejected the RIAA's 'making available' theory but sustained the legal sufficiency of the RIAA's pleading of actual distribution and actual downloading. Additionally, the Court suggested to the RIAA that it might want to amend its complaint to include a claim for 'offering to distribute for purposes of distribution', but gave no guidance on what type of evidence would be required for an 'offer'.

The Court's suggestion that merely 'offering' to distribute could constitute a violation of the Act has come under attack from William Patry, the author of the treatise Patry on Copyright. Three other decisions, also rejecting the RIAA's 'making available' theory, came from more unexpected sources. The Barker decision was perhaps rendered anticlimactic by the decision of Judge Janet Bond Arterton, from the District of Connecticut, handed down six weeks earlier, in Atlantic v. Brennan, rejecting the RIAA's application for a default judgment. Brennan, like Barker, rejected the RIAA's 'making available' theory, but unlike Barker it found the RIAA's specificity on the other issues to be insufficient, and it rejected the conceptual underpinnings upon which Judge Karas based his 'offer to distribute' idea. And Barker was perhaps overshadowed by the decision of Judge Gertner, rendered the same day as the Barker decision, in quashing a subpoena served on Boston University to learn the identity of BU students, in London-Sire v.

Here too the Court rejected the RIAA's 'making available' theory, but here too—like Atlantic but unlike Elektra – also rejected any possible underpinning for an 'offer to distribute' theory. And then came the decision of the District Judge Neil V. Wake, in the District of Arizona, in Atlantic v.

This 17-page decision – rendered in a case in which the defendant appeared pro se (i.e., without a lawyer) but eventually received the assistance of an amicus curiae brief and oral argument by the Electronic Frontier Foundation —was devoted almost exclusively to the RIAA's 'making available' theory and to the 'offer to distribute' theory suggested by Judge Karas in Barker. Howell strongly rejected both theories as being contrary to the plain wording of the Copyright Act.

The Court held that 'Merely making a copy available does not constitute distribution.The statute provides copyright holders with the exclusive right to distribute 'copies' of their works to the public 'by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.' 17 U.S.C.106(3). Unless a copy of the work changes hands in one of the designated ways, a 'distribution' under.106(3) has not taken place.' The Court also expressly rejected the 'offer to distribute' theory suggested in Barker, holding that 'An offer to distribute does not constitute distribution'. The next critical decision was that in Capitol v.

Thomas, which had received a great deal of media attention because it was the RIAA's first case to go to trial, and probably additional attention due to its outsized initial jury verdict. The RIAA had prevailed upon the trial judge to give the jurors an instruction which adopted its 'making available' theory, over the protestations of the defendant's lawyer. Operating under that instruction, the jury returned a $222,000 verdict over $23.76 worth of song files.

Almost a year after the jury returned that verdict, however, District Judge Michael J. Davis set the verdict aside, and ordered a new trial, on the ground that his instruction to the jurors—that they did not need to find that any files were actually distributed in order to find a violation of plaintiffs' distribution right—was a 'manifest error of law'.

The Judge's 44-page decision agreed with Howell and London-Sire and rejected so much of Barker as intimated the existence of a viable 'offer to distribute' theory. There may be indications that the RIAA has been jettisoning its 'making available' theory. In a San Diego, California, case, Interscope v. Bluetooth Dongle Driver For Windows 8 64 Bit.

Rodriguez, where the Judge dismissed the RIAA's complaint as 'conclusory', 'boilerplate', 'speculation', the RIAA filed an amended complaint which contained no reference at all to 'making available'. In subsequent cases, the RIAA's complaint abandoned altogether the 'making available' theory, following the model of the Interscope v.

Rodriguez amended complaint. In its place, it is apparently adopting the 'offer to distribute' theory suggested by Judge Karas. In the amended complaint the RIAA filed in Barker, it deleted the 'making available' argument—as required by the judge—but added an 'offer to distribute' claim, as the judge had suggested. It remains to be seen if it will follow that pattern in other cases. Secondary infringement liability [ ] Secondary liability, the possible liability of a defendant who is not a copyright infringer but who may have encouraged or induced copyright infringement by another, has been discussed generally by the United States Supreme Court in, which held in essence that secondary liability could only be found where there has been affirmative encouragement or inducing behavior. On remand, the lower court found Streamcast, the maker of Morpheus software, to be liable for its customers' copyright infringements, based upon the specific facts of that case.

Under US law 'the Betamax decision' (), holds that copying 'technologies' are not inherently illegal, if substantial non-infringing use can be made of them. Although this decision predated the widespread use of the Internet, in MGM v. Grokster, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged the applicability of the Betamax case to peer-to-peer file sharing, and held that the networks could not be liable for merely providing the technology, absent proof that they had engaged in 'inducement.' In 2006 the RIAA initiated its first major post-Grokster, secondary liability case, against in, where the held that induced and granted a against. Electronic Frontier Foundation [ ] The (EFF) seeks to protect and expand digital rights through,, and public awareness campaigns.

The EFF has vocally opposed the RIAA in its pursuit of lawsuits against users of file sharing applications and supported defendants in these cases. The foundation promotes the legalization of peer-to-peer sharing of copyrighted materials and alternative methods to provide compensation to copyright holders. In September 2008 the organization marked the 5th 'anniversary' of the RIAA's litigation campaign by publishing a highly critical, detailed report, entitled 'RIAA v.

The People: Five Years Later', concluding that the campaign was a failure. Reported suspension of RIAA litigation campaign [ ] Several months later, it was reported that the RIAA was suspending its litigation campaign, followed by a report that it had fired the investigative firm SafeNet (formerly MediaSentry) operating on its behalf. Some of the details of the reports, including claims that the RIAA had actually stopped commencing new lawsuits months earlier, and that its reason for doing so was that it had entered into tentative agreements with Internet service providers to police their customers, proved to be either inaccurate or impossible to verify and RIAA's claim not to have filed new cases 'for months' was false. Effects [ ] A study ordered by the found that illegal downloading may lead to an increase in overall video game sales because newer games charge for extra features or levels. The paper concluded that piracy had a negative financial impact on movies, music, and literature. The study relied on self-reported data about game purchases and use of illegal download sites.

Pains were taken to remove effects of false and misremembered responses. Notable cases [ ] EU • (Germany) • (England) USA • The of 2007 • - appeal case which analyzed contributory infringement in the context of linking to infringing material and. • • • (The Betamax decision) Sweden • Singapore • See also [ ] • • • • • • • • • • References [ ].