LA judge makes file swapping legal


CNet reports that federal court Judge Stephen Wilson has handed down a decision that correctly points out that the responsibility for using a file sharing service illegally lies with the user, not with the file sharing service.

"Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."