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Brazilian Court Bans P2P Software
Earlier this year, at the behest of an anti-piracy group consisting of the usual suspects from the recording industry, a Brazilian court ruled that a company named Cadare Information Technology must implement a filter on the P2P software they distributed on their website to weed out copyrighted content. Cadare was unable comply with the order because they didn't develop the software; they merely offered it for download. The case went back to court, and a Brazilian judge has now decided to ban distribution of the software because it can be used to assist copyright infringement. "He went on to suggest that any website offering the software alongside advertising (i.e, trying to profit from offering it) would be committing a crime, punishable by between two and four years in jail."
You're setting up a false premise here -- nobody believes that one can't use Google to infringe. We're all smart people here and we owe it to ourselves to not fall into these sort of silly traps.
If you're genuinely curious why "just like Google" doesn't work, Google on "substantial non-infringing uses." It's a fundamental legal test for contributory copyright infringement.
Turning it around, if you're wondering if Google and similar facilities are in danger of being held liable for the actions of their users, this is an important one to understand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
Another critical thing to understand is that safe harbors (the DMCA being the most relevant) are, to mangle the metaphor, a two-way street. Yeah, they'll protect you, but only if you make use of them. For example, Google and many other sites honor DMCA takedown requests. If you're running a P2P site and you know that filtering out pirated material would put you out of business, you don't have the luxury of ignoring takedown requests simply because honoring them would affect your site's viability -- and excuses like "I'm too busy" or "I don't have the manpower to handle all those requests" don't hold any weight with the court. To take advantage of the DMCA safe harbor that Google and so many others enjoy, you must take active steps to make use of it.
That appears to be similar to what happened in the case described in the article.
HTH.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
It is far too late... ...
[rant] Noticed how 2/3 of slashdot news today is about the legality aspect of one thing or the other ? Noticed how we spend more time on the issues of free speech, copyright violation, net neutrality than on actual coding ? The cool stuff is out, the dull is in. Granted, a coder, a hacker, a security expert, has to know some legal things, but it should not waste half of our time. Life is too short for this. Increasingly it feels like knowing the law bears little correlation to not being charged and that rational thinking and common sense bears far less importance in the judicial system. I wish we were spending less time being concerned on these issues and we could keep focus on nifty reverse engineering projects or amateurish robotics. I guess what I am trying to say is
FUCK. THIS. SHIT.
[/rant]
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.