The French Parliament voted last night to allow free sharing of music and movies on the Internet, setting up a conflict with both the French government and with media companies.

If the amendment survives, France would be the first country to legalize so called peer-to-peer downloading, said Jean-Baptiste Soufron, legal counsel to the Association of Audionautes, a French group that defends people accused of improperly sharing music files.

The amendment, which is attached to a bill on intellectual property rights, states that "authors cannot forbid the reproduction of works that are made on any format from an online communications service when they are intended to be used privately" and not for commercial use.

For a year now, there have been many rumors why SuprNova.org was taken offline. Some have said that it was because of legal issues, some said it was because I sold out to eXeem project, or because I became a millionaire and did not want to bother with the site anymore, and the rumors go on.

On November 2004, I received a call from my ISP saying that all of my servers had been raided by the police. I received nothing from the police before or after the raid, nobody told me what was going on.

About a month later, after SuprNova.org had been taken offline, there was a door bell at 6:30 in the morning, saying it's the police. Actually I was not expecting anything anymore, since SuprNova.org had been taken offline long before that. They showed me a court order to search my place and they did so. They took as far as I remember, two of my computers and lots of documents.

But anyway, I went to the post and picked up the document. It was from the prosecutor, saying by the law blah blah and blah blah the denunciation against Andrej Preston has been dropped. And I received all the CD's and computers that they took from me. This happened on 18th October 2005.

Kazaa has opted to cut access to its file-sharing network in Australia rather than install keyword filters specified by record companies to block access to copyright music.

Kazaa was originally given two months by the court to change its search technology to prevent the sharing of pirated music.

Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) said on Tuesday the record companies would return to court to enforce the orders of the copyright judgment which it believed was only on hold if key word filters had been put in place by midnight on December 5.

Sharman Networks, owner of the network, argued that by making the site inaccessible to Australian users it was complying appropriately with the court orders pending the outcome of the appeal.

A user of an unofficial version of the Kazaa software, Lite K++ said he was still able to download music files from artists such as Kylie Minogue from the network on Tuesday. "I don't think this will stop file sharing because there is lots of other file sharing software available," he said.

The popular file-sharing service Kazaa has been put on notice. Sharman Networks, the Australian company that purchased the Kazaa network and software in 2002, has been told by an Australian judge that they have until December 5 to either filter copyrighted music from its system or shut down their operations entirely.

To avoid complete shutdown, Sharman Networks must, as a "first step," implement a keyword-filtering system for the Kazaa network within 10 days. This would remove the links to many copyrighted files already being shared over the network, but obviously it would be easy for users to add intentional misspellings to their files in order to bypass the filters. There has been no comment about whether or not the fake, static-filled music files hosted on high-speed connections by the music industry themselves would be subject to these same keyword filters.

The chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an organization that represents the recording industry in over 75 countries, issued this statement:

It's time for services like Kazaa to move on—to filter, go legal or make way for others who are trying to build a digital music business the correct and legal way.

From a distance, iMesh looks like another subscription service à la Yahoo Music. You pay your US$6.99 per month and are able to access all the legal music on the iMesh network. Like the other subscription services, the music is tied to the PC on which iMesh is installed. Unlike NapsterToGo and Yahoo Music, there's no option to copy the music to your digital music player; a future update will include that functionality. Naturally, if you want to keep the music, you still have to buy it.

iMesh will still search Gnutella and other P2P networks for files, but users will not be able to download them. That's due to a filtering function that will keep users from downloading "illegitimate" files found on other PCs on the network. Some free downloads will be allowed, such as those in the public domain or by artists who release the songs themselves. Videos less than 15 minutes long or 50MB in size can also be downloaded, which rules out most of the stuff file-sharers would be looking for (e.g., tv shows, movies).

Sweden's high profile battle between illegal file sharers and representatives of the film and games industries rumbles on. But now the country's music industry, which has so far kept quiet on the subject, is planning to get involved.

Last week the IFPI, along with the games and film industry body, Antipiratbyran (APB), was given the right to register the IP addresses of individuals found to be sharing copyright-protected material.

This gave the organisations an exemption from the Personal Data Act and was seen as a significant victory for APB and an indication that the hunt for illegal file sharers could proceed.

The order comes from the Swedish Board of Data Inspection, but APB says it is impossible without the cooperation of the country's internet service providers. And the ISPs are not playing ball.

Only the file sharer's ISP can link the IP address to the person. If the ISP receives a request for such information from the police, they cannot refuse it, but a few calls from TT revealed that requests from APB would be ignored.

The public face of APB, lawyer Henrik Pontén, thinks that the ISPs are taking a short-term view of the problem.

"It is also in their interests that there is a functioning games and film industry for legal distribution," he said.

The RIAA and its international counterpart released their latest sales figures today, of course taking the opportunity to whine about flie-sharing and blame piracy for all their industry's woes. The IFPI says, though, digital music sales shot up 259% in the first half of 2005 over last year, with much of that coming from things like mobile phone ringtones. While the music industry pats itself on the back for initiatives like implementing copy protection that just annoys buyers and its continued aggressive legal strategy, it's really doubtful that file-sharing is on the wane. Every time the RIAA gets one site or service shut down, users just move on. So although the groups scream loudest about a slight overall decline in music sales, the fact of the matter is that digital music sales are increasing in spite of piracy, and thanks to sales of non-traditional content like phone ringtones. Now imagine what would happen to the music business if labels embraced this kind of innovation and proactively changed their business models, rather than just stumbling upon it.

Canadians illegally download 14 music CDs or other files from the Internet for every file they take from the web legally, a new recording-industry poll suggests.

The illegal downloading has cost retail music stores more than half a billion dollars in lost sales since 1999, a study by Pollara for the recording industry estimates.

Canadians between the ages of 18 and 29 are much more willing than other age groups to make illegal copies of software programs, cheat on exams or even shoplift, an Environics poll suggests.

Of those asked, 6 per cent of younger Canadians said they would leave a store without paying for a piece of clothing, compared with 2 per cent of the population at large.

Recently, the two industry lobbying groups have adopted the strategy of running to Capitol Hill and begging for legislation to achieve their goal of maintaining absolute control over their content after it has passed from their hands into the consumer's. They must be overjoyed with comments made yesterday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) at a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Referring to the failure of the recent MGM v. Grokster ruling to significantly curtail peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic, she said that Congress may eventually try to legislate them out of existence.

At this time, there are no bills on the table or even in the pipeline, and Sen. Feinstein wasn't ready to offer specifics on possible legislation. However, her comments indicate that Congress is starting to think about intervening in an area that has so far been confined to the US legal system.

A law outlawing peer-to-peer file sharing services is a possibility at some point; more remote is legislation barring the access of such networks. Sen. Feinstein said that her intent is not to go after every high schooler that logs on to eDonkey. However, it is apparent that Congress will be very closely watching developments in the world of file-sharing in the aftermath of MGM v. Grokster. Some of the networks are: Limewire plans to implement safeguards that would keep unlicensed content from being shared and downloaded over the network. Chances are other networks will take similar steps. Is the possible combination of federal legislation and networks barring content enough to stamp out file sharing, or will it just be driven deeper underground?

In a court case where the RIAA tried suing the mother of a 13 year old when her daughter shared music over a file-sharing network, the court forced the RIAA to dismiss the case. In order for the RIAA to sue the child, a Guardian Ad Litem (guardian appointed by a court to represent a minor) must be appointed to protect the interests of the child. While the mother had no experience or knowledge with computers, the RIAA claimed that she was indirectly liable for allowing her daughter to use her computer to illegally share music online.

Finally, the RIAA tried asking the Judge to amend the judgement in order to allow them to sue the child through a Guardian Ad Litem. However the court denied this RIAA's request.

Well, at least it is nice to see the RIAA finally lose a case for trying to sue an adult or child when a minor ends up sharing music online. However, this does not stop them from issuing further lawsuits against children with guardians to present the minors.