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."

Re:Why just software?

[Shikaku]

UK already did that.

A common (American) misconception...

[Inf0phreak]

Precedent [wikipedia.org] is a common law [wikipedia.org] thing. Brazil - and pretty much the rest of South America - has a civil law [wikipedia.org] system. The common law article even has a link to a neat picture: Legal systems of the world [wikipedia.org].

Re:Why just p2p?

[shark72]

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 [wikipedia.org]

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.

Whoa. Nice way to get bribes?

[No Eye Deer]

I haven't been following WOW at all, but don't they use BitTorrent for distributing their updates? Will they ban Opera for including BitTorrent support in their browser too? Imagine all the lobbying required for application vendors to have their P2P-enabled software to be "legal".

Correct "translation" of facts

[kusanagi374]

I'm brazilian and I've read Internet Legal's press release about this (which is a bit like EFF), and what the judge actually prohibits is showing ads FOR THE SOFTWARE. The website in question (www.iplay.com.br) displayed ads which, according to the judge, implied that the software was meant for illegal file sharing.

Also, what happened here is that a second judge REVERSED the decision made by the first one, that said P2P applications are like knifes: you can use it for good OR evil, and there's nothing the maker can do about it. The second judge compared the P2P software to an establishment that sells both drugs (illegal) and soda pop (legal): even if legal products are available, the correct thing to do is to shut everything down.

in pt-br: http://www.internetlegal.com.br/2009/09/tjpr-decide-que-e-ilicito-o-uso-de-software-p2p-para-baixar-musicas-pela-internet/ [internetlegal.com.br]

in english (courtesy of google): http://translate.google.com.br/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.internetlegal.com.br%2F2009%2F09%2Ftjpr-decide-que-e-ilicito-o-uso-de-software-p2p-para-baixar-musicas-pela-internet%2F&sl=pt&tl=en&hl=pt-BR&ie=UTF-8 [google.com.br]

Re:Right on, ban P2P!

[Totenglocke]

Sorry, but I disagree. Why? Because OSS doesn't always provide what people want since it's made by nerds coding software that THEY want, not what the users want. For example. I'm a gamer (among other things) so I need Windows. If I pirated it (I don't, but this is hypothetical), it wouldn't be "slowing the progress of Linux" because, as great as Linux is, it's not good for gaming. Yes, I've run games in Wine, but until everything runs fine and it's easier to install games than it is for Kanye to piss people off, Linux will never be a gaming OS. That will probably never happen because most of the people writing Linux aren't gamers.

I've had my laptop Linux only for awhile, but my desktop never will be because the people writing code for Linux (generally speaking) couldn't give a rats ass about what I want in an OS. So, as much as I like OSS and think it will gain a much bigger market share over the next decade (due to smart phones and netbooks getting people used to it), I don't think OSS will ever "win" because it's not focused on the users desires, only the coders desires.

THIS IS NOT A FEDERAL RESOLUTION!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not equivalent to a federal law in Brazil, and is not a federal resolution. Only after this case reach the supreme court and after the supreme court agree with this resolution will be possible to say that P2P file sharing softwares are illegal in Brazil. This was just a 1st instance case, and the 1st instance in Brazil for complex cases like that, or anything related to Internet, says a lot of crap. The only thing that this decision says for the future, is that in future similar cases this resolution can be a guide for a judge, if it want, and if one of the lawyers make a reference to this case. And until the case is closed, in other words, after all the appeal rounds of all the parts in the case ends, no one can make a reference of this case for future cases since it doesn't have a final resolution yet.