Korea Fines Brothers Who Created File Sharing Network

from the next-up:-jailtime dept

Over in Korea a civil court has fined two brothers who created a file sharing system. The brothers claim that (like many popular file sharing systems elsewhere) that they just built a tool that provides a private channel for communication, and they can't be held responsible for what people do with it. The case had already been thrown out for lack of evidence, but was brought back to court with "more" evidence a second time. Of course, it's not over yet, as they still face criminal charges that may end up with them being put in jail for five years. In this case, the court found that the brothers violated the copyright owners' rights by providing software "to aid illegal song-sharing among its users". So, now, do those same copyright holders go after the creators of FTP, email clients and web browsers, all of which are software that can "aid illegal song-sharing among its users"?
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