Taiwan Declares File Sharing App Illegal

from the not-just-in-sweden dept

Tue, Apr 21st 2009 6:44am — Mike Masnick

While everyone's been focused on The Pirate Bay trial in Sweden, who knew something similar was happening in Taiwan? Michael Scott points us to the news that a Taiwanese court has found the file sharing app Foxy to be illegal. There's not much in the way of details, other than to suggest that the company behind Foxy has shut down. The report also notes that some other file sharing services in Taiwan have been sued -- but one was "cleared of charges because it merely provided a way to transfer information, images, videos and text." Isn't that what most file sharing apps do?

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: file sharing, foxy, taiwan

8 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2009 @ 7:16am

What happen to you Taiwan? You used to be cool.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2009 @ 7:37am
  
  Re:
  TAIWAN STILL COO
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
spaceman spiff, 21 Apr 2009 @ 7:16am

Windows contributes to copyright infringement
IMO, Windows' file/folder sharing capability is the proximate cause of most of the illegal content piracy/sharing that occurs today. Let's hold MS to the same standards (sic) that we do companies like Foxy and The Pirate Bay... :^)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
NSMike, 21 Apr 2009 @ 7:57am

Umm....
"The report also notes that some other file sharing services in Taiwan have been sued -- but one was 'cleared of charges because it merely provided a way to transfer information, images, videos and text.' Isn't that what most file sharing apps do?"

Isn't that what the *internet* does?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
inc, 21 Apr 2009 @ 7:58am

I think files are the cause of file sharing. We must get rid of these files and stop them from multiplying before they ruin the world! That or people need to get their heads out of their ass.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
TheStuipdOne, 21 Apr 2009 @ 8:18am

no no
"The report also notes that some other file sharing services in Taiwan have been sued -- but one was 'cleared of charges because it merely provided a way to transfer information, images, videos and text.' Isn't that what most file sharing apps do?"

See it says transfer ... so it goes from one computer to another and the original is erased. Most file sharing apps illegally reorient the little magnetic bits on your hard drive to COPY what the other person has. That is unacceptable.

/sarcasm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- The infamous Joe, 21 Apr 2009 @ 9:30am
  
  Re: no no
  /sarcasm
  
  Whew. I almost had brain aneurysm reading your post. The /sarcasm was a wise choice. :)
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Killer_Tofu (profile), 21 Apr 2009 @ 8:43am

Stupid Courts
Lets face it, as time moves on, there is an extremely small (and I mean close to zero, not zero, but really close) number of courts that actually understand anything about technology. Things progress, but the court's intelligence does not. They are being asked to rule on things that they rarely understand. Even when they get experts to present things to them I am still sure they don't understand what most of it means.

Thank god the internet developed when it did with the very little oversight that it did. Otherwise we would have none of the internet freedoms we do today.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]