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?

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Filed Under: file sharing, foxy, taiwan

8 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2009 @ 7:16am

What happen to you Taiwan? You used to be cool.
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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... :^)
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2009 @ 7:37am

Re:
TAIWAN STILL COO
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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?
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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.
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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
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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.
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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. :)
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