The Lion's Den

A victory for file sharing

In a reversal from the trend so far, a judge in Los Angeles has knocked down the record industry lawsuit against file-swapping software companies.

Judge: File-swapping tools are legal

"Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and Streamcast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."