Two prominent P2P developers in South Korea were let off the hook this week after a long running copyright violation case.
Brothers Yang Jung-hwan and brother Il-hwan were accused of copyright infringement back in 2002 for their part in creating
P2P platform Soribada, a service dubbed the 'Korean Napster'.
However, after a long legal battle, the Korean courts this week freed both brothers without charge.
But the music industry can take heart in the knowledge that that decision closely follows a different ruling in the Seoul High
Court that ordered Soribada itself be closed down. While the court did not agree that the P2P platform's creators were guilty of copyright infringement personally, it ruled the service itself did encourage users to commit copyright violation and therefore should not be allowed to operate.
That is the kind of decision the **Recording Industry Association of
America** has been looking to the US courts to make. They will continue that fight against the P2P Network's 'Betamax plea'
(like the video maker, they argue a technology maker cannot be held liable for any copyright violation their technology enables) in the US Supreme Court later this year.