How do u think about this in term of law?

Question

File sharing has been a huge issue. Publisher lose money, government lose income (tax). So government turn to sue eDonkey for the lost. But i wonder who should be sue? eDonkey or user (assume that is possible to track down user) ? and Why?

eDonkey release the following statement: "MetaMachine does not have any control over the exchange of material over peer-to-peer networks, even when users utilize MetaMachine software. Nonetheless, MetaMachine strongly encourages users to respect and abide by copyright laws, which benefit us all."

Answer 1

It isn't clear what your question is. The Government (no government) can sue http://edonkey.com/ for loss of tax revenue through piracy. In any event, the claimed loss of revenue by intellectual property owners is ludicrously exaggerated since many or most file sharers would not buy the product anyway. (Indeed, many would get the same product elsewhere: borrowing the CD or DVD from a friend or the public library, etc. Or do without. It's a fact of economics that when something is free lots of people take it; when it costs money the number who buy is inversely geometrically related to price.)

The laws of different countries differ as to the liability of Kazaa or Napster or Limewire or eDonkey for use of its system or its software for unlawful downloads and transfers. If a crime has been committed, the trade association will often put together a case to make it easy for some prosecutor to arrest and charge infringers -- giving the prosecutor an easy conviction and improving his job rating.

Answer 2

Only registered articles are protected under the Copyright law. Thus, sue the publisher that do not own the copyrighted articles.