Online music swapping found legal.... in Canada

In some surprising news today, a Federal court rejected a motion from the CRIA (The Canadian equivalent of the RIAA) to sue Canadian file swappers. The judge ruled: "No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service." He added "I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service"

This is a pretty unheard of event, as the American RIAA has successfully attacked numerous file swappers and convinced the majority of them to settle out of court. However, keep in mind that Canadians currently pay some pretty harsh levies on recorded CD media, portable MP3 players and other devices that could be used to hold music.