P2p File Sharing Software Copyright Law Problems

The emerge of P2P technology has brought huge challenge to every nations’ law. Lawalways cannot keep pace with the development in this battle, yet the final result is uncertain.Since the United States applies judicial force to tackle the online pirate, the article’sanalysis has mainly relied on these typical cases.The first part tries to find out the reasonwhy the technology could trigger copyright infringement by comprehensively analyzing thetechnology of the P2P, its operate theory and its types. Then did we found that the theretypes, which includes hybrid decentralized architectures, partially centralized architecturesand purely decentralized architectures, are crucial to its operator’s legal liability. Thesecond part focuses on the most important cases in dealing with the technology of P2P.They are A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster and MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster. The third partis the core of this article, which focuses on the most recent development in United Statesand Australian. In United States, counts has blamed the operator’s failing to applyreasonable fliting measures to reduce the copyright infringement. What’s more, counts alsohas targeted the users for responsibility. At the mean while, the Congress has introducedseveral bills concerning the technology of P2P. Besides, we found that the Australian hasincredibly suing the iiNet company, an Internet liking service provider. The final partsummed the analysis, and then tried to predict the trend of the development relative to boththe technology of P2P and the copyright law.