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Denis Kvasov, head of Mediaservices, owner of music website Allofmp3.com was acquitted by a Moscow court after having been brought to trial by entertainment companies EMI Group Plc, NBC Universal and Time Warner Inc. for copyright offences.

On 15 August 2007, district judge Yekaterina Sharapova ruled that Denis Kvasov had not infringed the Russian law. "The prosecution did not succeed in presenting persuasive evidence of his involvement in infringing copyright law," said the judge. She considered the arguments of the plaintiffs as unconvincing and contradictory. Also, no evidence was produced to prove the purchase and storage of counterfeit phonograms or the conversion of the

Recent cases in the German Local Court of Offenburg have confirmed the reluctance of the German public prosecutors in determining the identities of P2P users that have allegedly breached the copyright law.

The German online publication Heise has revealed that in a recent case in the Offenburg court, the judge decided to reject the music industry claims to order the ISPs to reveal the subscribers that were suspected of having infringed the copyright through peer-to-peer applications. The court considered the measure as "disproportionate"and the plantiffs did not show how the alleged offenders had been involved in actions that had created a "criminally relevant damage".

The Offenburg Local Court confirms its jurisprudence set on 20 July 2007 when the public prosecutor's office was not allowed to ask the ISPs for the

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In her opinion on case C-275/06 (Productores de Música de España Promusicae vs. Telefónica de España SAU) the advisor to the European Court of Justice (EJC), Advocate General Juliane Kokott, considered that, according with the EU law, the ISPs are not obliged to reveal personal data in civil litigation cases.

In this case, the Spanish music Association Promusicae asked the ISP Telefonica to hand over the names and addresses of the subscribers that allegedly distributed copyrighted songs via the p2p software Kazaa. Telefonica refused, considering that it could do that only in a criminal investigation or in matters of public security and national defence. A Spanish Court of Madrid asked the ECJ for the interpretation of the EU law

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The famous website allofmp3.com was quietly shut down at the beginning of July 2007, but the Russian websites that are selling music online at much cheaper prices are on the rise, one of them winning also a lawsuit against Visa.

Russian authorities pressured the Moscow-based company MediaServices, owner of allofmp3.com, to close its website in order to meet the requirements for the entry into the World Trade Organisation. MediaServices claimed that is was a legal business, paying royalties to a Russian collective society that distributed the collected fees to the copyright holders.

However, a new website, mp3Sparks.com, was opened by MediaServices selling online music. The company considers that the new website is legal under the

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The Swedish Justice Department initiated the public debate process on a new legislation that will allow the copyright holders to obtain the identity of people that share illegal content over in the Internet.

The draft says that the copyright holders can go to court asking the ISPs to reveal the names of the people allegedly violating intellectual property laws.

The Justice Department statement explained the purpose of the draft: "Thereby, it will become easier to intervene against illegal file-sharing, which in turn will stimulate the development of legal alternatives for distribution of, for example, film and music over the Internet."

Tobias Andersson, press spokesman for Piratbyrån, was critical of the new

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On 13 July 2007, a French court has ruled against the French company DailyMotion, second world leader of video-sharing platforms after YouTube, in a counterfeit case. The legal action was initiated by the director, the producer, and the distributor of a movie put on-line by a user of the DailyMotion platform. The court decision is entirely based on the French law on the digital economy (LCEN), and not the copyright law (DADVSI). The LCEN provisions onISP liability are a direct transposition of the EU E-commerce Directive. This decision is likely to constitute a major turn in the legal qualification of web2.0 services.

The court acknowledges that DailyMotion is not a content provider as claimed

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Under the cover of the DADVSI law with the so-called Vivendi amendment (initiated by Vivendi Universal) the French association SPPF (Société civile des producteurs de phonogramme en France - The French collective society for phonogram producers representing the independent labels) started a legal action against P2P software producers.

The Vivendi amendment, strongly debated in the Parliament, but supported by Nicolas Sarkozy and barely passed by the Joint Committee of the National Assembly and the Senate, considers as criminal the creation and distribution of all software obviously intended to provide to public some unauthorised copyrighted works. The non-compliance is punished by three years of prison

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The State Council of France validated on 23 May 2007 the automatic tracing of illegal downloading in P2P networks. This decision cancelled the 18th October 2005 CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) decision that rejected the introduction of surveillance devices proposed by Sacem and other 3 author and producer associations asking for the automatic tracing of infringements of the intellectual property code.

The State Council believes that such devices are acceptable considering the extent of the piracy phenomenon in France. The number of downloaded files decreased by half in 2006 as compared to 2005 but according to GfK institute this is probably due to the evolution from a quantitative type of