] A federal appeals court on Friday rejected efforts by the
] recording industry to compel the nation's Internet
] providers to identify subscribers accused of illegally
] distributing music online.
]
] In a substantial setback for the industry's controversial
] anti-piracy campaign, the three-judge panel from the U.S.
] Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned
] a ruling by the trial judge to enforce a copyright
] subpoena from a law that predates the music downloading
] trend.
]
] The ruling does not make it legal to distribute music
] over the Internet, but it removes one of the most
] effective tools used by the recording industry to track
] such activity and sue downloaders.
]
] The appeals court said the 1998 law doesn't cover the
] popular file-sharing networks currently used by tens of
] millions of Americans to download songs. The Digital
] Millennium Copyright Act "betrays no awareness whatsoever
] that Internet users might be able directly to exchange
] files containing copyrighted works," the court wrote.
]
] The appeals judges said they sympathized with the
] recording industry, noting that "stakes are large." But
] the judges said it was not the role of courts to rewrite
] the 1998 copyright law, "no matter how damaging that
] development has been to the music industry or threatens
] being to the motion picture and software industries."

HA HA HA! Stick *THAT* in your pipe and smoke it, RIAA! :p

Laughing Boy

USATODAY.com - Appeals court: RIAA can't use copyright subpoenas