A Spanish judge has thrown out a criminal file-sharing case against a 40 year old man writing in his ruling, "no offense meriting penal sanction has been committed." The judge in the case went so far as to say that granting a guilty verdict "would imply the criminalization of socially accepted and widely practiced behavior in which the aim is in no way to make money illicitly, but rather to obtain copies for private use."
According to the AP, Spain's Minister of Justice, Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, expects the ruling to be appealed. The Minister added that, "while the area of copied artistic material for private use had yet to be properly defined in legal terms, artists' rights must be protected as much as possible."
[via Associated Press]
