Portuguese prosecutors have declined to press charges against individuals accused of file sharing, arguing that the non-commercial sharing of copyrighted material is not a violation of Portuguese law. The move was a serious setback for ACAPOR, the Portuguese trade association that had sought the prosecutions.
According to Torrent Freak, ACAPOR had provided prosecutors with a list of 2000 Portuguese citizens who it accused of illicit file sharing. But instead of pressing charges against the accused copyright infringers, the prosecutor questioned whether personal file-sharing was against the law at all:
“From a legal point of view, while taking into account that users are both uploaders and downloaders in these file-sharing networks, we see this conduct as lawful, even when it’s considered that the users continue to share once the download is finished.”
The prosecutor adds that the right to education, culture, and freedom of expression on the Internet should not be restricted in cases where the copyright infringements are clearly non-commercial. In addition, the order notes that an IP-address is not a person.
The prosecutor also pointed out that the owner of a particular IP address may or may not be the person who engaged in any particular act of file-sharing, a point that some US judges have made as well.
ACAPOR denounced the decision in a blog post, calling it a "desperate argument to justify doing nothing."
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