Swiss Court Ruling Sets Precedent in File Sharing Cases

The spread of file sharing lawsuits has reached the canton of Ticino where an 18-year-old woman was found guilty of making available online unauthorized content, setting thus a precedent.

Currently, the Swiss law allows the downloading of material but forbids the illegal sharing of such material over the Internet. The Locarno based young woman received a suspended fine for illegally making available 270 movies and 4,200 tracks.

In case you were wondering – yes, there is a Swiss branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic industry and it does keep itself busy – it accused the woman of copyright infringement.

While so far no such ruling was given in Switzerland, now with this case the precedent has been set and probably more cases will follow. After all, suing pays, right? Or at least, that’s what the industry believes.

However, if one takes a closer look a pattern will immediately emerge since most of those charged with copyright infringement are easily persuaded into out-of-court settlements. They pay a fee convinced they were lucky enough to be able to do that and not go to court while the record labels smile tolerantly and generously reminding everyone the losses they endure but especially how their main worry is, in fact, for the artists.