“Operators of peer-to-peer networks cannot escape copyright infringement claims by giving their members the ability to mask the content that changes hands on their networks, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
Calling the tactic a form of “willful blindness,” the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld a lower court’s injunction against the Madster file-swapping network that had ordered the service shut down pending a trial. But, in a mixed decision, the court also bolstered a key defense argument invoking a comparison between file-swapping software and personal home video recording.” [News.com]