Creative Commons folk have had a party and a new animation to celebrate their first year in existence. (Warning the animation is pretty big, so unless you're on Broadband, it might be better to give it a skip, until they produce a smaller version).

The Dutch Supreme Court have just dismissed a case brought against the developers of Kazaa by the Dutch music copyright levy collection agency, BUMA. Kazaa creators cannot be held liable for the actions of their users.

It appears as though the Court's decision was procedural i.e. Kazaa won on a technicality. BUMA had wanted Kazaa changed in such a way that it would make copyright infringement using the program impossible but didn't file the correct legal documents in the correct way within the required deadlines. So the ruling is about procedures rather than directly about the liability of Kazaa for P2P file sharers actions. BUMA may try again.

Comment from the usual suspects imminent.

I'm buried in exam marking and a pre-Christmas admin. mountain, so won't be posting much. Some things of note going on, not least of which is the Canadian Copyright Board's decision to stick a levy on MP3 players and suggest P2P downloading is legal (although uploading copyrighted files is not).