A victory for fairness, and a corresponding loss for property rights fascism;

in Los Angeles on Friday. There, a judge decided that the online file-swapping services Streamcast and Grokster - two networks that let computer users see the public folders of fellow users, and copy files between themselves - should not be outlawed simply because users can use them to share copyright material.

"Judge Stephen Wilson found that "[the] defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends... Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."