Surprisingly, a Spanish judge has ruled today in favor of a file-sharing website since P2P networks as a mere transmission of data between Internet users, would not violate, in principle, any right protected by Intellectual Property Law.
Furthermore, he decided that "offering an index of links and/or linking to copyright material is not the same as distribution."
The decision was based on the notion that the file-sharer doesn't make any direct or indirect profits off the site
A group of independent film producers have initiated court actions against over 20,000 Bit Torrent users, through an organisation of their own design, a group of lawyers known as the U.S Copyright Group.
This group are demanding users to either defend themselves in court or alternatively, to settle outside of court for downloading particular movie titles. Most accused will settle to avoid the costs of litigation.
Actions such as this are worrying as may give rise to a standard in which large numbers of corporates, not only in film but in all types of media, may start bringing forth unrelenting actions against individual users- holding them personally accountable. This is problematic (amongst a variety of reasons) that in the identification process through IP addresses is not 100% accurate, leaving room to wrongly accuse some users.