Digital File Sharing and Copyright Law in Lithuania. The Comparative Perspective.

The Internet is a shared resource, a cooperative network built out of millions of hosts all over the world. Its popularity is unquestionable and the necessity is enormous. However, the Internet is becoming a headache for intellectual property right holders. The advent of file-sharing technology has allowed consumers to copy music, books, video games and other protected works on an unprecedented scale at minimal cost. Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology allows people to exchange information over the Internet via many equal or ‘peer’ machines linked across a network, rather than on a central server. The problem is (as some copyright holders claim) that this kind of easy copying may destroy the incentives to create and 'kill' copyrights. The sharing trend indeed is vastly used to copy protected works. During the years the copyright law has been negotiated among the representatives of copyright-owning and copyright-using industries while the public, which is expected and encouraged to use copyrighted works (and thus to generate revenue for copyright owners), have been left apart. The rights of the public were not clearly expressed and today it has become a problem. The holders of copyrights by making use of the strict copyright law and with the help of national courts are suing peer-to-peer technology providers as well as individual users. But while copying of copyrighted materials is illegal, sharing and exchanging information is not. And the same sharing trend on the other hand, may advance various legal goals. This paper is asking is it really true that digital sharing is only a tool for intellectual property law violations or can it possibly be used for legal purposes? If both are true, where does the border lie and when does the digital sharing is the copyright infringement? This thesis actually deals with the peer-to-peer technology while focusing on the Lithuanian peer-to-peer practice and its copyright laws. The case of the Lithuanian sharing site Linkomanija is presented and scrutinized, while comparing other national courts' rulings in the digital sharing field. The national legislation is also explored and some criticism is expressed. The question whether copyright laws as they stand today are sufficient in the digital age is raised.