Seoul District Court dismisses case against Soribada, a P2P service:

"The prosecution's case did not state why the defendants' acts qualify as an offence, thus the case is in violation of procedural regulations," the court said in its ruling.

"The prosecution stated that the defendants (brothers only known by their surnames Yang) helped their members infringe on other people's copyrights, but it did not state how they made the violation, only that they had assisted," the court said.

A Korean version of "Napster," the Internet service allows users to search and download free videos and sound files using a peer-to-peer program.

As the trial was thrown out of the court, the question of whether providing free audio files over the Internet is in violation of copyright was left unanswered.

The Yang brothers were indicted in August 2001 for developing a program to provide music files to their members without paying royalties for copyrights since May 2000. [KoreaTimes]