In a twist of events in the US, the judge in the Atlantic vs. Pamela and Jeffrey Howell filesharing case has come out and said that filesharing is OK – we think.

The judge denied the RIAA’s push for a summary judgment and said that just because MediaSentry, the RIAA’s partner in crime, was able to download songs from a Kazaa account owned by the Howell’s, doesn’t mean that they were distributing the songs. The songs were simply made available.

The RIAA must now come up with more evidence if it is to get a favourable verdict over the Howells.

Until now, the RIAA has sued the pants of anyone who moves for simply putting a song into a folder and making it available for free music download to people over filesharing networks.

The RIAA has not, until now, needed to prove that other people actually downloaded the tracks. The judge’s ruling overturned his initial verdict, which ruled that the Howells must pay $40,000 in damages.

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