It appears that this Napster decision was very strong in line with the usual central server decisions on secondary copyright infringement. However, it appears that a different angle was taken on determining liability.

Links were provided to popular music with well-known artists, and Bruvik
must have known that the music was uploaded without the right-holders` consent. Thus,
Bruvik is liable and must pay compensation for damages primarily due to the fact that
some of the users of the website otherwise would have bought CDs. There is causality
between his acts and (TONO`s) loss. In addition, the Supreme Court states that liability is
not incompatible with the freedom of speech. (paragraph 67 to 70)

In reality this gets us no closer to understanding Grokster or Kazaa because Bruvik (the guilty party) was the uploader. I guess the information was held on his (or an associated) server.

But I do like S 55 Copyright Act where it state the secondary infringement standard

If the right of an
author or a performing artist has been infringed willfully or by gross negligence,
the court may also award him a sum of money as redress for damage of a noneconomic
nature

Would peer to peer represent a wilful infringement or gross negligence by not creating some architecture in the software that required the uploader to provide a licence?

I guess it would when you consider author rights as held by the court the exclusive right to make the copyright available to the public
covers the making available in any way by any mean (paragraph 42).

But still doesnt address file sharing software – the court obviously came close to considering lack of communication of licences as infringement
Thirteenth, the Supreme Court refers to what the parties contend as the consequences if
linking is considered as the �making available to the public� being that linking to legally
and illegally published copyright protected material require authorization from the rightholder.
The party appealing the case contend that making available implies authorization.
The Supreme Court states that such an understanding of the law could probably solve a
lot, but could lead to difficult question as to delimitation of such an authorization, which
in turn cold lead to doubt and initiate and increase the number of court proceedings.

Thats probably a really good remark on the next round of techno IP debates.

Still it was a solid judgement despite the fact we all read this sort of thing in the last few years.

I did note this one thing that raised an eyebrow though:-

Links were provided to popular music with well-known artists, and Bruvik
must have known that the music was uploaded without the right-holders` consent. Thus,
Bruvik is liable and must pay compensation for damages primarily due to the fact that
some of the users of the website otherwise would have bought CDs. There is causality
between his acts and (TONO`s) loss. In addition, the Supreme Court states that liability is
not incompatible with the freedom of speech. (paragraph 67 to 70)

Junichiro Ito must be annoyed.