The bench said in its ruling that although the activities of site users constituted copyright violation, Yang Jeong-hwan and Yang Il-hwan did not themselves commit copyright infringement. The site allowed users to exchange music files and download them to their computer.

But in a separate ruling on the same day, the Seoul High Court said Soribada helped site users infringe on copyright and ordered it to shut down its file-sharing software and its three computer servers, upholding a lower court’s decision. Eleven record companies had filed charges against the P2P music exchange website.

(Choi Gyeong-woon, codel@chosun.com )