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Sep 08EFF the RIAA.
The RIAA’s witch hunt suffered another loss today, as a Minnesota court concluded that making music files available in a shared folder doesn’t violate copyright law, and rejected the RIAA’s asinine attempt to redefine copyright infringement.
From the judgment:
The plain meaning of the term “distribution” does not including making available and, instead, requires actual dissemination.
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If simply making a copyrighted work available to the public constituted a distribution, even if no member of the public ever accessed that work, copyright owners would be able to make an end run around the standards for assessing contributor copyright infringement.
What I’d forgotten, but still remains mind-boggling, is the punishment assessed in the original trial:
The damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs. Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs—the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000—more than five hundred times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than four thousand times the cost of three CDs.
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Thomas acted like countless other Internet users. Her alleged acts were illegal, but common. Her status as a consumer who was not seeking to harm her competitors or make a profit does not excuse her behavior. But it does make the award of hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages unprecedented and oppressive.
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The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer-to-peer network cases such as the one currently before this Court.
The EFF has the rest of the story here.
Tagged: civil liberty, music, nerdiness, news, pop