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Judge Rules Kazaa Distributors Can't Sue Labels
evenprime writes "Sharman Networks tried to file an antitrust lawsuit against record labels and movie studios. They alleged that the companies forced piracy to occur by conspiring to keep authorized and copy-protected versions of their songs and movies off Kazaa. U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson
just dismissed Sharman's claims."
can sue labels. It's just that they can't sue with their premise.
This article talks about a group of small webcasters is threating to sue the RIAA for antitrust violations. They feel the royalty agreement favors only big webcasters and is being used as a stick to drive out the smaller ones.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Seriously, they ought to consider suing their council for legal malpractice. I can't believe they would waste time with such an absurd argument. It's a silly argument, and the only thing it does is serve to postpone the final showdown. If it is indeed a delaying action, well, it's not the best way to do it, as it only weakens Sharman's credibility.  Making silly arguments doesn't strengthen your position; it only makes you a laughingstock *cough*SCO*cough*
Sharman had best get its ass in gear if they don't want to end up being the next napster.
come on guy.
you *seriosly* think that Sharman Networkds is that stupid? No one is that dumb. They must have sued knowing that they have no chance in hell. They just want free publicity.
Like the stunt they pulled with the "most downloaded program" in the history of the Internet. Blech. I think they just want to be the de facto P2P network before they start charging users for their services, or go "legit."
Note to Sharman Networks: if you charge a penny for your services, you will fail. Leechers don't pay. They don't the artists and the middlemen, why would they pay you -- a filthy spyware-based app maker?
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
Thieves sued banks for forcing robbery to occur by not giving away free money.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
"They alleged that the [record labels and movie studios] forced piracy to occur by conspiring to keep authorized and copy-protected versions of their songs and movies off Kazaa." (emphasis added)
Of course. I am sure that without this so called "conspiracy" (quote and quote) Kazaa users would post "copy-protected" songs and movies, which no one would be able to copy whatsoever. Of course, that is exactly what would happen --- people would share unplayable media and everyone would be happy.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Does your impressive brain mean that you give impressive head, too?
Now that the lawyers can't file frivolous lawsuits against record labels, they can go back to important business like the time they sued McDonald's because some clutz poured hot coffee on her own crotch.
Any time lawyers are prevented from making frivolous lawsuits, it is a good thing.
that is all
was the judge a republican by any chance...? ;)
MilkMiruku
That was not a frivolous law suit... http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
No matter how much ambulance-chasers try to obscure it with weaseling and irrelvancies (such as in your web link), the fact remains that the woman spilled coffee on her own lap. The fault for the incident is hers and hers alone.
" I agree that frivolous lawsuits are a scourge, but that woman actually had some really severe damage."
She should not have tried to balance a liquid labelled "hot" in such a precarious place. The incident resulted from her choice(s).
McDonald's did not spill hot coffee: she did. This case is a perfect example of why we need tort reform to get rid of similar lawsuits.
I don't buy thta because coffee drinkers like their coffee hot. The complain when it isn't.
I worked at McDonalds at the time, in reaction to the result I (At the time it was my personal job to make sure all tempatures were in spec, checking weekly, my boss said go with the lower limit on coffee so I did) turned our coffee tempature down to the lowest setting, (140 degrees f) and got complaints about the quality of the coffee after that. Eventially we turned to the upper end of the range acceptable (160-165 IIRC - what is was before), and the complaints stoped.
Personally I can't stand coffee, but most who like it like it hot, and they will complain if it isn't. Those who don't like it hot know enough to order ice with it, which several people did.
This doesn't count as quite so laughable a claim as many have suggested.
Consider the following three situations:
1) You buy a new CD. You go to listen to it in your car, only to discover that it won't play, since most audio CD players actually use CD-ROM drives that have difficulty (by design of the CD, not the player) reading copy-protected (ie, "broken") audio CDs. Solution? Download the album, of which you legally own a copy, and burn it to a non-broken CD.
2) You buy a new CD. Since you listen to 99% of your music while sitting at your computer, you just keep it all as Ogg files on your HDD. This shiny new 12cm hunk of plastic won't play on your PC, nor can you rip it to ogg. So, you download off the net, for personal use only, an already-ripped-and-encoded version of the album you have a legal right to listen to.
3) You purchased a copy-protected CD a year ago, and while you usually make backups of all your CDs, for obvious reasons you could not do so in this case. Your dog eats that CD. Not wanting (or legally needing) to purchase the same CD again, you download a copy of the CD off the net.
All COMPLETELY LEGAL reasons to "pirate" music off a service such as Kazaa. And, they all reflect the exact argument made in this case - That, if not for the annoying copy protection that renders a nice new CD nothing more than a round hunk of plastic and foil so far as your PC cares, such people would not have needed to download that music in the first place.
Does this describe the most common reasons to "pirate" music? That depends. A hit-of-the-week by the latest boy-or-girl pop group, probably not. For anything else, I don't consider one of the above (or some other similar and legal scenario) as all that unlikely.
They have a distribution channel of 100M sites. They should beam down all sorts of stuff explaining why what the users are doing is right.
Possible arguments:
a) Making a copy of a song does not deprive the artist of anything. They have all of their assets and all of their goods and all of their money. You don't take anything from the music company. The music companies are just saying that they have a right to take your money whenever you talk about an artist.
b) Since music companies want you to pay whenever you talk about an artist, then perhaps artists should pay everyone that they talk about. If an artist can refer to Republicans, for example, should they not be required to pay every Republican a portion of the proceeds for the referral? Should not every gun owner be compensated when a song protests people with guns?
c) Kazaa is just a form of electronic discussion. It's no different than a song in and of itself. If artists do not damage people by discussing them, then how can Kazaa damage artists?
d) This is just about big companies being greedy. It's like the oil company saying they have the right to buy up fuel efficient engine designs so they can make more money.
This is my sig.