Supreme Court Rejects RIAA Appeal

An anonymous reader submits "Recall that the RIAA originally used to directly send DMCA-laced supoenas to ISPs to obtain information about a P2P user. Then recall how Verizon and other providers balked saying the RIAA had to file John Doe suits first. It ultimately reached SCOTUS, with the RIAA appealing a decision that was in Verizon's favor. SCOTUS has declined to hear the case, effectively casting the Verizon opinion in stone. Wahoo! Part of DMCA shot down!"

Comments

great!

[reptilezero]

great :) now all people have to do is STOP STEALING MUSIC. it's not that hard, and there's plenty of alternatives now. no excuses left to download music illegally.

Re:great!

[mcrbids]

Every time the word "steal" in this context, it is demonstrated that the speaker is ignorantly trying to apply the definition of a crime in which a possession is taken from its rightful owner against his/her will to a completely different crime, based on artificial restrictions that at least some people believe to be unjust.

And, nearly every time I hear somebody justify file-sharing, it's based on the argument that you aren't stealing anything from the owner of the media. (the CD, DVD, etc)

A typical argument is "You copy the CD, the original owner still has the CD! So, what am I stealing?".

It's stealing because if unrestricted copying was made legal, you'd "steal" the earning potential of the works in question. (software, song, movie, etc)

People don't work for nothing. Even GNU software is generally written by people who cooperate towards their own self interest. Hell, the GNU licensing system itself depends on... (did you guess it?)... copyright law!

Of course, it's convenient to bury your head in the sand, and come with with all kinds of (rediculous) arguments as to why this is not so, but that's the naked truth.

The unfortunate part is that copyright, otherwise such a good idea and one part of IP rights our government got right is being subverted by creating (effectively) unlimited terms of ownership.

That is where the copyright system is failing, and if you were actually interested in a fair system for Intellectual Property rights, that's where your attention would be.

But, attacking copyright so that you can justify downloading the latest CD is fallacious at best. It's like saying "I didn't steal it, I found it in the neighbor's garage!".