Judge — "Making Available" Is Stealing Music

JonathanF writes "If you were hoping judges would see reason and realize that just using a program that could violate copyright law is about as illegal as leaving your back door unlocked, think again. An Arizona district judge has ruled that a couple who hosted files in KaZaA is liable for over $40K in damages just because they 'made available' songs that could have been pirated by someone, somewhere. There's legal precedent, but how long do we have before the BitTorrent crew is sued?" The New York case testing the same theory is still pending.

Comments

Re:Geek Speak Criminal Definition

[Almahtar]

punishing people like you is important. Now I'm going to withhold judgment and ask you to clarify what you meant by "punishing people like you". I mean, to me it really sounds like you're insinuating that just because he drew the distinction between "the illegal use of a protocol" and "the use of a protocol" you're calling him a criminal. I really hope that's not what you meant, because that would be short-sighted, ignorant, and just plain wrong. It's a very damaging assumption that holds back progress. I'd love for you to clarify if that's really what you meant.

Baby out with the bathwater

[Scrameustache]

More importantly, buy the cd/tape/record USED, not new.

When you buy a new CD, you are putting money into the pockets of
the RIAA. When you buy a used CD, you put your money into the
pocket of whoever last bought the CD, and the RIAA doesn't get
a penny. But neither do the artists :(