Rochester Judge Holds RIAA Evidence Insufficient

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Judge David G. Larimer, presiding in Rochester, New York, has denied an RIAA application for default judgment on the ground that the RIAA's evidence was insufficient, in that it contained no details of actual downloads or distributions, and no sufficient evidence that defendant was in fact Kazaa user 'heavyjeffmc@KaZaA.' The decision (PDF) concluded that 'there are significant issues of fact regarding the identification of the defendant from his alleged "online media distribution system" username.' (In case you're unfamiliar with the term 'online media distribution system,' that's because it is a term the RIAA coined 4 years ago to describe p2p file sharing accounts in its lawsuits; the term is not known to have been used by anyone else anywhere else.) In August a similar RIAA default judgment motion was denied on the ground that the pleadings failed to allege sufficient factual details supporting a claim of copyright infringement, in a San Diego, California, case, Interscope v. Rodriguez."

Comments

Creative Commons Music Can Be Legally Shared

[MichaelCrawford]

We could all stay out of trouble if we downloaded and shared music with the permission of its copyright holder. The best way to know that one has permission is to look for a Creative Commons license notice.

Here are some resources for you:

• Creative Commons Search
• Jamendo - CC music distributed via BitTorrent and eMule
• My own piano music - you could really help me out if you shared it on the Internet
• The Mutopia Project - CC and public domain sheet music

I placed my music under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license because I hoped that would enable more people to get to know my music. While I work as a programmer now, I've been studying piano so that, when I can pass the entrance audition, I can enroll in music school to study musical composition. I want to compose symphonies someday! By sharing my music freely, there will be plenty of fans ready to buy tickets to my performances when I'm ready to play professionally.

Where is the RIAA going to get the evidence from?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The key here is that the RIAA doesn't have any additional evidence to bring to the hearing; it has admitted under oath that it can't identify the individual.

So what they'll do is come armed with a bunch of backdated printouts and a lot of doubletalk, and hope to confuse the judge. Whether they can confuse this judge, as they have confused so many others, is, however, as you can see from the decision, quite problematic.