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RIAA College Litigations Getting A Bumpy Ride
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's juggernaut against colleges, started in February of this year, seems to be having a bumpier and bumpier ride. The normal game is to call for a subpoena, to get the name and address of the students or staff who might have used a certain IP address. The normal game seems to be getting disrupted here and there. A Virginia judge threw the RIAA's motion out the window, saying that it was not entitled to such discovery, in a case against students at the College of William & Mary. A New Mexico judge denied the application on the ground that there was no reason for it to be so secretive, in a case involving University of New Mexico students. He ultimately required the RIAA to serve a full set of all of the underlying papers, for each 'John Doe' named, and to give the students 40 days in which to review the papers with counsel, and make a motion to quash if they chose to do so. In a stunning development, the Attorney General of the State of Oregon made a motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena on behalf of the University of Oregon, on grounds which are fully applicable to every case the RIAA has brought to date: the lack of scientific validity to the RIAA's "identification" evidence. The motion is pending as of this writing. Students have themselves made motions to vacate the RIAA's ex parte orders and/or quash subpoenas in over half a dozen cases. Much combat remains, but the RIAA's campaign is no longer a hot knife cutting through butter on the nation's campuses."
You people continually try to parse a semantic argument and fail. What you're describing and reacting against is not what you believe it to be. Copyright infringement is not theft. It is not larceny. Generally, it is also not conversion (but sometimes it is). It is stealing, though, which is not a crime, a misdemeanor, or even itself a tort. It is a means to one of those infractions.
Piracy is stealing. Stealing is simply the taking of something to which you are not entitled. That's it. Under the law, the copyright holders are entitled to compensation for each of those unlawfully conveyed copies. They are entitled to statutory damages for doing so (damages which were established in a time where casual, individual infringement was not contemplated and which need to be restructured). Every illegal copy for which compensation is due is unequivocally a deprivation of money they are due. It is not relevant whether or not the person doing the taking and/or distribution would have paid for it or not. It is only relevant that each of those copies is one that is protected by law. If you take it without a right to do so, you've stolen it. End of story.
The copyright holder is entitled to whatever the copy sells for, whether supply is infinite or whether the file is "worth" what they charge for it. Those are not legally relevant issues. The copyright holder's damages are also not limited to the cost of lost income, but also to statutory damages, which treble the costs to the wrongdoer. This encourages responsible participation--if the only consequence to your taking something without permission would be that you might have to pay for it if you get caught, there'd be no deterrent and no value, hence the treble effect of being punished for doing something you know you're not supposed to.
Bottom line, it's not yours. You have no authority to interfere or make unilateral determinations about which rights you'll take without entitlement. If the terms aren't fair and if the product isn't worth the asking price, walk the other way. Do without.
It's not creating if the thing already exists. The right to duplicate is vested. Making a copy is taking a right which is not yours in order to produce a copy which is not legally yours. Read more carefully:
Nothing + act to obtain = taking.
Alternatively, you could go to the dictionary. There are about 114 entries in the OED, ranging from acquiring to occupancy to assuming possession. They all conform to the proper agency of the verb. None of them supports your claim.
You had no legal right to make and distribute those copies. The copyright owner had a right to be paid their asking price for each of them. It does not matter that they can make more for little cost. It only matters that you acquired something (whether it be someone else's property right or an unlawful copy) to which you were not entitled. Period. You have no leg to stand on. It simply is not within your rights to do so. Each of those unlawful copies is a stolen copy.