RIAA's 'Misspeaking' May Have Affected Verdict

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "David Kravetz of Wired.com covered last year's Capitol v. Thomas trial gavel-to-gavel. It's worth noting, then, his article saying that the RIAA's recent statement — that Sony's top litigation lawyer 'misspoke' during the trial. She said that making a copy from one's own cd is 'stealing', which (in his words) may have caused a major miscarriage of justice. Wired further points out that later on in the trial, during the RIAA's examination of Ms. Thomas, 'On the hard drive she [turned] over were thousands of songs Thomas said she ripped from her CDs. The RIAA's Gabriel suggested to jurors that copying one's purchased music was a violation of the Copyright Act. Gabriel, for example, asked Thomas whether she had ever burned CDs, either for herself, or to give away to friends.' Gabriel, the RIAA's lead attorney, apparently misspoke too — prejudicing jurors along the way."

Comments

Re:Tag this article Negroes

[One Childish N00b]

A practicing Jew? What parts do you need to practice? Do you keep putting your kippah on the wrong way around?

Yours,
A Jew Who's Quite Good at It.

Re:Can we define copyright as between two people?

[Anonymous Coward]

license at all to install and run software. Just as you do not need any sort of license at all to read a book. An EULA is a contract offer. You are perfectly free to decline that contract offer, and it is absolutely positively not copyright infringement to go ahead and install and run software anyway. WRONG There is an implied license in the sale of a copyrighted work, which unless stated otherwise only gives you the right to read the book or run the software. In no way does the implied license give you the right to copy the work, and if there is a EULA the author is specifically granting a written CONDITIONAL license. If you decline this conditional license, then you have no right to use the software. However, you are entitled to a full refund of it if you have not installed it or retained any copies. This could be argued on the grounds that you had not read the terms beforehand and could not possibly have read them. Once you read the terms and click "I Accept" you are bound by them. I rarely feel the need to post on slashdot (hence my lack of an account) but this ignorant statement amazed me so much I felt obliged to.