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RIAA's $222k Verdict Is Likely To Be Set Aside
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Apparently the RIAA's 'big gun' didn't fare so well this morning in Duluth, when he tried to persuade the judge in Capitol v. Thomas that the part of the Copyright Act which says 'by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending', can be disregarded. According to an in-person account by Wired.com the Judge indicated that he is likely to grant a mistrial, setting aside the $222,000 jury verdict based upon his incorrect jury instruction, and that he will probably hand down his decision in September. Just yesterday some of the same lawyers got rebuffed by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in their attempt to argue that Cablevision's online storage for its customers constitutes a copyright infringement, in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings. There, too, the content owners had argued that the wording of the Copyright Act did not mean what it said. There, too, the Court politely but firmly disagreed."
I don't think that's going to stand up. Undercover cops buy drugs and the state doesn't have to prosecute them for buying them. Why couldn't investigators "illegally" download copyrighted material and still have it considered infringing on the part of the defendant, but not be prosecuted?
Not defending the RIAA, but just pointing out something that seems illogical to me.
Start a happiness pandemic
Even if the 'making available' argument doesn't stand under current law, you can expect attempted copyright infringement to be made illegal when congress gets back from vacation.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
but to set aside a jury's verdict is fairly unamerican
Not when the judge in question gave an incorrect interpretation regarding a point of law to the jury that almost certainly affected the verdict. I think it's a sign of a pretty good judge when he has the balls to say he made a mistake big enough to warrant a do-over.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
None of this means a damned thing if the RIAA succeeds in getting their private gestapo made into an arm of the Department of Justice. Remember, they are pushing a bill to create a Federal framework for billing the US Government for both civil and criminal actions using Federal officers to do their dirty work. Even if you don't download music, you're gonna pay through the nose in tax dollars and the loss of more civil rights as the government bureaucrats try to ram through new laws to "support their mission" - mandatory ISP snooping and filtering, legitimized abuse of due process, lower standards of evidence, and a grab bag of laws to "protect jobs" (that's the rationale being currently used to get this bill passed). We're setting ourselves up for an Orwellian nightmare of epic proportions if this nightmare passes.
So, genius, explain to me how you upload something without making a copy.
Typically it is legal to make a copy of material under fair use guidelines. Whether the copy is on a CD or on a server or some other medium is generally irrelevant. What is relevant is whether mens rea can be proven and whether the use clearly falls outside fair use guidelines. Upload stuff to a website saying "Warez here - come and get it" and you likely are committing a copyright violation. But simply putting files on a server is not an automatic copyright infringement. The issue is a lot more complicated than that.
Both sides copy, and as you say, the act of copying without permission is illegal.
This statement could not be more wrong. Copying material is not an automatic copyright infringement and both case law as well as legislation have strongly established this fact. All copyright infringements require the act of copying but not all copying is an automatic copyright infringement.