Fair Use Defense Dismissed In SONY V. Tenenbaum

Several readers sent us updates from the Boston courtroom where, mere hours before the start of trial, a federal judge ruled out fair use as a defense. Wired writes that "the outcome is already shaping up to resemble the only other file sharing trial," in which the RIAA got a $1.92M judgement against Jammie Thomas-Rassert. The defendant, Joel Tenenbaum, has already essentially admitted to sharing music files, and the entire defense put together by Harvard Prof. Charles Nesson and his students turned on the question of fair use. The judge wrote that the proposed defense would be "so broad it would swallow the copyright protections that Congress has created." Jury selection is complete and opening arguments will begin tomorrow morning. Here is the Twitter feed organized by Prof. Nesson's law students.

Comments

Re:gosh

[jkgamer]

Eh, I have a real problem with prosecuting the people for "making available." Prosecuting people that share their music for having enabled copyright infrigement is essentially like prosecuting people for leaving their doors unlocked and having enabled burglary.

Except Tenenbaum was not making his OWN property available, it belonged to someone else. A closer analogy would be more like...

"Prosecuting people for picking their neighbor's locks and having enabled THEM to be burgled."

Re:Seriously, what the hell?

[sanosuke001]

There is no fair use that falls under the current laws. However, I would say that it should be fair use. If he owns the albums or has purchased the songs from a digital retail store, then him sharing them is just another way of helping others device-shift their collection. He wouldn't be forcing anyone to break the law; it should be their responsibility to do the right thing, not his.