RIAA Loses Case Against Launch Media

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's claim that personalized internet radio stations were 'interactive services' was flatly rejected 'as a matter of law' by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Arista Records v. Launch Media. In affirming the jury's verdict in favor of the defendant, Launch Media — acquired during the lawsuit by Yahoo! — the Court said it did not even need to concern itself with possible errors in the jury instructions, since the trial judge should have directed a verdict for defendant 'as a matter of law' on the question of whether the radio stations were 'interactive services.' At pages 23-42 of its 42-page opinion (PDF), the appeals court carefully analyzed how Launch Media's personalized internet radio stations worked, and noted that the users could neither obtain and play on demand a particular song, nor obtain the transmission of a particular program, thus rendering the RIAA's claim of 'interactivity' meritless."

Comments

Re:What does "as a matter of law" really mean?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I am not an lawyer either, but the concept between a "matter of law" and a "matter of fact" is pretty basic. Matters of fact: "I didn't do it." "Yes you did." Matters of law: "Of course I did it; it ain't against the law, bub!" "Yes it is". In this case, the fact that internet radio stations were broadcasting copyrighted material (for which they had the proper licenses) was not in doubt. The question was one of law: is that an "interactive service" or not, which has additional restrictions on it?

In the context in which it was said in this case, it meant simply that there was no factual issue, that under the conceded undisputed facts, it was not interactive, no matter how you slice it.

not quite

[hawk]

I'm a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you get your legal advice here, you may as well just sign away your house, children, and car now and savve on legal fees . . .

Anyway . . .

That's not quite right; the facts as alleged by that party do matter. "As a matter of law" means that the evidence doesn't matter. Such a ruling means that even if they could prove everything that they alleged, they would still lose.

In this case, they found that the judge did indeed err--but not by giving the wrong instructions, as the RIAA alleged, but by even letting the jury hear the case, as no reasonable jury could have found for the RIAA. (Yeah, and here we get a bit murky with two overlapping "as a matter of law" usages, one on the allegations, and one on the strength of the evidence. Life's rough :)

hawk, esq