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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."
I can't wait for the day that headline becomes so commonplace I get bored of it.
My webcomic
Pandora has some semblance of interactivity that regular streaming radio does not.
You can vote song/artists off the island, and fine tune the selection to your particular tastes.
Still, you might be on to something here because you still can't order up a song at will, nor know what is coming ahead of time.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Most people would claim that monkeys are luminous if it somehow hurt the RIAA.
Is this close enough?
This guy's the limit!
Most people would claim that monkeys are luminous if it somehow hurt the RIAA.
You missed this story didn't you. All living things emit visible light at low levels. So with that in mind, the RIAA must be doomed.
I have a request from Slashdot based on this post.
We need a -1: Stupid.
It's not trolling, nor really flamebait, nor offtopic, or redundant. Also, offtopic just isn't quite enough.
As for why I feel that way: Interactive, the way you see it, would mean that radios are interactive. Which would break the whole idea of broadcast to start with. After all, I set my dial to a channel and listen. If I don't like it, I can switch stations. In fact, I know what genres the stations tend to play, so I can add them to a "favorites" list called presets if I like them. The broadcast stations react to listeners by tracking how many they have and adjusting content to keep and expand that base. And, if listeners disappear, a station will react to that input (or lack thereof) and shutdown or change genres.
Oh, even better, many of these stations "take requests" from some listeners and then play those songs. In that regard, broadcast radio is *more interactive* than the services presented by Launch, and Pandora.
So... I don't know what exactly you were going for in your post, but this has nothing to do with just hate for the RIAA... This is a case where we finally see someone applying common sense and *law* to a lawsuit.
The last line of the ruling says: The district court's judgment of May 16, 2007 in favor 15 of Appellee is hereby AFFIRMED with costs.
Does this mean the RIAA pays the victim's court costs?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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?
What does "as a matter of law" really mean?
How does it differ from "as a matter of fact"?
IANAL - nor can I afford one to answer this question.
:) It means that there is no factual "issue" for the jury to resolve. I.e., that based upon the known facts, it is automatic that this is not "interactive" within the meaning of the statute.
No charge.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Right. I just read over the whole decision......
You read all 42 pages??? You must be new to /.! Nobody reads it all here.
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.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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
>No charge.
*shudder*
C'mon, a country lawyer should know to never point that out or bring attention to it :)
hawk, esq.