Court Says Fair Use May Hold In Some RIAA Cases

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston RIAA case in which the defendant, represented by Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, admitted liability at his trial, the Court has entered judgment in favor of the RIAA for the monetary award of $625,000 fixed by the jury. However, the Court left open the questions of whether the amount is excessive, and whether attorneys fees and/or sanctions should be awarded, and has scheduled further briefing of those issues. The Court granted the RIAA much, but not all, of the injunctive relief it requested. In an unusual step, the Court issued a 38-page decision (PDF) explaining in some detail the Court's views of the Fair Use defense in the context of cases like this, and indicating that there are some factual scenarios — not applicable in this particular case — in which it might have concluded that the claims were barred by Fair Use. E.g. it declined to rule out the possibility that creation of mp3 files exclusively for space-shifting purposes from audio CDs a defendant had previously purchased might constitute fair use."

Comments

Re:I didn't know they could do that

[glrotate]

Courts can bloviate all they wish. You're confusing two legal concepts: The case and controversy requirement, and dicta.

A court requires an actual case with actually adverse parties.* This is the case and controversy requirement.

That said, courts can bloviate all they wish. The fancy legal term is dicta. It is not binding on any court, not even the same Court. Sometimes distinguishing between the real opinon and dicta can be tricky.

However, if the Court's reasoning is strong, other parties will incorporate it into their arguments and it will be adopted by other courts making their own decisions.

Re:I didn't know they could do that

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

It may wind up being the RIAA that's going to "need an appeal".

That would be good news indeed, can you expound on that a little?

Liability is a foregone conclusion, since Mr. Tenenbaum formally "admitted liability" at the trial. But damages are not.

If the Court follows traditional copyright law principles, it will hold that there was no evidence in the record from which any statutory damages award beyond $750 per infringed work is permissible, thus limiting the award to a maximum of $18,000 under copyright law.

And if the Court then follows traditional constitutional principles, it will hold that any recovery beyond $1.40 per infringed work (or total of $33.60) is unconstitutional.

If the RIAA obtains a monetary damages award of $33.60 I would expect Mr. Tenenbaum to refrain from appealing, and I would expect the RIAA to be the one to file an appeal.

Re:I didn't know they could do that

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Your comment has a lot of fallacies in it. You are ignoring the large body of case law on proportionality of statutory damages; you are ignoring the fact that the Constitution takes precedence over any statute; you are ignoring the Supreme Court's caselaw on "punitive awards"; you are implying there is some prohibition against "uploading", while there is none.... what there is is a prohibition against 'distributing copies to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending', none of which have been proven; you are suggesting that damages can be based on speculation, which is not the case; you are assuming that an unauthorized download = a lost sale, which is not the case.