Appeals Court Knocks Out "Innocent Infringement"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A 3-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has ruled that a Texas teenager was not entitled to invoke the innocent infringement defense in an RIAA file-sharing case where she had admittedly made unauthorized downloads of all of the 16 song files in question, and had not disputed that she had 'access' to the CD versions of the songs which bore copyright notices. The 11-page decision (PDF) handed down in Maverick Recording v. Harper seems to equate 'access' with the mere fact that CDs on sale in stores had copyright notices, and that she was free to go to such stores. In my opinion, however, that is not the type of access contemplated in the statute, as the reference to 'access' in the statute was intended to obviate the 'innocence' defense where the copy reproduced bore a copyright notice. The court also held that the 'making available' issue was irrelevant to the appeal, and that the constitutional argument as to excessiveness of damages had not been preserved for appeal."

Comments

Re:Not really the point

[selven]

Hi, I'm a teenager in Canada, which is on the planet. I know that downloading music is legal where I am.

Re:NewYorkLaywer gives another dishonest summary

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

NewYorkLawyer characterized this decision as one about "access" (i.e. the argument that the defendant would have had *access* to other CDs with their copyright notices and so should have known that the same notices would have applied to downloaded music). But the decision clearly states [page 9], "Rather than contest the fact of "access", Harper contended only that she was too young and naive to understand that the copyrights on published music applied to downloaded music." Thus, the issue of "access" was NOT AT STAKE. It was not contested. The decision was made purely on whether Harper's ignorance of copyright law counts as a valid defense. And the court ruled clearly that ignorance of copyright law is not a valid defense. (If it were, then someone would be able to violate e.g. GPL merely by persuading the court that they didn't know how copyright worked.)

1. The name is "NewYorkCountryLawyer".

2. Your characterization of my summary as "dishonest" was quite dishonest on your part.

3. The decision was based on access; it was because of their conclusion on "access" that her lack of knowledge, etc., became irrelevant. Had she not had access, it would have been quite relevant.

4. I found the discussion of "access" vague, and for that reason used the term "seems". I wasn't sure exactly what they were saying. From their decision it seems that they had established that the copies were downloaded from copies that bore no copyright notice. So it would seem that the record supported the lower court's finding that there was no "access", and that they were defining access differently.