"Innocent Infringement" Defense May Reach Supreme Court

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Several years ago a federal court in Texas ordered the RIAA, in an 'innocent infringement' case against a teenager, to either accept $200 per infringed work, or to go to trial over the innocent infringement issue, in Maverick Recording Co v. Harper. Recently, an appeals court reversed, saying that the defendant could not avail herself of the innocent infringement defense since there were CDs, bearing copyright notices, available in stores, even though the copies she had made were from MP3 files which bore no such notice. Now, a petition for certiorari has been filed on the defendant's behalf, arguing that the 5th Circuit's ruling would make it impossible for anyone to interpose an innocent infringement case, even where they had never seen a copyright notice. The lawyers filing the petition on defendant's behalf are the same firm that represented Jammie Thomas in her second trial, and the motion which resulted in her verdict being reduced from $1.92 million to $54,000."

Comments

OT - your sig

[mcgrew]

Spiro Agnew, when defending the incredibly unpopular VietNam war, spoke often of the "silent majority". Of course, there was no such silent majority, by the time he and Nixon reached office just about everyone wanted out of the war.

He never finished his Vice Presidency and went to prison for tax evasion, much like Al Capone. He had been charged with of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy (see wikipedia link).

Why not just quote Agnew in your sig?