Supreme Court May Tune In To Music Download Case

droopus writes "The US Supreme Court is weighing into the first RIAA file-sharing case to reach its docket, requesting that the music labels' litigation arm respond to a case testing the so-called 'innocent infringer' defense to copyright infringement. The case pending before the justices concerns a federal appeals court's February decision ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 — $750 a track — for file-sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader. The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400 — or $200 per song. That's an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright act. Harper is among the estimated 20,000 individuals the RIAA has sued for file-sharing music. The RIAA has decried Harper as 'vexatious,' because of her relentless legal jockeying."

Comments

Re:Look

[Anonymous Coward]

The case of McDonalds v. the Coffee in Lap Lady for example.McDs appealed the million plus dollar ruling and had it reduced to $300,000. The Supreme Court decided it was excessive to award over a million for her injuries.

No they did not. It was the trial judge who reduced the punitive damages (from 2.7 million dollars to 480,000), and while McDonalds did appeal, as did Liebeck, they eventually settled out of court anyway.

I hope your professor didn't teach you the facts of this case, because he got it wrong. Also...the jury in the case decided their punitive damages based on 2 days worth of McDonalds coffee sales. Ironic, no?

The summary is wrong.

[davev2.0]

The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400 - or $200 per song. That's an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright act.

The judge found her an innocent infringer, which means the judge believes she didn't understand that what she was doing was illegal. That kicks in USC 17 504.C.2 which states:

In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.

The judge gave her the miminum fine for what he determined to be the truth of the case. The $750 is the minimum award for a finding of willful infringement and so his award is not well below anything.

Re:Look

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Ignorance is no excuse, and all of that, but I really think we'll start to see more of this. As filesharing becomes easier on the user's end, how is a new/naive/young user supposed to know it's illegal?

The law is quite explicit that if a person did not know they were infringing a copyright, then they are an innocent infringer, and the statutory damages are limited, unless... there was a copyright notice on the thing they were infringing. Then they don't qualify for the defense.

The 5th Circuit erroneously held that she is precluded from the defense because some other copy somewhere, which she had never seen, had a copyright notice.

Its ruling was ridiculous.