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Supreme Court Refuses P2P 'Innocent Sharing' Case
yoyo81 writes "The Supreme Court has refused to hear an 'innocent infringement case' in which Whitney Harper shared some music on the family computer when she was a teenager and was subsequently hit with a lawsuit from the RIAA. An appeals court overturned an earlier ruling from a federal court that reduced damages to $200 instead of the statutory $750 claiming 'innocence' was no defense, especially since copyright notices appear on all phonorecords. She appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear her case, but Justice Alito stated, 'This provision was adopted in 1988, well before digital music files became available on the Internet' and further,
'I would grant review in this case because not many cases presenting this issue are likely to reach the Courts of Appeals.' For now, though, Harper's verdict remains in place: $750 for each of the 37 songs at issue, or $27,750."
I think you misinterpreted what Justice Alito said - he *wanted* to hear the case; that sentence comes from his dissent. He would prefer to reexamine the laws which were written before a new medium was available (or at least widely available).
I had to look up some info on what exact precedents have been made in courts regarding this. So, here it is...
http://www.jwharrison.com/blog/2007/01/20/recording-the-radio-is-legal-recording-satellite-radio-is-illegal/
Satellite radio is illegal to record, while standard radio is in the clear.
The main argument being standard radio is more lossy. Not a very good argument IMHO.
http://mirror.infoboj.eu/
... well done. good for you.
and instead, talking from the filth you are fed by american media
Read radical news here
Actually, recording from the radio and making mix tapes has always been illegal for the same reasons as today.
Actually, according to the RIAA, recording from the radio to an audio tape cassette (specifically a tape cassette, mind you) is acceptable. You may not loan the recording to a friend. Further, time-shifting has been shown to be fair use by the supremes in the Betamax decision, so you are legally permitted to record audio or video for your own use regardless of media, since January 17, 1984. Otherwise the VCR would have ceased to exist.
So no, recording from the radio and making mix tapes has always been legal and has explicitly been legal since 1984, or basically, as long as it has been an issue. Redistribution of that content is illegal, but you knew that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Couple things:
1. They likely wrote "innocence" as a quote of what she claimed. For example, Cowboyneal claimed "Slashdot" is the best website in existence. This serves to place emphasis on which site was claimed to be the best. It's a writing technique, and the clerks working for the SCOTUS justices are uniformly highly educated in such techniques.
2. Innocence is not a defense to that of strict liability. Furthermore, innocence is not always a defense in civil proceedings (of which copyright infringement is a creature). Well, I suppose it depends on what we mean by "innocence." If we mean "it is factually untrue that my files were made available through my action or inaction" then it would be a defense. But I am under the impression the claim of "innocence" was "I lacked the intent but still committed the act," which is not a defense to copyright infringement IIRC.
Ok, we get it, you think all rich people are idiots with no empathy. Awesome. Can we move on now?
Not idiots, just out of touch in the "let them eat cake" style. And no, most rich people do not have empathy. It might affect their bottom line.
Similar to the upcoming US election results