Victory For Music Locker Services?

Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, Gaygirlie writes "Michael Robertson, the owner and founder of the MP3Tunes music locker service, has been locked in a copyright infringement case with EMI Records for a while now, especially because of the Sideloading search engine that is tacked along with the locker service. Now the case has been resolved though: EMI Records won. But lost on all the accounts that actually really matter." The important parts here are that MP3Tunes was granted safe harbor protection under the DMCA, and that merging multiple copies of the same file doesn't make distributing that master copy a public performance.

Comments

Wait, what?

[geminidomino]

Judge Pauley soundly rejected that line of reasoning, writing that "MP3tunes does not use a 'master copy' to store or play back songs stored in its lockers. Instead, MP3tunes uses a standard data compression algorithm that eliminates redundant digital data."

That sounds awfully clueful for a jurist... he even used the the word "algorithm" correctly.

What country was this in, again?

Re:Wait, what?

[gdshaw]

It wasn't a jurist; it was the Judge. However, your skepticism still seems relevant...

A judge is a jurist (but not a juror, which is probably the word you were thinking of).

Re:Wait, what?

[Hatta]

His misunderstanding comes from Hanlon's razor. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It's easy to mistake the behavior of federal judges as stupid based on that rule. Of course, they can't be stupid because law school is hard. Therefore stupidity is an inadequate explanation. The implications of this are left as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Wait, what?

[Hatta]

Judges opinions are usually written out, clearly showing how they arrived at the decision (precedents, etc).

Judges are selected from lawyers, whose entire professional carreer is spent disregarding right and wrong, and true and false. Their entire skillset revolves around making any argument they can, no matter how disingenuous, in order to prove their point. Is it any suprise that judges are able to come up with elaborate rationalizations for their opinions?

If a judge told me the sky was blue, I'd go outside and check.

Re:Victory? No

[Gaygirlie]

Inconclusive at best.. The lawyers can milk this for a while longer

If you'd actually read the whole thing you'd see that this is a clear victory: the Judge clearly ruled that these locker services do not need to buy licensing from record companies, they don't need to police the files of the users unless someone files a DMCA takedown request against a specific file.. How is this NOT a huge victory?

Cue the Village People

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fun to violate the
D-M-C-A

It's fun to violate the
D-M-C-A

Re:Victory? No

[Gaygirlie]

Conclusion

It's not clear where the ruling leaves MP3tunes.

That's relating to the fact that MP3Tunes had not removed the files for which DMCA takedown notices were filed and the files that Robertson himself had uploaded there. Ie. a completely DIFFERENT ISSUE.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Gaygirlie

[Translation Error]

How come homosexuals get to constantly get to broadcast their sexual orientation all the damn time? Typical reverse discrimination that runs rampant these days.

I know! It's terrible that they can just run around offending everyone by being themselves while those poor straight people have to skulk around, being careful about displaying affection in public lest they risk hostility and possibly even violence. Something must be done!

Time for a new law!

[erroneus]

Looks like the RIAA will be shopping for a new law. Any legislators or political party in need of funding? I think I know where your next "donation" is coming from.

Re:Gaygirlie

[Hatta]

No one's stopping you from registering 'straightdude'. I do think it's a little annoying that they seem to think their sexual orientation is relevant in many context where it is not. But that's not reverse orientation, you're free to act as annoying as they do if you want.

Re:Victory? No

[Trepidity]

Yeah, I take it to be basically a two-part decision: 1) if you run a music locker service in a non-stupid way, you are legally safe; and 2) MP3Tunes failed to run theirs in a non-stupid way. So for everyone else, #1 is still good precedent, assuming they don't do something absurd like have the founder himself upload and post public links to "privately" stored music he doesn't own the rights to.

Re:Victory? No

[Kirijini]

How is this NOT a huge victory?

From the point of view of mp3tunes, this decision is not a huge victory because it's liable for at least hundreds, if not thousands, of separate acts of copyright infringement (the decision is surprisingly imprecise as to exactly how many acts of infringement mp3tunes is liable for). If EMI chooses to have statutory (as opposed to actual) damages awarded, then mp3tunes is on the hook for between $750 to $150,000 per infringement (to be decided by the judge or a jury if EMI demands it). If somehow EMI is awarded the max statutory damages (unlikely but possible), that's 15 million dollars for every 100 songs infringed; EMI is claiming 3189 songs are at issue - if that's right, then mp3tunes max liability is $478,350,000 - half a billion dollars.

It's also not a huge victory for mp3tunes because there are a number of unresolved issues - including whether it's founder Michael Robertson is personally liable for songs he personally added to the mp3tunes service. Unreolved issues will go through more litigation, including possibly an actual trial. That, of course, is expensive and sucks for mp3tunes.

From the point of view of the public, google, and amazon, this is great, for all the reasons you mentioned.

Re:Victory? No

[spazdor]

Isn't that what amicus curiae briefs are for?