Rochester Judge Holds RIAA Evidence Insufficient 169
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Judge David G. Larimer, presiding in Rochester, New York, has denied an RIAA application for default judgment on the ground that the RIAA's evidence was insufficient, in that it contained no details of actual downloads or distributions, and no sufficient evidence that defendant was in fact Kazaa user 'heavyjeffmc@KaZaA.' The decision (PDF) concluded that 'there are significant issues of fact regarding the identification of the defendant from his alleged "online media distribution system" username.' (In case you're unfamiliar with the term 'online media distribution system,' that's because it is a term the RIAA coined 4 years ago to describe p2p file sharing accounts in its lawsuits; the term is not known to have been used by anyone else anywhere else.) In August a similar RIAA default judgment motion was denied on the ground that the pleadings failed to allege sufficient factual details supporting a claim of copyright infringement, in a San Diego, California, case, Interscope v. Rodriguez."
No big news here, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
No huge defeat for the RIAA here, but it does show how a savvy judge can recognize when evidence is flimsy or insufficient. That's why the RIAA really doesn't want any of these cases to hit the courts -- it requires a higher standard of proof from them, and that means more time and money proving the case. They know that most folks receiving a "letter of doom" from them will just cave in and pay the extortion money up front.
But to digress to a wider subject here.....do you think the RIAA understands that their tactics are but a finger in a dike? Do they honestly believe that their efforts have made any significant dent in file sharing of copyrighted material? And if not, then why do they persist? Just on principle alone? Despite what some here have implied, this can't be a cash cow for them -- the settlements offered are relatively low, and I can't imagine that they are not running in the red on these endeavors when you look at the bottom line. Even the much publicized recent $200K+ judgement they won, IF they could collect it (good luck with that), probably wouldn't even come close to covering their overall expenses so far.
I'd love to see statistics on what they have spent to go after filesharers versus what they have recovered in settlements. For that matter, I wonder how many active P2P users were sharing copyrighted stuff before the RIAA started their campaign, and how many do so now. I'm willing to bet that the numbers have not decreased, but increased significantly. After all, RIAA goes after a handful of people in the U.S. -- most have not been busted, and they can't even touch those outside the U.S. For that matter, how many folks sharing and downloading music on these networks have ceased to do so on their own out of fear that they will be busted? Probably a modest number, but certainly not a huge percentage. For every person that is busted or just stops on their own, I'm sure there are half a dozen more taking their place.
Maybe it really is just the principle of the thing, and they have to actively do SOMETHING to defend their members' copyrights simply to have a track record of doing so? You know, in the event of any future legal or legislative challenges to these copyrights, or the whole copyright system in general? Is there a provision in copyright law that requires that one to actively defend their copyrights in order to keep them? Help me understand this, please.
Re:Semantics (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a difference between "online file sharing system" which is what the rest of the world calls it and "online media distribution system". I am surprised they didn't go for "online intellectual property stealing system", I guess they decided on a slightly more subtle approach.
Claim Ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
Creative Commons Music Can Be Legally Shared (Score:5, Interesting)
Here are some resources for you:
- Creative Commons Search [creativecommons.org]
- Jamendo [jamendo.com] - CC music distributed via BitTorrent and eMule
- My own piano music [geometricvisions.com] - you could really help me out if you shared it on the Internet
- The Mutopia Project [mutopiaproject.org] - CC and public domain sheet music
I placed my music under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license because I hoped that would enable more people to get to know my music. While I work as a programmer now, I've been studying piano so that, when I can pass the entrance audition, I can enroll in music school to study musical composition. I want to compose symphonies someday! By sharing my music freely, there will be plenty of fans ready to buy tickets to my performances when I'm ready to play professionally.Where is the RIAA going to get the evidence from? (Score:5, Interesting)
So what they'll do is come armed with a bunch of backdated printouts and a lot of doubletalk, and hope to confuse the judge. Whether they can confuse this judge, as they have confused so many others, is, however, as you can see from the decision, quite problematic.
Re:Yet another "not liable by technicality" (Score:5, Interesting)
However, it is incorrect to assign blame for the wholeness of the problem on congress (really the last three congresses before the current one - which has just refused to correct earlier errors). You need to also spread some hate on the judges that have accepted a "making available" argument in leiu of actual proof of distribution. That has *literally* made it questionably legal to run ITunes with the built in content sharing app (on by default).
-GiH