RIAA Foiled By "Innocent Infringement" Defense 220
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In an interesting development in a Texas case against a college-age defendant who was 16 at the time of the infringement, the Judge has denied the RIAA's summary judgment motion and ordered a trial of the damages — even though the defendant admitted copyright infringement using Kazaa — based on the 'innocent infringement' defense, which could reduce the statutory damages to $200 per song file. Relying on BMG v. Gonzalez (PDF), the reasoning of which I have criticized on the 'innocent infringement' issue, the RIAA argued that Ms. Harper does not qualify for the 'innocent infringement' defense, since CD versions of the songs, sold in stores, have copyright notices on them. In its 15-page decision (PDF) the Harper court rejected that contention, holding that 'a question
remains as to whether Defendant knew the warnings on compact discs were applicable in this KaZaA setting,' since 'In this case, there were no compact discs with warnings.' Finding that there was a factual issue as to what the defendant knew or didn't know at the time of the infringement, the Court ordered a trial of the damages unless the RIAA agrees to accept $200 — rather than the $750-plus it seeks — per infringed song."
Why don't they sell songs at $200 a pop? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not a good writer. (Score:1, Insightful)
Innocent? It could happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
$200 a song.. (Score:2, Insightful)
$200 dollars a song is still eff'in outrageous I can't fathom how they're allowed to charge hundreds of times more than retail price. The guy could walk up to a BMW, bash the windows in and pay less.
Re:Under age (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA has never cared about opposition. What are you going to do, continue to not buy CDs from them? Even if they were to announce that for every song stolen, they would kill a puppy in a country where there are no animal cruelty laws, they would still keep doing brisk buisness: the teenagers buying mainstream CDs at walmart don't care about things like that.
Re:I still don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the government using it's power to prop up a failed buisness model. This is the RIAA using the legal system to try to prop up their diminishing buisness by bullying people who share music.
There are certainly some people in government who are sympathetic to the RIAA because of legal bribes in the form of lobbyists and campaign contributions, but that's not the whole government and in this instance, the biggest government involvement is that the legal system is being used by the RIAA.
What you're talking about would be if the government subsidized the RIAA's DRM attempts or things like that. Maybe they do that already, I don't know, but this isn't that.
Anyway, as to why it's so much, it's because sharing music is actually illegal (note that I am not saying it should be or that the RIAA has morality on their side or their tactics are justified, or even that they shouldn't all be shot). It's like asking why tickets for possession of pot are so high. You're not causing any damage to anyone, the fines don't make sense in that reguard.
The only answer is because it's illegal and in many cases, some people have interests in seeing the law enforced even when there's no real benefit to society in it. They fine you for posession because it's illegal, they don't think they like pot smokers, and they can.
Sure, easy to see (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean most people think, and correctly so in most cases, that if you pay for something, that means it is legal for you to use/have it. Whatever the seller wishes to charge is their business. If you pay what they asked, then the deal is done. If they want to give you a good deal, that's up to them and there is, as they say on the playground "No take backs." If the seller realizes after the sale they sold it for less then they wanted to, too bad.
So it is easy to see how people, especially those who are up on technical news, could be fooled. I remember getting a call from my mom about buying the Adobe Creative Suite. She was searching online to see if she could get a better price, since it is very expensive. Well, she found a place that indeed had a MUCH better price. Now she's pretty clever and realized that it sounded too good. Well, sure as shit, the site was selling pirated software. However, it is easy to see how someone might be fooled. After all, I've got some smoking deals on all kinds of products in a quite legitimate manner. People might figure this is just the same thing.
So it is quite easy to see how someone might download music and perfectly well believe they were not breaking the law.
Re:This at least has a basis (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why don't they sell songs at $200 a pop? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I still don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why don't they sell songs at $200 a pop? (Score:5, Insightful)
A penalty is fine, but a 2000% penalty? The percentages aren't that high on anything else...
But, but but this is electronic media! It involves computers and intarwebs and a series of tubes and electrons and stuff, you're supposed to abandon all logic and common sense and instantly enter into Dummy Mode whenever that's the case! Certainly you can't use critical thinking and compare it to the penalties you'd face when dealing with anything else! Why, that might amount to treating IP as though it were like tangible property! Oh, wait...
Re:"making available" (Score:3, Insightful)
Well the girl wasn't authorised to distribute the songs, so surely it doesn't matter who she distributed them to?
Well, if the copyright holder himself asks you for a copy, or an authorised agent of the copyright holder, then it surely is authorised.
:-)
If Bill Gates' laptop crashes and he needs a new copy of the OS, you can give him your copy to install it. That is as long as he uses Linux or Windows, not if its MacOS X
Re:This at least has a basis (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why don't they sell songs at $200 a pop? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they can inflate the piracy numbers. If they sell it at $0.99 they'll be able to claim the other $749.01 as piracy damages. Also known as creative accounting or fraud.
Re:Under age (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'm not sure I buy it (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it's possible that if someone doesn't have a decent understanding of how the software works, it's plausible that a person could honestly be ignorant, but for anyone who frequents slashdot or has any small amount of knowledge about computers probably knows better.
I have seen advertisements for software that really did sound as if you could download millions of songs legally (that's what it advertised: Download millions of songs legally). Maybe a lawyer with a very suspicious mind would have figured it out just by reading the advert, I figured it out because I _know_ there are no millions of songs that you can get legally and for free and therefore knew what words to look for in the advert, but to anyone who doesn't know about that subject it looked totally genuine. I thought it was disgusting.
If you download music illegally, and you know what you're doing, that's fine with me; you know the risk, you take your chances. But that kind of advert could get someone into deepest trouble who doesn't have the slightest idea they are doing anything wrong.
Go away, you're not 21 (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to support the artist, go to their concerts
Unless your favorite artist won't play at any all-ages venues near you.
Re:This at least has a basis (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This at least has a basis (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why don't they sell songs at $200 a pop? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Big Picture (Score:3, Insightful)
The Big Picture:
The idea of copyright is a societal agreement with creators, as a fair method to pay them for contributing to society. Over time, our environment has changed, and the old copyright paradigm is an ill fit for today, and so great is the ill-fitting-ness that a large section of society chooses to ignore it to some extent. Until such a day that we as a society create a new copyright paradigm, that most of us will agree to honor, then we will have lots of legal battles.
The Small Picture:
In a legal battle, the simple footsoldier known as a lawyer is not necessarily motivated to make the world a better place, but is motivated to defend his client, be they innocent or guilty. With success defined in such a way, a lawyer may sacrifice less valued big ideals, in order to achieve higher valued small wins.
Your Answer:
A lawyer may take laws and legal rules to their extremes, like a competitive athlete may take their training to extremes, but at those extremes are gray areas. Gray areas like the difference between supplements and steroids, or plausible deniability like claiming the guy injecting you said "it was just an all-natural supplement" so how could you have known. In this case, the "Innocent Infringement" idea is being stretched, and twisted, in hopes that it might just work well enough to help his client.
Re:I still don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
Roads are paid for with taxes. Businesses pay taxes. So that's not a subsidy.
Nice murder strawman (Score:0, Insightful)
Nice murder strawman! Do you always compare IP law violations to physical assault (or, as many do here, in not quite as blatant a strawman, the theft of physical goods)?
If you would use your software to download a book by a US author published in the US between the years 1923-1951 [upenn.edu], I daresay that even you wouldn't know if you were in violation or not. I know that I wouldn't (and expecting me to pay $150/hr to find out is not reasonable in my eyes). Your average grandmother paying to download MP3 files from the allofmp3.com site, which claimed to have a valid license (which almost certainly was only valid for Russians), is unlikely to understand that she is violating her local IP laws.
Re:I still don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
At least here in the U.S. a tax (registration fee) is paid for each vehicle and is presumed to cover the cost of the roads the vehicle may use. Interstate trucks are often required to pay those fees in each state that it may visit. Many states additionally apply a fuel tax.
Your case is clearly a subsidy since the taxes the business pays clearly are not even intended to cover the expenses of the givaway program.
In the case of businesses that have some sort of special deal to not pay taxes, they may indeed have a failed business model that is being propped up by subsidy. They may also have a workable business model (if they COULD pay the taxes and remain profitable) and a sweetheart deal on top of it.
Re:Go away, you're not 21 (Score:3, Insightful)
If they won't support your needs, why should you support theirs? If a band refused to let anyone over 50 into a concert I'd be damned if I ever bough one of their CDs, no matter how much I liked the music.