RIAA Victory Over Usenet.com In Copyright Case 289
ozydingo writes "The RIAA has scored a victory in a decision on a copyright case that they filed back in 2007. US District Judge Harold Baer ruled in favor of the music industry on all its main theories: that Usenet.com is guilty of direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement. In addition, and perhaps most important for future cases, Baer said that Usenet.com can't claim protection under the Sony Betamax decision stating that companies can't be held liable of contributory infringement if the device is 'capable of significant non-infringing uses.' Bear noted that Usenet.com differed from Sony in that the sale of a Betamax recorder was a one-time deal, while Usenet.com's interaction with its users was an ongoing relationship. The RIAA stated in a brief note, 'We're pleased that the court recognized not just that Usenet.com directly infringed the record companies' copyrights but also took action against the defendants for their egregious litigation misconduct.'"
Re:FURIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't that cover about anything on the internet, ftp, http, ssh.... Gee they could sue just on a grounds that the technology "maybe" used for illegal activity.
Hmmm.. sue the founders of tcpip because they allow for the "transport" of such illegal activities...
That would be the logically consistent position, yes.
a new age in file-sharing is born (Score:3, Interesting)
Kids, forget the internets.. I've got a whole NEW way of file-sharing with no pesky lawyers, no judges, no colluding ISPs, no Orwellian gubment "oversight".
It's called a "flash drive".
1. Put a song or movie onto your flash drive and give it to a friend.
2. They give it back to you with some of their songs or movies on it.
3. ???
4. We both haz profits!!!!
How Many Separate Cases? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm guessing no.
Though I posit that if we had access to a simple count of current litigation broken down by who is suing whom, the RIAA would be somewhere near the top in terms of the number of suits they have filed and are currently working.
Re:Any good news lately? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bear noted that Usenet.com differed... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, what he seems to be saying is: If you sell someone a thing, your rseponsibility for how they use that thing after the sale is less than your responsibility for how someone uses a service you are actively providing. Given the nature of secondary infringement, it certainly seems like a plausible distinction. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good cynical punchline.
(Now, whether I agree with his conclusion I couldn't say without digging quite a bit deeper into the issues.)
usenet.com's own fault (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How Many Separate Cases? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm curious - we frequently hear of the RIAA suing this, that, and the other thing. Is there somewhere we can go to see just how many concurrent ongoing cases involve the RIAA on a global scale? I'm guessing no. Though I posit that if we had access to a simple count of current litigation broken down by who is suing whom, the RIAA would be somewhere near the top in terms of the number of suits they have filed and are currently working.
Makes me wonder one thing. Do you think it would benefit the general population or harm the general population if we simply outlawed all trade organizations and forced all companies in an industry to act as completely independent entities? Because personally, I have never seen them do anything that I found to be desirable though I admit that such things probably don't make the news.
I Find This Troubling (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's because I'm not really involved in the legal system, but I find the way the jduge sanctioned usenet.com to be very troubling.
If you'll read the article, you'll see that usenet.com destroyed evidence and arranged for witnesses against it to be out of the country for the trial. For this, usenet.com absolutely deserves to be sanctioned.
But the judge's sanction was effectively to rewrite the DMCA. Lawmakers inserted a Safe Harbor provision into the DMCA that shielded service providers from responsibility for criminal activity of their users. When Judge Baer sanctioned usenet.com by preventing them from raising the Safe Harbor defense, he effectively rewrote the DMCA in a way that lawmakers never intended!
Without the Safe Harbor defense, usenet.com's case was lost. I'm not sure what the appropriate sanction should be for usenet.com's blatant discovery violations, but a judge rewriting a law as it applies to just one company seems wrong to me.
Re:Any good news lately? (Score:2, Interesting)
ince the average person probably isn't sharing copyrighted material, he probably won't have anything to fear from the RIAA.
I am having a hard time telling if this sarcasm or not. If it isn't you might want to read up on some of the recent MPAA/RIAA related cases.
Re:Any good news lately? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well from what i can understand... (Score:4, Interesting)
No one gets usenet versus Usenet.com (nor I really). But it certainly has some interesting implications, for example, almost every ISP in Australia has a usenet feed and a full alt.binaries tree. That could make for some "fun times" and i cant only imagine what will happen if the RIAA equivalent in AU gets to mess with our little comunist firewall... err, i mean saviour of our childrens minds.
Given there are already cases against the ISP's in court already.
But, does it really matter? Yeah, usenet was good while it lasted and if this is about to spell it's final "for whom the bell tolls", then so be it. One of the big problems with usenet in the modern era was lack of knowledge of its existence. For example, in my day I sold and bought things on Aus.ads.forsale and now everyone uses ebay cause they know it exists.
But, some of that "social fabric" is changing as well (to more modern things I mean). Take twitter and facebook as a semi-evolutionary step, sure you probably cant easily share copywritten (?) work on them easily, but how long until the google wave becomes a simple, all-access protocol capable of doing the same?
The internet does route around the damage that people do to it, and techo's come up with better tech for avoiding rediculous litigation - but more importantly, they get better at quickly making things that are hard to blame on any one person or organisation while people like the RIAA are struggling to grapple with putting together a case based on incomplete evidence from yesterdays protocols.
Block Bittorrent in AU? go for it, we'll get something else (we had kazaa, napster, emule, etc etc already and we learnt from the various mistakes present in those protocols). In short, techno-people move quick, bit corp's move slow and we're always going to be ahead.
Personally when it comes to all these things all I know is that it puts me off watching movies or listening to music because if I happen to have an MP3 of a song from a CD that was later stolen, chances are I could be possibly in trouble. In alot of industries thats called shooting yourself in the foot.
Oh, and did anyone see that little news report in AU about how movie piracy was funding terrorism? I wonder how much the RIAA payed to have that little piece put on the air (in all fairness, it was physical media piracy as opposed to sharing on the internet, but still)...
Re:I Find This Troubling (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, generally speaking, when a litigant is caught falsifying or destroying evidence, or otherwise interfering with the other side's case, it isn't uncommon for the judge to deny them to opportunity to present any defense. This is, in many people's opinion, entirely appropriate. It's the punishment for obstructing justice. This happened in one of the lawsuits over the University of California fertility clinic scandal, when the state's lawyers were caught falsifying evidence. The judge just issued a summary ruling for over $100 million, and that was that.
The key concept here is, if you don't want to lose automatically, don't break the rules (and the law).
So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Any good news lately? (Score:3, Interesting)
n00bs casually break copyright laws.
The idea that copying something is "wrong" is just not something
that occurs to the common man with a classical medieval notion of
what is moral or what is legal.
The law is inherently complex and the media moguls constantly seek
to increase their power and make more things illegal. The tech is
inherently complex and already bound to be out of the control of
the typical n00b.
The law is already at the point where the common man is going to
be somewhat bothered. The media moguls will likely not be
satisfied until the common man is generally criminalized for
mundane petty acts of infringement.
Their own lack of restraint may be their undoing.
Tell Suzie Homemaker that it's illegal for her to copy
the baby portraits and see how she reacts to that...
Re:If you ever go to court... (Score:1, Interesting)
No, *we* don't have legal ways of changing them. We don't even have illegal ways of changing them. We are held in your "civil society" by force of violence--quite literally at gunpoint. If I resist copyright legislation, I will be prosecuted--if I resist prosecution, I will be arrested. If I resist arrest, I will be tased or shot. Leave and go elsewhere? Where? There is no land, no water, no surface unclaimed, even on the ocean floors. Even if I could afford to set up a colony in Antarctica, I would be kicked off by military force.
Rules only exist to govern--and leaders exist only by and for the consent and good will of the governed. It's been six years since the last election was stolen (and it was--even if it would've turned out the same way, the fact that vote fraud occurred is sufficient to reject all individuals involved) and I gave up on these so called laws and rules which exist only for the benefit of those who create them. This system of law you preach *is* anarchy.
It isn't just "you" that pays the price for being "uncivil"--it's all of society. Please line up against the wall.