Judge Deals Blow to RIAA in Music Piracy Case

[admin]

The Recording Industry Association of America suffered a legal setback this week in a music piracy case where a judge ruled that the sole act of making a music file available in a "shared folder" does not violate copyright laws.

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006876.html

Finally, some common sense.

[drfsupercenter]

Is this saying that actually having the song downloadable in a p2p program is legal? Or just making a folder called "Shared"? LOL

And ironically, this is the exact reverse of Canada's copyright law... There it's legal to download whatever you want, but you can't upload copyrighted stuff (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I heard this from someone who lived there) (and I actually prefer that system better )

[admin]

Arizona District Court Judge Neil V. Wake dealt a heady blow to the RIAA last Monday, striking down its popular “making available” theory as insufficient grounds for accusations of copyright infringement.

Wake’s ruling (PDF) set a higher burden of proof for the RIAA’s campaign of litigation: RIAA investigators – not third party agents, like those at MediaSentry – must download files from a defendant’s hard drive in order to accuse them of unlawful distributing copyrighted materials.

http://www.dailytech.com/RIAA+Sucker...ticle11650.htm

[cynthia]

must download files from a defendant’s hard drive

I do hope they catch some nasty viruses at the same time...

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah, I should make some fake mp3s that are really viruses, and see what happens.

So in other words, they can't sue you for just DOWNLOADING, you have to be sharing songs at the same time? Or am I missing something?