Court Ruling Could End P2P Music-Download Lawsuits

[Lite]

A federal court has dealt a body blow to the recording industry's efforts to sue people who use peer-to-peer software to download music from the Internet. In fact, says one copyright lawyer, the P2P decision could mean the end of the Recording Industry Association of America's litigation strategy.

In Atlantic Records v. Howell, U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake rejected the RIAA's theory that the defendants distributed music files merely by making them publicly available through the Kazaa P2P application. Contrary to the music industry's theory, "Merely making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work available to the public does not violate a copyright holder's exclusive right of distribution," the judge wrote.

The facts of the case are fairly typical. MediaSentry, the private investigator that researches these matters for the RIAA, used Kazaa to identify 4,000 files available from the Howells' computer, with 54 of them copyrighted music files. MediaSentry took screenshots showing the files available and downloaded 12 of the songs.

View: Original Article

[voodoohippie]

So too will the tech savvy beat these tyrants into submission just like when the phone companies charged outrageous prices just to place a phone call to a loved one or friend. Now as you can see long distance phone service is flat rate just as cell phones soon will not have contracts (see alltel pre paid plans like pay per day, pay per month all with free nights and weekends). What does this have to do with this story? Well again the RIAA tries to control something they have no business trying to control in the first place. Plus the RIAA has had ample opportunity to make p2p a lucrative business for them via ad banners at the bottom of the p2p app. But they've tried to play God. Oh what is that scraping sound? Oh its the tables turning on the RIAA. A wonderful sound this is.