Supreme Court Won’t Hear RIAA File Sharing Case
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By David Kravets
- November 29, 2010 |
- 1:35 pm |
- Categories: RIAA Litigation, intellectual property
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the first Recording Industry Association of America file sharing case to cross its desk, in a case that tested the so-called “innocent infringer” defense to copyright infringement.
The case, which one justice voted to hear (.pdf), leaves undisturbed a federal appeals court’s decision in February ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 for file-sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader.
The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay just $7,400, or $200 per song. That’s an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright Act for each violation.
Harper is among the estimated 20,000 individuals the RIAA has sued for file-sharing music. The RIAA had decried Harper as “vexatious,” because of her relentless legal jockeying.
In September, the justices showed some interest in the case, asking the RIAA to respond to Harper’s appeal. But in the end, Monday’s action by the high court means, for the moment, the Supreme Court will not review any aspect of the RIAA’s five-year litigation campaign targeting individual music fire sharers.
Harper’s challenge weighed whether the innocent-infringer defense to the Copyright Act’s minimum $750-per-music-track fine may apply to online file sharing.
Generally, an innocent infringer is someone who does not know she or he is committing copyright infringement.
Attorneys for Harper told the justices (.pdf) that she should get the benefit of the $200 innocent-infringer fine, because the digital files in question contained no copyright notice.
A Texas federal judge had granted Harper the innocent-infringer exemption to the Copyright Act’s minimum fine, because the teen claimed she did not know she was violating copyrights. She said she thought file sharing was akin to internet radio streaming.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, said she was not eligible for such a defense, even though she was between 14 and 16 years old when the infringing activity occurred on LimeWire. The reason, the appeals court concluded, is that the Copyright Act precludes such a defense if the legitimate CDs of the music in question carry copyright notices.
In a lone dissent to hear the case, Justice Samuel Alito said the justices should clarify whether that appellate ruling reflects the digital age.
See Also:
Wow, I finally agree with Samuel Alito on something. First time for everything, I guess.
Suing a file-sharer, making $750 per song.
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Suing an innocent infringer, making $200 per song.
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The cost of prosecuting file-sharers, millions of dollars.
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The realization that even if you stopped piracy of your ‘products’ your sales would still be just as terrible, priceless.
Really? A screenshot with hover text on it?
@jbca They’re a lot of things money can do, for everything else there’s a bullet to the head.
Scumbags, taking the innocents of children now I see. We need a few more LimeWires to start popping up that have better security. Attack the children and give BP money for spilling oil…
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:: Humans :: FAIL ::
It’s amazing how they cherry pick easy targets but leave the hard ones alone. Go to Google search, images, enter “GRU logo”. Why doesn’t Warner Bros. sue over that? Wouldn’t you call that copyright infringement on the Batman logo? Comment, editors? Let’s see them take GRU on. I’ll watch this thread for a response.
The RIAA describes Harper as vexatious because she’s fighting back. I guess they gotta make money any way they can off of material that will be quickly forgotten anyhow. The only thing many of today’s so-called performers will be remembered for is being great big jerks anyhow.
Good luck to you Whitney. I wish you well.
I’d like to hear their lame excuses if they ever get busted for something.
I am soo completly sick of these guys. How about this lets just all stop buying music/movies and make them realize that their livelyhoods depend not only on us wanting their goods, but also feeling like the industry itself is doing something positive. I believe that what we are seeing here is an industry that while its moving slowly towards the next phaze of entertainment distribution. Is still ferosiously defending its “rights” to the old paradigm. Just becouse you have the right to do something does not mean you should. In this spirit I propose that we schedual the day right before christmas this year as a day where no one will purchase any media from these people at all. We have to flex our consumer muscle, and make these people realize they have to play fair if they expect to play at all. The price for the means of production for movies/music has droped astronomicaly. While the industry may have alot of collective experiance in terms of producing high quality goods. It is only a matter of time before they practicaly loose this sort of power. They better make damm sure that they stay in all of our collective good graces if they have any hopes of surviving the transition in creative power.
37 mp3 tracks priced online for an average of $0.99
That would be shoplifting of approximately $36.63 of merchandise if it was a physical object.
The RIAA can only verify that the property was shared with a few people so multiply the total by (round number here) 10.
A $366.30 fine for sharing music is fair, and an effective deterrent.
The penalty for file sharing should be directly proportional to the resale value of a piece of property. This is like taking someones house for shoplifting a candy bar.
Regulatory capture in action!
Haven’t purchased a CD in 10 years now, and I am proud of my opposition to the forces of anti-freedom!
I don’t get it. Which lower court’s decision remains final if the Supreme Court refuses to hear the case?
Boy, I hate to play devil’s advocate, but someone has to…
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How many of you REALLY think she and all other file sharers are truly innocent? You paint a picture of this girl as if she is some “innocent child” and the RIAA are purely black hats… well I hate to break it to you folks, but she and all of YOU know that sharing MP3s is wrong and illegal but you do it anyway because you perceive it as a victimless crime and you think the odds of getting caught are slim to none… but it’s still wrong!
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I agree completely that the punishment here does not fit the crime, but let’s get off the high horse that she’s innocent of all wrongdoing. She was on Limewire, so she knew she was trading copyrighted files back and forth… but never imagined she’d get caught. Just like everyone else.
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Downloaded music should be paid for – anyone who argues with that doesn’t deserve to be part of the debate. The RIAA isn’t making any friends the way they pursue these cases, but at least they are continuing to underline the point: if you illegally share music, the next cheerleader might be YOU!
“she and all of YOU know that sharing MP3s is wrong and illegal”
We know that filesharing is illegal, but it’s not wrong. There’s a big difference that the lawmaker has yet to notice.
“Downloaded music should be paid for”
Yes, but not at the sole pricemaking discretion of the vendor. The buyer should have some power over the prices as well, only then will we have truly free-market equilibrium-prices. And since copyright law has taken away our power over the prices, we had to get it back any way we could: piracy was the answer. And I have to say it’s starting to work: content distributors with an ounce of intelligence are increasingly moving toward online, diskless/tapeless distribution of content and are bringing their prices down toward more reasonable values. If we just keep pressuring them some more we just might get to a normalized cultural market and to some reasonable prices for access to culture and then we can get back to paying for stuff again (rest assured, none of us would like to see our favourite artists starve).
“anyone who argues with that doesn’t deserve to be part of the debate”
What about anyone who “argues” by bullying their opponents with the force of an unjust law? The MAFIAA should’ve disqualified for the debate the second they filed suit against the first individual consumer.