Friday, September 02, 2005

More Distortion by RIAA

It was reported by Digital Music News that RIAA president Cary Sherman has justified bringing 754 new suits on the ground that the Supreme Court's Grokster ruling signified that "the individuals who download songs without permission can be held accountable". http://digitalmusicnews.com/#090105riaa.

This is false and misleading in two respects.

1. The Grokster ruling had nothing to do with liability of individuals sharing files for personal use.

2. The RIAA is commencing lawsuits against people without any knowledge of whether they are or are not "individuals who download songs without permission".

2 comments:

Jonathan said...

This is the "SCO" model of good corporate behavior. The only difference is that instead of suing people who can't defend themselves and extorting them for money, SCO sued organizations that can destroy them in response.

There has to be a way to stop this sort of thing. There HAS to. Otherwise, no one is safe.

Anonymous said...

I understood that downloading a music file was not copyright infringement and thus wasn't illegal. I thought it was uploading that was the problem.

Is this more distortion or am I wrong?