Monday, January 22, 2007

Hollywood Reporter article on Elektra v. Barker, case scheduled for argument Friday January 26th

Elektra v. Barker, in which the RIAA will be making its "making available" argument, is scheduled for argument Friday, January 26th. See Hollywood Reporter ESQ article.

Keywords: digital copyright online download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs

7 comments:

Scott Ferguson said...

It seems to be that this ruling could render ANY public grid computing project illegal as well, since nodes in these grids "share files" just as Lime Wire does. For background, search Wikipedia for "grid computing" and note the charitable projects in the links at the bottom of the article.

I'm sure the pigs at the RIAA would love to be responsible for stopping projects like the World Community Grid (http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org), which is working on finding cures for muscular distrophy and AIDS.

Alter_Fritz said...

That's italian I guess, so not RIAA, but more the MAFIAA with only one(1) "A" I guess ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAFIAA
vs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAFIA

raybeckerman said...

For those of you coming in to this late, my loyal listners are referring to a piece of "comment spam" which I have since removed.

StephenH said...

I hope the judge strikes down the RIAA's interpretation of WIPO, and sets a standard in which they need to prove that a file was in fact COPIED. This would make RIAA's case harder, due to the fact they would need forensics on BOTH ends, something impossible to do with a spy bot. This case if Barker wins, has the potential to END RIAA's CAMPAIGN, because they will need a lot more forensics. Doing that will result in expensive investigations that lead to a less than 100% guilty verdict rate.

AdHominem said...

Something I always wondered about 'making available'...how do the complainants know that the receiver of the content does not hold a valid licence? Say I have a licenced copy of a piece of software, but maybe my installation CD fails for some reason. I still have a valid licence to use the software. So I download it. As far as I can see, no law has been broken, I've simply resourced the software for which I have a licence. In that scenario, the person who made the software available for me can in this specific case have done no wrong. Since the R**A et al. cannot possibly establish that if a file is made available it is neccesarily downloaded by somebody who does not have a valid licence, how can they ever establish a case?

chamar said...

Everyone who is affected by the big record labels, especially those being sued, should join Digital Freedom (www.digitalfreedom.org)

raybeckerman said...

Dear stephenh

Although the judge was noncommittal about almost every issue, the one issue on which he clearly indicated his holding was the WIPO issue; he indicated in no uncertain terms that he has granted your wish and is completely rejecting their WIPO argument.