Thursday, June 18, 2009

Jury instructions in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset now available online

We now have a copy of the jury instructions in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset.

Jury Instructions

[Ed. note. The instructions do not define or explain what a distribution is. I.e. they do not instruct the jury that plaintiffs have to prove a dissemination of copies to the public, or that there must have been a sale or other transfer of ownership, or a lease, rental, or lending. In view of how we got to this point, I'm a bit surprised at that. -R.B.]



Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

5 comments:

Marc W. Bourgeois said...

The Special Verdict Form will not be available via ECF. I have a hard copy but am unable to make it into an electronic version at the present time.

Anonymous said...

Third time's the charm!

2L student

raybeckerman said...

Not necessarily. We don't know what led up to it. The defendant's counsel might have agreed to it. There might have been some negotiation. We just don't know.

Anonymous said...

The thing that jumped out at me was the repeated assertion that "...without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners’ exclusive right" See for example instructions 16, 18 and 19. As a juror I would be lead to believe that no one could ever copy or distribute any copyrighted work without infringing on it absent a license from the copyright holder.

If I go to a store to buy a copyrighted item for a child, should I demand to see the cashier's license to distribute, and also require that I get one so I can distribute the item to my child?

Just a biased observer

Anonymous said...

So why would the whiz kid defense lawyer go along with this? Did he? If so, how can he now object to these instructions on appeal?

Judge Davis had it figured out last year. What happened?

Ray - maybe you should have been her lawyer.