Comments on: Copyright Infringement Requires Active Dissemination; RIAA Judgment Overturned

By: MS Jones

MS Jones — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:43:35 +0000

You're right, that's how I read it too, I may not have said what I meant (not enough caffeine yet this morning). It seems the music-making and book-publishing industries would get more traction suing the websites that facilitate copyright infringement rather than going after college students and single moms. That's assuming that piracy really is bad for business, though. A Canadian study found that it was not:

"music downloads have a positive effect on music purchases among Canadian downloaders"

It seems as though the music industry has decided to go with the free flow at Myspace. So maybe the Thomas lawsuit is a holdover from back in the days when the industry thought piracy was evil.

By: Jane

Jane — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:15:42 +0000

That’s not exactly the way I see it but it is huge, MS Jones. How I see it is if you have a folder with copyrighted material that other people can access, that is not active dissemination. I would think, though, if you took proactive steps to make that copyrighted material to others that it might be active dissemination but the mere existence of the folder that is available and has copyrighted material is not. Who knows though.

By: MS Jones

MS Jones — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:13:33 +0000

Whoa! This is huge. Wired is reporting that Pirate Bay is trying to obtain a Kindle, presumably to set up a filesharing system so that books saved on a Kindle can be downloaded for free onto other devices. If I'm understanding the court's decision ("...a publication effected by merely offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to the public is merely an offer of distribution, not an actual distribution") then distributing one's ebooks to others (via Napster-like file sharing) would not be prosecutable.

By: Folklore Fanatic

Folklore Fanatic — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:17:10 +0000

I wonder what the decision would be iffile-sharing worked on a system like an RSS feed? I mean, if there is some intermediary system between simply hosting or posting data files and active dissemination, wouldn’t that mean that the R.I.A.A. should have focused its arguments on KaZaa and not on individual users? Or is it the option of allowing someone to access personal files on your own turf that determines one’s culpability? Because if that’s the case, we’d all be up shit creek if a hacker or some malware made it easy for others to transmit and distribute information to and from our computers (which happens every second).

That crazy internet. It makes simple concepts like ‘private possession’ and ‘intent to distribute’ such tricksy areas.

By: whey

whey — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:03:37 +0000

Guess Jammie Thomas can stop selling “Free Jammie Thomas” thongs now. And we are all the better for it.