Consumers have rights to....

[pam123]

File swapping is legal - LA Judge
Posted 4/25/2003 - 5:00PM, by Andrew "andyfatbastard" Brennan
Two file-sharing companies, Streamcast Networks (who run Kazaa) and Grokster, have won a landmark victory in the ongoing fight over the legality of their products. Judge Stephen Wilson today ruled that file-sharing networks are not responsible for their users actions. The majority of a lawsuit filed by a combination of the MPAA and RIAA was dismissed by the judge. Some claims, targeted at older versions of the software, will be further argued in the court.

"Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and Streamcast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."


At last we see some sense being applied in court judgements of this kind. When Napster was told to make sure that it was impossible to trade copyrighted material illegally on their network or shut down, we all feared that consumer fair use rights would go out the window. I have to applaud Judge Wilson for making the distinction between Napster and modern file-sharing systems. Napster was created for the purpose of trading illegally, and marketed as such, whereas Kazaa et al can be used for sharing any sort of file. To shut them down would destroy the valid uses of their technology, and punish users who may have done nothing wrong.

"This is far from over," said Fred von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney who has represented Streamcast in the case. "This is not the end, but it sends a very strong message to the technology community that the court understands the risk to innovation."


Time and again I find myself cheering the work of the EFF. They are an organisation of volunteers fighting for our rights to use our computers in any way we see fit. The RIAA and MPAA will certainly appeal the decision.

[Byte 2.0]

wow, looks like the judge actually understood what he was ruling on.

I hate seeing people that have no clue about how stuff works writing the rules and how to books.

[TwoRails]

Wow!! Thanks for the update, pam123!!!

TwoRails

[pam123]

There may be hope for the average citizen yet ( and we need it !).

[TwoRails]

Yes we do! More than most realize....

[Xayd]

All that's lacking is for someone to be charged under a DMCA law and win to eliminate all of those too.

Depending on the wording of this opinion, it may go ahead and trump alot of the state DMCA laws that are in the news lately. When the company I works for gets the full text of the opinion (probably next week) I'll post it.

Bottom line: If the rest of the opinion is written like that quote, a Federal Judge has already wiped out the state DMCA laws by stating that any device or software with legitimate uses is a legal device or software, no matter what users do with it.

[Propain]

Im not sure where to take this debate over theses P2P companies. You guys are all happy about this decision by the courts BUT when someone posts a question about downloading and such , he gets shot down by moderators? http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=62797 Dont tell me movies arent the same as music files . downloading copyrighted content is all the same.


cheers

[glc]

Propaine: Have you read the forum FAQ yet, specifically Usage Guideline 9 and the Censorship section?

There's a difference between discussing the laws and court cases as they pertain to these issues, and asking for assistance in breaking a law.

[Mac Medic]

Propaine:

The Judge did not rule Swapping copyrighted files to be legal, only the means to do so. He really had no choice as there are many valid and useful uses for file swapping software. The issue of MP3 and Movie downloads are completely separate to this decision and are already ruled to be illegal.

[Xayd]

Opinion

^^ full opinion for those who wanna read it, badly formatted but it's a quick PDF to HTML conversion.

The main point in it is the ruling that while Grokster was in a position to know that the software was used to download copyrighted material, they are not obligated to prevent it or combat it, since the network does not belong to them. Good decision.

A funny snip of part of Grokster's motion that I thought funny, though...

Defendants argue that Plaintiffs should not be able to sue for copyright infringement because they misuse their copyrights by violating U. S. antitrust laws.

The judge made no ruling on the antitrust claim but /cheers to Grokster for making it a part of their motion (even if their software does suck).

[glc]

I heard a good discussion of this on talk radio yesterday - the guest was a law professor. She basically said that now the media companies have to go after the end user.

[yellohut]

what i think is amusing is that two of the plantiffs in tha case are aol/time warner and sony... one gives you access to music files (isp), the other provides the means by which you can burn the music to a cd (cd-rw drives).
by the way, if i download a song or movie i already own, is that legal (as a backup).

[Strider]

Originally posted by yellohut by the way, if i download a song or movie i already own, is that legal (as a backup).

Yea it would be legal, but why would you have to download it to make a backup since you alread own it and can presumaly make your own backup?

[pam123]

Originally posted by Strider Yea it would be legal, but why would you have to download it to make a backup since you alread own it and can presumaly make your own backup?

Because the new copy protections aim to make that impossible.

The RIAA has painted itself into a corner, suing your customers is not a good strategy.
Before corporations took over the record business and radio stations consolidated, that is before "big money", this cd to mp3 conversion would have been a marketing blip. Now it's a disaster.
I don't object to record companies, much, but these guys basically misunderstood what they bought into.
My generation has replaced all the vinyl with CDs that we're going to and the market they thought they had has gone.
They were caught flat-footed by computers and, as a rep from Bertelsmann admitted last week in the NYTimes, " the stuff we've been putting out just isn't that good".
Time to return the record industry to what it was before the clones took over ( how many copies of Ms. Spears will the market hold? ) and bored everyone.
Real music can be expensive but it's as noting to the fake stuff.
Oh yeah, while were at it maybe the musicians and singers who had Sony, EMI, Warner, and Bertelsmann on their backs can get paid properly. It would be a nice change.

[Byte 2.0]

I wonder if napster will make a big return.

[pam123]

The RIAA just lost it's case against Kazza and Grokster.
I understand, today's Times, that they're considering trojans to stop on-line file sharing.
Steve Jobs has just come up with an on-line music solution for Apple which will be ported to Windows by the fall ( it's the sort of thing the record companies should have come up with for themselves ) that may make on-line music workable.
The queston is, "Will record companies get the point before the industry is on it's knees?"
An industry that loses it's market has to make changes. So why does the the RIAA resemble the Bourbons?

[yellohut]

i download movies because i'm not very good at ripping myself. i can't seem to get the quality right..
the way i see it... so long as the movie or song can be played at all.. it can be digitized.. some of the technology they're working on is to prevent you from playing the cd/dvd in your computer.. but as long as i can get it to play in a regualr cd/dvd player i can always use my computer to record the analog output... with no real noticible difference.

[Strider]

I for one am a little leary of downloading movies from the net, for getting a virus and/or trojan from sites like Kazza or Grokster are pretty decent. There are programs that will make good copies of of your original movies, the one I use is DvdXCopy and it does a pretty a great job plus it puts a short message before movies stating that this DVD is a backup of an original. While this isn't going to prevent illegal copies being made, it does renforces honest people to be honest.

[pam123]

I'm not interested in downloading movies or music for free.
I'd gladly pay, I have other things to do with my time, but it seems the industry hasn't listened to it's market ( MovieLink is a great idea, if only it had more movies and didn't cost more than BlockBuster).
I can only assume that extortionate MusicNet and the other sites are some sort of bad joke.
We're looking at a distribution shift here and the respective industries haven't caught up with their buyers.
Actually that's kind.
They're planning on trapping the consumers to make more money and because they're butt-headed idiots.
We have the sort of market war going on that any industry with sense would try to avoid.
I await developments with interest.