RIAA ‘porn’ ploy in Barker case
p2pnet.net News:- January 26 will be an interesting day for people who believe sharing music with each other is a normal, accepted cultural occurrence; and, for Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG who, as part of their bizarre marketing plan, accuse people who share, including 12-year-old children, of being hard-core “thieves”.
Oral arguments will be heard by judge Kenneth M. Karas in Elektra v Barker, a milestone case brought by the Big 4 against New York mental health worker Tenise Barker.
The RIAA says if there’s a shared files folder holding copyrighted song files, and it’s been online for even an instant, the owner is automatically an illegal distributor.
The Big 4′s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) knows if it loses, it’ll also lose its most powerful weapon against the millions of Americans it says are “criminal” file sharers.
So in a hand-delivered letter to Karas, it’s pleading for a dismissal and has cited a pornography case and the discredited Australian p2p file sharing application, Kazaa, which so many victims have used, to suggest making available is the same as distribution.
However, Barker’s lawyers say the porn case has absolutely no bearing on Elektra v Barker because it wasn’t a copyright infringement case and, “did not even involve the construction of the term ‘distribution’ as that word is uniquely defined in the Copyright Act,” says a court document.
Kazaa is, meanwhile, also now being sued in its own right
Also See:
milestone case – End of the RIAA terror reign?, January 1, 2007
no bearing – RIAA Cites Child Pornography Case to Judge in Elektra v. Barker; Barker Says Case is Irrelevant, January 10, 2007
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