The tide ebbs on RIAA, MPAA ‘reign of terror’
p2pnet news view MPAA | RIAA News:- It looks as though we’re now past the high water mark of RIAA / MPAA attempts to rewrite copyright law, says Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman (right).
“The credibility of their radical arguments is gone, and the tide is ebbing on their reign of terror,” Beckerman writes, going on »»»
The trend I’m seeing is that judges are reading the statute and following the statute, the one exception being Judge Karas’s decision in Elektra v. Barker, in which he incorrectly equated “distribution” with “publication”, a result he reached by elevating scraps he’d read from the legislative history over the plain wording of the statute itself.
The high water mark of the madness was probably the RIAA/MPAA’s success in getting Judge Davis to disregard the jury instruction he had planned to give, and to use their instruction, which disregarded — indeed contradicted — the plain words of the US Copyright Act, in Capitol v. Thomas, resulting in an absurd verdict of $222,000 for infringement of 24 99-cent song files.
[The] decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings, was most heartening, as all of the content cartel’s requests for the Court to disregard the plain meaning of the statute were rejected.
In the Cartoon Network ruling, the court overturned a summary judgment to film and TV producers who claimed Cablevision’s system would directly infringe their copyrights by making unauthorized reproductions and by engaging in public performances, says Law.com.
Now, judge Michael Davis, who heard the Thomas case, “said Congress didn’t support Verrilli’s position that proof of downloading by others from Thomas’ share folder was implied and not necessary,” says Beckerman, quoting Wired.
“Why didn’t Congress do that?” Davis asked.
‘Verrilli’ is Donald B. Verrilli Jr, a legal gun hired by the RIAA to persuade Davis to ignore his own misgivings.
The Copyright Act gives a rights holder the exclusive right “to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending,” says the RIvTP post, adding:
“I’m glad to see the law being applied in a conservative and rational manner, and I’m glad to see the content owners’ unprincipled attempts to rewrite the law being rejected.”
Click here for p2pnet’s Jammie Thomas digest.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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August 5th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
“It looks as though we’re now past the high water mark of RIAA / MPAA attempts to rewrite copyright law, says Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman (right).”
How so? Both the RIAA and MPAA are hard at work trying to get the ACTA treaty passed in secret so that it can dramatically alter copyright law. Meanwhile the MPAA is pushing the FCC for a waiver to selectively disable the analog outputs on cable boxes so that they can offer new movies to subscribers before they’re released on DVD.
And if the Jammie Thomas verdict is overturned and “making available” is declared to be insufficient to find someone guilty of infringement, I guarantee you that there will be a bill before Congress within a month that specifically states that “making available” IS infringement. It’ll probably be sponsored by “Hollywood” Howard Berman.
August 30th, 2008 at 5:42 am
The intelligence of the RIAA and MPAA is equivalent to a selfish, irrational 8 year old. They won’t give up anytime soon.