RIAA scores in Usenet case
p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music are well-pleased.
“In Arista Records v. Usenet.com, Inc., both of the RIAA’s motions — for discovery sanctions and for summary judgment — have been granted, and the matter referred to the Magistrate Judge for determination of damages and an appropriate injunction,” says Recording Industry vs The People.
Or as CNet News sums it up, federal judge Harold Baer jr, “ruled in favor of the music industry on all its main theories: that Usenet.com is guilty of direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement.
Baer also decided Usenet, “can’t claim protection under the Sony Betamax decision. That ruling says companies can’t be held liable of contributory infringement if the device is ‘capable of significant non-infringing uses’,” says the story.
Now, “This decision is another example of courts recognizing the value of copyrighted music and taking action against companies and individuals who are engaging in wide scale infringement,” crows RIAA lawyer Steve Marks. “We hope that other bad actors who are engaging in similar activity will take note of this decisive opinion.”
Says the court document »»»
This action arises out of allegations of widespread infringement of copyrights in sound recordings owned by Plaintiffs Arista Records LLC; Atlantic Recordings Corporation; BMG Music; Capitol Records, LLC; Caroline Records; Elektra Entertainment Group Inc.; Interscope Records; LaFace Records LLC; Maverick Recording Company; Sony BMG Music Entertainment; UMG Recordings, Inc; Virgin Records America, Inc.; Warner Bros. Records Inc; and Zomba Recording LLC (“Plaintiffs”), copies of which are available for download by accessing a network of computers called the USENET through services provided by Defendants Usenet.com, Inc. (“UCI”), Sierra Corporate Design, Inc. (“Sierra”), and spearheaded by their director and sole shareholder, Gerald Reynolds (“Reynolds”) (collectively, “Defendants”). Specifically, Plaintiffs brought this action alleging (1) direct infringement of the Plaintiffs’ exclusive right of distribution under 17 U.S.C. § 106(3);
(2) inducement of copyright infringement; (3) contributory copyright infringement; and (4) vicarious copyright infringement.
The RIAA accused Usenet.com of, “intentionally destroying the contents on seven hard drives that contained employee-generated data; providing false information; and attempting to prevent employees from giving depositions by sending them to Europe,” says CNet, adding:
“The judge found the evidence credible but denied the RIAA’s motion to hand it a victory based solely on the misconduct. Instead, the judge sanctioned Usenet.com ‘from asserting (the company’s) affirmative defense of protection under the DMCA’s safe harbor provision’.”
Stay tuned.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Recording Industry vs The People - RIAA wins case against Usenet.com based on discovery sanctions & summary judgment, June 30, 2009
CNet News – RIAA triumphs in Usenet copyright case, June 30, 2009
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July 1st, 2009 at 1:02 pm
“prevent employees from giving depositions by sending them to Europe” – Of course they were not sending them for vacations, Usenet.com maintains a Eropean server farm(s) for their customers.
July 1st, 2009 at 3:13 pm
please dont confuse usenet.com and the protocol known as usenet
‘One notable difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one another. These servers are loosely connected in a variable mesh. ‘ – wiki
big win, big woopdedoo, I never heard of usenet.com until the asshats busted it. Notice how on lamescream media websites this news is above USA troops leaving Iraq, and below details of wacko jacko’s post-mortem circus.
While i ‘feel’ for p2p advocates when they get busted (awwwww), i typically look a little closer….
If you look down the barrel of a gun while pulling the trigger without ‘grasping’ the outcome, then, well, your an idiot.
‘If you leave muddy footprints while surfing the net, they can see where you trod.’ – surfer
stw, with at least a modicum of intelligence.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
As someone who downloads from Usenet on a daily basis, this ruling scares the crap out of me. No, I’m not worried that I’ll get sued or anything like, I’m worried that the RIAA will use this stupid judge’s ruling to try and sue every other Usenet provider into oblivion.
The judge basically said that they were responsible for what people post through their servers, and if one Usenet provider is guilty of that, then all Usenet providers are guilty of that.
They will use this as a club to try and eliminate all the alt.binaries groups. Of course, the elimination of those groups would also put the providers out of business since nobody is going to pay huge monthly fees for text groups.
I would REALLY like to hear Liz chip in here with an opinion from Giganews’s legal department on the potential ramifications this ruling, if it stands, will have on other Usenet providers. At least those in the US.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Also, I’d love to hear Ray B.’s take on what this means for other providers…
July 1st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Usenet may be the next major battleground between the RIAA and file sharing community. Unlike torrents and other P2P, downloading from Usenet is 100% risk-free: no lawsuits, no ISP warnings, no 3-strikes. Usenet thwarts all these RIAAs methods to supress file sharing.
Usenet.com was an exceptional case because they purposely directed users to infringing content and advertised it as a safe alternative to the lawsuit risk of downloading MP3s from P2P. Most usenet providers seem to take a “see no evil” approach: they must surely know that illegal stuff is there, but all they can do is secretly hope users will quietly find it on their own.
Even if this lawsuit results in Usenet.com shutting down, it won’t make any difference in reducing infringement because all the other usenet newsgroup providers carry exactly the same content.
Of course no one pays Giganews $30 a month just to read text discussions – and Giganews would rather not know what people are using it for.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:46 pm
IANAL, but… The commercial Usenet services have been living on borrowed time since Grokster, where the Supremes threw out the substantial-noninfringing-uses standard of the Betamax case and replaced it with a very vague “are you making the bulk of your income from copyright infringement” standard. I expect that something like this Grokster standard will be found to trump the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions; it will be argued that the DMCA Safe Harbor was intended to provide a defense to incidental or occasional infringement, but should not apply when a random statistical sampling shows that the majority of the defendant’s traffic is infringing.
Nothing like this came into play with the Usenet.com case, as the defendants so pissed off the judge that he decided to destroy them without allowing any defense. But the surviving commercial Usenet services will have to ask themselves if they want to bet everything they own on a DMCA Safe Harbor defense working.
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:37 am
If they are fined the maximum statutory at $150000 per infringement, they still only get a $1.35 Million fine… Less than Jammie Thomas did for 24 songs