Choices like that are giving consumers more options. See the quality content at http://www.knobtweakers.net, for instance. These options will continue to expand in the future, and present an even bigger threat to the RIAA — no new content to bring to market.

End User Victory In Michigan (Followup 7-03)

DirecTV v. Eugene Karpinsky, Case No: 02-CV-73929, United States District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan. The Court issued an Order granting Summary Judgment as to all counts of DirecTV’s case against Eugene Karpinsky. The Court affirmed that contrary to DirecTV’s argument, mere possession of two smartcard recovery systems is insufficient to support a finding of liability under
47 U.S.C. Sec. 605(a), 18 U.S.C. Sec 2511(1)(a), or 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2512(1)(B)or demonstrate a claim of conversion.

DIRECTV, INCORPORATED Norman C. Ankers
plaintiff [COR LD NTC ret]
Bradley H. Darling
[COR LD NTC ret]
Honigman, Miller,
660 Woodward Avenue
Suite 2290
Detroit, MI 48226-3583
313-465-7000

vs.

EUGENE KARPINSKY John T. Hermann
defendant [COR LD NTC ret]
2684 W. Eleven Mile Road
Suite 100
Berkley, MI 48072
248-591-9291

U.S. District Court

for the Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit)

CIVIL DOCKET FOR CASE #: 02-CV-73929

DIRECTV Inc v. Karpinsky

Filed: 10/01/02
Assigned to: Judge George Caram Steeh

Otherwise, excellent points are made.

It’s one thing to have a can of gasoline in the garage for the lawnmover and a pack of matches in your pockets. It’s quite another to dump the gasoline all over everything in the garage, strike a match and toss it into the garage. Holding that the ‘potential’ for anything or ‘the willingness to engage in’ anything rises to the level of criminal conduct is just crap. It’s tantamount to creating ‘thought crimes’. If infringement is to be punished, then actual infringement (creation of a distinct 2nd copy) must have been proven to occur and not just because the accused had a pack of matches and a credit card receipt from the filling station in their pocket.

–TG

So, if I have a copy of Madonna – Like A Virgin.MP3 …

… which I know to be a real music file…
… and I search for files with the same hash…
… and you happen to show up on the list of search results as a peer having the same hash…
…that should count as some kind of evidence…

unless of course you claim to have spoofed the hash

One would think that the intention was would have something to do. For example if you know that distributing ilegal copies of cds (labeled as a copyright protected work) and you put the fake cds for sale through an Internet ad, the making them available through the ad is to me enough proof that the infringement was made, even though there is no proof that a single cd was actually copied or sold.

Quite different from kids sharing and copying digital files whose copyright status is unknown.

So I will answer my own question:
Allowing Internet access to song digital files should be infringement if the work is known to be a copyrigh protected work and the person allowing access or copying the files should know (for example: publicity company, music publisher, a record company). Certainly kids and normal people have no reason to know copyright law, the copyright status of a song or the how-to knowledge to investigate copyright status.

It should be noted that my explanations are not law based (the copyright law and its jurisprudence is all screwed up) and are made with song files in mind. For other types of files, for example, pdf file downloading, the situation is far more complex. Why, just this past month I downloaded over 25 pdf files off the Internet and most of them prohibit their copying, all of which makes me a big infringer and criminal, as induced by the owners of the copyrights who could, I guess, sue me for copying their files they induced me to copy, if they find out I did what seemed to be a perfectly normal thing.

Of course I do not have to worry, since the people that place pdf files on the net are normal, not criminal type people, so they will not be spying on me to see what I download, as the RIAA seems to be doing.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

In the USA there was no need to provide evidence to get the disclosure of names, and thus be able to scare people into settling out of court. In Canada we have privacy protection laws (PIPEDA) which meant that the ISPs could not disclose the customer names without a court order.

Note: There is nothing in fair use (in the USA) or fair dealings (Canada) that authorizes a private citizen from communicating music to the public without authorization from the copyright holder.

I have a hard time understanding those who want to take things too far onto the other extreme from the recording industry. The industry wants to shut down all P2P activity (authorized or not, given it is the authorized and non-infringing P2P that threatens their business model the most), while other commentators want to legalize all P2P activity (authorized or not, erradicating any exclusive rights from the copyright holder). I consider both of these extremes to be wrong, even if I believe that legalizing all sharing is less harmful to the legitimate interests of the full spectrum of musicians.

The fact is that there is a growing number of authors who eithor explicitly (through Creative Commons types licenses) or implicitly (through where they publish the works) are authorizing activities such as non-commercial verbatim redistribution (p2p sharing, etc).

We need to separate out the concepts of being under copyright, being authorized by a copyright holder, and something being an infringing activity as these are 3 very separate concepts. Something can be under copyright and authorized to have specific things done. An activity might not be authorized by the copyright holder, but is not infringing as copyright does not grant absolute rights to eithor the copyright holder or the general public.

Prior to digital copyright most activities were non-infringing activities as copyright did not regulate them. The few things which copyright regulated (copying, distribution, communication via telecommunications) were not things that the general public wanted to do (share/rent/loan/resell physical media, access using any tools to assist and under any conditions, use media as furnature, whatever).

In a case where I was part where we sued because our songs were stolen, the judge claimed that the theft and down the line authorization by the robber was not infringement because we did not prove direct infringement. In other words, authorization alone was not infringement.

Clearly the judge’s decision, recently uphelpd by a federal appeals court is at odd with the comment …. “Because allowing others access to copyrighted material is also a violation of the copyright act”

Could someone with legal knowhow explain this.

I hope Mr. Hermann is right.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

So if youngsters use a pay to peer service thier parents are going to be wary of anything that uses any type of peer to peer becuse of the cartels scare campain .