Tag: Copyright

Ernest Miller is on a roll over at LawMeme. His latest post asks why people treat HTTP (i.e., the web) and peer-to-peer systems so differently: P2P and http uploading and downloading of copyrighted MP3s are, essentially, functionally equivalent from a copyright point of view. From a technical point of view, however, there are significant differences.…

Eugene Volokh and Lawrence Solum are having an interesting debate on the theory behind intellectual property. So far there have been four postings: Volokh’s initial posting, explaining via a clever example why it might make sense to treat information as property Solum’s response, challenging Volokh’s example Volokh’s response to Solum Solum’s response, digging deeper into…

Louis Trager at the Washington Internet Daily (no link; subscription only) reported yesterday that the RIAA is planning on filing hundreds of additional lawsuits against peer-to-peer users within the next month. RIAA VP Matt Oppenheim also expressed outrage at the criticism of the group’s amnesty program. Trager quotes Oppenheim as saying, “We can only give…

The RIAA launched its long-awaited lawsuit storm today. John Borland at CNet news.com reports that 261 copyright infringement suits were filed against individual defendants. Several of the suits have already settled, reportedly for around $3,000 each.

The RIAA is reportedly planning to offer amnesty to file sharers. According to the reports, just after the RIAA launches its upcoming flurry of lawsuits against file sharers, it will offer a deal to everybody else: send a letter to RIAA admitting that you have infringed in the past, and in exchange RIAA will promise…

A few years ago I was summoned for jury duty. The summons was an old-fashioned computer-printed document spit out by an IBM mainframe computer down at the county courthouse. Procedural rules required that prospective jurors be chosen by an officer of the court, so a judge had apparently deputized the mainframe as an officer of…

As expected, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s temporary injunction against the Aimster file-sharing service. The Court’s opinion was written by Judge Richard Posner. I noted three interesting things in the opinion. First, the court seemed unimpressed with Aimster’s legal representation. At several points the opinion notes arguments that Aimster…

The Washington Post online has a nice summary/directory of articles on the RIAA’s upcoming crackdown on peer-to-peer file sharers. The crackdown seems like a risky move, but it seems the industry can’t think of anything else to do about their P2P problem. When the industry sued Napster into oblivion, Napster was replaced, hydra-like, by a…

Senator Orrin Hatch issued a short press release yesterday, backtracking from his previous (mis-)statement about remedies for copyright infringement. There are some interesting tidbits in the release, which I quote here in full, with the surprising bits italicized: HATCH COMMENTS ON COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT Washington – Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary…

Jesse Jordan, one of the students sued by the RIAA, is back in the news. It’s not that anything new has happened; it’s just that Jordan and his father are complaining about the unfairness of the suit and of the $12,000 settlement. It’s true, as Seth Finkelstein observes, that continuing to fight the suit was…