This is the second time they have been told this by the courts, lets hope Richard Gabriel stops wasting his clients time and money, surely he can get a real job ?
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/15773RIAA lawyer Ira Schwartz had tried to argue MP3s made from legally bought CDs and stored on Pamela and Jeffery Howell’s PC were “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.
“The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation.”
In a case centering on New York social worker Tenise Barker, Connecticut district judge Janet Bond Arterton threw out out the RIAA’s infamous ‘making available claim which, “comprises the bottom line for all the Big 4 P2P file sharing cases,” p2pnet posted in February.
This time around, the RIAA was demanding a summary judgement against the Howells, claiming they’d infringed Big 4 copyrights
Instead of proving the Howells actually distributed music files, the RIAA claims only that they had songs in the Kazaa ’shared’ folder of peer-to-peer file-sharing software Kazaa, “without any proof that anyone other than their own investigators actually downloaded the songs from them,” said the EFF.
“If the RIAA wants to keep bringing these suits and collecting big settlements, then they have to follow the law and prove their case,” said senior EFF lawyer Fred von Lohmann, adding:
"It’s not enough to say the law could have been broken. The RIAA must prove it actually was broken.”
This sure sounds to me like the RIAA just earned themselves a new dummy and rattle set for Cary and his cronies to throw about
On a serious note we can now fairly conclusively say this settles the making available arguement and the copying your own cd aspect all in one, the Judge indicated both claims where invalid, talk about digging your industry a pit.
I,m sure most of you will act accordingly in boycotting RIAA-member company products while they call you a criminal for ripping your purchased CD.
After all we all know who the real criminals are, ask anyone at the RIAA how much tax they paid last year, be ready for a long silence.
