A judge has asked for some "learned" opinions to clear up a point of law, although one has to ask why when the law is clear.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/mpaa-says-no-pr.htmlA Duluth, Minnesota, jury in October dinged Thomas $222,000 for "making available" 24 songs on the Kazaa network in the nation's first and only RIAA case to go to trial. United States District Court Judge Michael Davis instructed the 12 panelists that they need only find Thomas had an open share folder, not that anyone from the public actually copied her files.
Judge Davis suggested last month that he might have erred in giving that "making available" jury instruction, and invited briefing from the community at large. A hearing is set for August, and the judge is mulling whether to order a mistrial.
The deadline to submit briefs to the judge was Friday. Among the briefs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the United States Internet Industry Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association all jointly filed a brief, saying the law did not allow damages for "attempted" copyright infringement.
"Given the serious consequences that flow from copyright’s strict liability regime, the court should resist plaintiffs imprecations to expand that regime absent an unequivocal expression of Congressional intent," the groups wrote, noting that the language in the Copyright Act demands actual distribution to the public of protected works.
It was a similar brief in tone to the one that a group of 10 intellectual property scholars lodged earlier in the week.
But the MPAA, long an ally to the RIAA, which has sued more than 20,000 individuals for file sharing of copyrighted music, told Judge Davis that peer-to-peer users automatically should be liable for infringement.
"The only purpose for placing copyrighted works in the shared folder is, of course, to 'share,' by making those works available to countless other P2P networks," the MPAA wrote.
It seems the MPAA pro-extortion group are trying to ask the judge to change the law, after already not declaring a mis-trial when the evidence is clear that is what occured I think he is on shakey ground with trying to rule a change in the wording of the laws intent, also any such attempt will be met with a ferocious defence of the existing and clearly worded interpretation used by all lawyers worldwide.
