Wednesday, April 05, 2006

US Department of Justice Says It May Want to File Papers in Elektra v. Barker

The United States Attorney's Office has written to the judge in Elektra v. Barker, indicating that the Department of Justice may wish to file a "Statement of Interest" in the case in order to "express the views of the United States regarding the scope of the distribution right embodied in sec. 106(3) of the Copyright Act."

April 4, 2006, letter of Assistant U. S. Attorney Rebecca C. Martin*

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Keywords: copyright download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs

3 comments:

raybeckerman said...

In view of the fact that I am one of the attorneys working on the case, it would probably not be appropriate for me to speculate on that.

Perhaps some of you other lawyers out there might have some thoughts on the subject.

StephenH said...

How can one infringe a copyright if they didn't copy anything? I beleive that RIAA should have the burden to prove that a pirated file was ACTUALLY UPLOADED, and not fair use, or other legal manner.

One defense you may have is to prove that there is a DEFAULT SHARE ON WINDOWS. For example, on your local network, type in "\\IPADDRESS\c$" where IPADDRESS is the IP Address of your computer, and a login prompt should pop up, or in some cases it may even let you in if your username and password are the same. Windows has local network file sharing built in, and so does Mac OS X (via System Preferences and Connect to Server commands), as well as other OSes. This case has the potential to make illegal any PC operating system with local network sharing, any file server, or anything else.

This case has the possibly to extend liability to each user, every user with a local area network. I would suggest calling Novell, Bayan, Cisco Systems, Free Software Foundation, and others to see if they want to file an amicus in this case.

raybeckerman said...

The trade associations representing the major computer companies have put in an amicus brief.