In response to the post “Internet2: My Space is Your Space?” I looked up the RIAA. What I found is an article that reveals the “unknown” means by which the RIAA is persecuting downloaders, or at least one of them. “Judge Says Music Sharing Doesn’t Necessarily Equal Infringement”, which comes from Wired, covers Judge Neil V. Wake’s unusual opinion in the case of Atlantic vs. Pamela and Jeffery Howell. I think the title kind of makes what is so unique about this case pretty obvious. Judge Wake felt that music sharing wasn’t necessarily infringement because of the way the RIAA found proof that the Howells were providing illegal access to music: they committed the infringement themselves. MediaSentry, at the behest of the RIAA, “download[ed] 12 copyrighted songs from the Howell’s Kazaa account at two in the morning on January 30, 2006.” Though this proved that the Howells had the potential to provide illegal access to these songs, Judge Wake ultimately believed that there was no proof that, other than by MediaSentry, the material had been downloaded. Essentially what MediaSentry did is like an employee at a grocery store slipping unpaid food into a person’s bag and then accusing him or her of shoplifting. I also find this to be underhanded because, under normal albeit illegal circumstances, both the downloader and the uploader would be held accountable. In a scenario like this, only one party is “guilty” and it is because of the company’s own nefarious actions to prove that the person is guilty. A set up like this makes one wonder how much of the whole situation of illegal downloading is arranged? It’s probably a little too much of a paranoid assumption but then again, if each downloaded song is sue-able for $1000, whereas if it is bought legally it costs $1, the financial gain maybe worth providing easy access to the material.
As a side note, this article was written April 30, 2008, so it’s nothing new but pretty fascinating.
Here is the link: http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/04/judge-says-musi/
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