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 waving a white flag is that their new lawsuit against producers of file swapping software is exceptionally weak. Against Napster they had a reasonable case, because the music files were being hosted by Napster itself on its server farm. That meant that Napster was actually party to copyright infringement. Napster tried to hide behind the principle that it was no more responsible for the music on its site than would AOL be for personal web pages they host -- but that was wrong and the judge quite rightfully rejected that argument.However, when you talk about MusicCity, the latest target of RIAA's wrath, the situation is different. MusicCity creates a software package which they give away. When the package runs, it displays advertising for which MusicCity is paid but aside from that it doesn't connect to MusicCity's servers. Rather, it is used by people to create their own file swapping networks, and the information moves directly from one person to another. MusicCity's product is legally identical to a photocopier or a CD burner. The company making it has no control whatever over how it is used. It can be used to violate copyright, and both are indeed used that way routinely. Yet the manufacturers of those products are not themselves liable in any way for violation of copyright, and copyright law cannot be used to prevent sales of CD burners or of photocopiers. By the same token, a VCR has that same ability and it's even more blatant, since easily 98% of the use of VCRs is for capture of broadcast material all of which is copyrighted. And yet the landmark Sony decision declared that VCR manufacturers were not liable for copyright infringement even if it was routine with those products. Sony now makes a device specifically intended for burning your own CD anthologies by copying music tracks from other CDs; I have seen no indication that RIAA intends to try to stomp on that, either. RIAA is trying to do to MusicCity what it did to Napster, but I don't think it's going to work this time. The EFF is putting together a legal dream-team on MusicCity's behalf, and they are going to fight based on the fact that MusicCity itself is not involved in transacting copyrighted material. The legal issues are far from clear, despite a year-and-a-half of litigation by Napster and the record industry. Federal judges have deemed Napster potentially liable for copyright infringement damages largely because it ran a central indexing server that allowed people to swap files, and e-mails showed that executives knew massive amounts of copyrighted music were being traded. I disagree; I think the issue is extremely clear. RIAA doesn't have a case, and they're going to go down in flames. (discussion in progress) |
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