RIAA Wins Again: Judge Says LimeWire Induced Copyright Infringement
from the and-there-goes-another-one dept
This is hardly a surprise, given earlier rulings on various file sharing systems, but a court has ruled in favor of the RIAA and against Limewire, saying that Limewire "engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement."You can read the full decision here:
Either way, I'm still wondering if, based on the Supreme Court's ruling in the Grokster case, which solidified this non-legislative concept of "inducement" for copyright infringement (something that Congress had chosen not to put into the law -- despite having the opportunity), if it's possible to create a system for more efficiently sharing files that doesn't violate the inducement standard. In most of these cases, part of the problem is that these sites advertise themselves for the ability to infringe on copyrights, and employees at the sites were active in helping users infringe. As such, you can see how that's clear inducement. But what if a site was set up that didn't do all of those things, but was still widely used for infringement. Would that still be inducement? If so, that seems incredibly troubling. The law should not be set up in a way to outright ban a technology that has a wide variety of useful applications, and is used for plenty of legitimate purposes, even if it's also used (even if regularly used) for infringing purposes.
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Filed Under: copyright, inducement, limewire
Companies: grokster, limewire, riaa
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Does it hurt now?
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the masnick is great
we surrender our will
as of this date!
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If you hate Mike so much, why do you keep reading Techdirt and posting messages on his website?
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nope
DID it hurt me grabbing all that?
and i travel a lot so guess what happens
I give without the net
YOU LOSE
I R WINNER
AHOY
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Useless
Nobody uses LW for real sharing, what a bunch of retards.
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Re: Useless
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The hell? If I recall correctly, even the Grokster decision didn't go as far as to say "Your programs (and presumably websites) must proactively filter copyrighted content or else". Or am I reading this incorrectly?
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Tell that to Viacom...
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When they are on stronger footing, they will shake down the big search engines for a settlement. They will be looking for a "search tax" that they can collect from the guys with business models that actually work.
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Well then....
But I can sell guns legally so long as tell people to NOT rob banks or kill people and I go about it in a proactive manner?
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Re: Well then....
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You know what induces copyright infringement?
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Re: You know what induces copyright infringement?
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Re: You know what induces copyright infringement?
Human nature. It's almost as if the urge to make copies is in our very own DNA!
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Re: Re: You know what induces copyright infringement?
Oh I like that. Dress it up a bit and we have T-shirt material. "Making copies is in my genes!" (or something like that.)
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Inducement Threshold
that's happening right now. big content has filed an amicus curiae in viacom v. youtube claiming just this scenario. oh and claiming as well that the dmca doesn't apply because youtube does not provide a service.
the only consequence of this decision, which likely will be appealed methinks, will be the same as napster/grokster: said file-sharing will just further de-centralize.
their only hope is to destroy the network.
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Re: Inducement Threshold
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31150167/Copyright-owners-amicus
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Things that make you go hmmmm ....
and
"the evidence reveals that LW has not implemented in a meaningful way any of the technological barriers and design choices that are available to diminish infringement through file-sharing programs, such as hash-based filtering, acoustic fingerprinting, filtering based on other digital metadata, and aggressive user education."
FTP - Fail
Web Lockers - Fail
E-Mail - Fail
UseNet - Fail
Thinking outside the box ... The guys at Limewire should state ... "we are perfectly willing to implement these filtering technologies if RIAA provides them to us and shows they are effective and dont create excessive false positives"
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Key point: LimeWire filtered out their own stuff
As for whether it can be done legally, note that the *AAs of the world aren't bothering to go after torrent client developers, they're only going after the torrent search engines and tracker hosts.
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The Internet "induces copyright infringement"
Ugh.. I'm soo damn sick of this "inducing" crap that I could puke. Just like the following:
Buying a car can induce global warming
Eating can induce me having to use the toilet
Exercise can induce sweating and exhaustion
The MPAA/RIAA is inducing me to kill several people due to the movie/music telling me to.
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Re: The Internet "induces copyright infringement"
As I am sure you are aware, this has been tried some time ago and it was shot down. I wonder what has influenced the courts to view a similar situation and come up with the opposite conclusion?
At the time, I think one of the arguments was that a corporation could not be held accountable like a person is, or something like that. Anyway ... now that corporations are people (they can even run for office) possibly this vector may become fruitful. (evil laughter)
Interesting.
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http://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-gets-injunction-to-disconnect-the-pirate-bay-100512/
It appears that Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Paramount Pictures,Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. have obtained a preliminary injunction against CB3ROB Ltd from the Regional Court of Hamburg.
The injunction, which was granted without an oral hearing, states that the CB3ROB company (and its Managing Director Mr. Sven Olaf Kamphuis personally) are hereby prohibited from connecting The Pirate Bay website and associated servers to the Internet.
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Shit
I wonder, though, which country will pick up the slack?
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