Supreme Court Apparently Interested In 'Innocent Infringer' RIAA Case

from the this-could-get-interesting dept

We've been covering the Whitney Harper "innocent infringement" case for a while now. Harper, as a teenager, was sued in one of the tens of thousands of RIAA lawsuits, for sharing some music via Limewire. US copyright law has a provision for "innocent infringement," where it lets you lower the statutory award amounts from a minimum of $750 down to $200. Harper made the case that she was unaware that sharing music via Limewire was unauthorized, as it seemed just like an online radio to her. While the district court sided with Harper in saying that it was innocent infringement, the record labels appealed and the appeals court reversed, claiming that because the CD cases of the music in question had proper copyright notices, Harper was properly notified... even though she never saw those cases.

Harper appealed to the Supreme Court earlier this year. At the time, I noted that while this is an important issue, I doubted the Supreme Court would hear the case. However, indicating a fair bit of interest, the Court has asked the RIAA to respond to Harper's appeal -- which generally indicates serious interest in potentially taking the case. According to Wired, the court normally agrees to hear less than 1% of appeals, but if it requests more info on a petition, then it tends to take 34% of those cases. Still long odds, but a lot more likely...

Filed Under: copyright, innocent infringement, supreme court, whitney harper

Judge Considering Innocent Infringement Provision For Cat Blogger Sued By Righthaven

from the just-dismiss-the-case dept

The Righthaven saga continues. The Las Vegas Sun (who seems to be having fun reporting daily on this operation set up by its competitor), is noting that in the first court hearing on a Righthaven lawsuit, the judge appeared to want to figure out the absolute smallest sum that he could set for an unemployed, non-commercial cat blogger (written from the perspective of a cat) who was sued by Righthaven for posting an article, with a link and credit, about a fire that killed some birds. The magistrate judge clearly wanted the two sides to settle quickly, and kept pushing Righthaven boss Steven Gibson on how much it actually cost to file one of these lawsuits, and even challenged his initial claim of $1,800, and got him to push the number lower. The judge also brought up the potential of awarding $200 in damages -- which is the amount allowed for cases of innocent infringement. It seems pretty clear that the magistrate judge is not impressed with at least this lawsuit.

Separately, the article notes that the WEHCO Media newspaper chain -- apparently totally and completely oblivious to the massive negative publicity Righthaven has generated for the Las Vegas Review-Journal -- has become the second media company to sign up for Righthaven's brand of "copyright enforcement." Paul Smith, the President of WEHCO apparently said:

"It's a pretty serious matter when someone takes your copy, information you've spent a lot of money to produce."

To which we wonder if he even realizes what Righthaven does. First of all, having a random blog or forum repost your content with a link back to you isn't "a pretty serious matter." It's someone giving you some attention. It's certainly not taking anything away from you. Anyway, if you want a list of newspapers not to link to, WEHCO publishes the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (and the NW Arkansas Democrat-Gazette), the Benton County Daily Record, the California Democrat, the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Fulton Sun, the News Tribune, the NW Arkansas Times, the Rogers Morning News, the Springdale Morning News, the Banner News, Camden News, El Dorado News-Times, the Texarkana Gazette and The Sentinel-Record. Apparently none of those papers want you alerting anyone to the news they publish.

Filed Under: blogs, cat blogger, copyright, innocent infringement
Companies: righthaven

Did The RIAA Just Destroy Its Own Argument Concerning Innocent Infringement?

from the whooops dept

We just saw that amicus briefs are being filed over whether or not the Supreme Court should hear the case concerning whether or not an "innocent infringement" defense is a legitimate defense to an RIAA file sharing lawsuit. If you don't recall, a district court found that a teenager's claim of "innocent infringement" -- which knocks the potential statutory minimum down from $750 to $200 -- was a legitimate defense. An appeals court overturned the ruling, and said that the girl, Whitney Harper, should have known that downloading music was infringing because any CD has a copyright notice (even though she never saw the CDs of the music she downloaded).

I have no idea if the Supreme Court will take the case, but the JoelFightsBack website is pointing out that RIAA boss Cary Sherman, in a recent interview, appears to have undermined the industry's own claims in a recent interview with Vice magazine:

The time had come to shift over to a strategy that would be more effective. The lawsuits were obviously controversial in the media, but the reality was that most people had no idea that what they were doing was illegal at the time of those lawsuits. We did all sorts of surveys. We tried PR firms. We did everything to look at how to begin to change the culture of using illegal P2P. We realized that 1) none of the messages resonated, and 2) most people had no idea that what they were doing was illegal, let alone thought it was wrong. That completely flipped overnight when we started the lawsuits. It made an enormous impression and we were constantly generating dinner conversations about what you may or may not do with your computer. We think it would be very good if there were more such conversations about all the other things that can be done inappropriately with a computer. So we think it had a tremendous impact by very clearly searing in the minds of the public that maybe getting all of this stuff for free isn't legal after all.

That seems to undermine the claims that of course people knew it was illegal, doesn't it? Not surprisingly, the Sherman interview is chock full of other bizarre statements. Even just this one little quote is pretty funny with him trying to somehow redefine the lawsuits as a successful PR strategy. Of course, if they were actually successful in educating people, then wouldn't there be fewer people accessing unauthorized music today than when they started? Of course, the exact opposite is true. The rest of the article is filled with similarly laughable attempts by Sherman to pretend that the RIAA's strategy over the past decade has been successful, rather than a complete disaster that has helped the major record labels speed up their own demise.

Filed Under: cary sherman, copyright, innocent infringement, supreme court, whitney harper
Companies: riaa

Supreme Court Asked To Explore Whether 'Innocent Infringement' Is A Legit Response In File Sharing Cases

from the might-not-matter-after-acta... dept

A few years back, we wrote about a teenager who used "innocent infringement" as a defense to an unauthorized file sharing lawsuit brought against her by the RIAA. Innocent infringement is in the law, as a way to reduce the statutory awards from the $750 minimum to $200. It doesn't absolve the person or get them out of paying, but can greatly lower the amount. The district court agreed, and said she could just pay the $200 rate. However, an appeals court overturned, saying that because CDs have copyright notices on them -- even though the girl never saw the CDs -- the girl should have known that the mp3s were infringing. The logic there made very little sense. How can you hold someone to a clause that was never seen?

The girl's lawyers have now appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which now has the option of weighing in on the matter (the Wired article linked here is a little misleading, in that at the beginning and in the headline, it implies that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case). If I had to guess, I'd say the Supreme Court won't take the case, even though it is an important issue.

Filed Under: copyright, innocent infringement, supreme court

Court Denies Innocent Infringement Defense To Teen For Sharing Music

from the reasonable? dept

You may recall a few years back that a teenager, Whitney Harper, who was getting sued by the record labels/RIAA for file sharing, claimed that the amount she should have to pay up should be less than the $750 statutory minimum, because she was an "innocent infringer," unaware that what she was doing in listening to music was against the law. In fact, she didn't even realize she was sharing files, but thought she was just listening to music, like radio. Surprisingly, the lower court actually agreed with her and said that $200 per song (for the 37 songs) was an appropriate amount. But, of course, the RIAA appealed, as (despite claims to the contrary in the Tenenbaum and Thomas-Rasset case) they need those huge potential amounts to use as a sledge hammer against file sharers. Unfortunately, an appeals court has overturned the lower court ruling, and said that the statutory minimum of $750 per infringement should apply -- saying that the innocent infringement defense isn't applicable because the CDs the music came on (which she never saw) had proper copyright notices.

As you may know, copyright law does allow for reduced statutory damages on innocent infringement, "where the infringer sustains the burden of proving . . . that [she] was not aware and had no reason to believe that . . . her acts constituted an infringement of copyright." Given the details of this case, that seemed to apply -- but the appeals court was having none of it. In the decision, it argues that the law says an innocent infringer defense cannot be applied (with one exception irrelevant to this case) if a proper copyright notice "appears on the published . . . phonorecords to which a defendant . . . had access."

The court the says that because copyright notices are found regularly on CDs, then Harper effectively "had access" to those recordings, at least enough to know they were covered by copyright. Not surprisingly, I find this argument to be quite troubling. If we assume it is accurate that Harper was using LimeWire as if it were a radio to listen to music, then how would she know that she was violating the copyright on the recordings at all? Would someone listening to the radio know? What about someone listening to Pandora or Spotify. Based on this ruling, anyone can be put at risk of much larger statutory damages for copyright if they simply don't know if the online streaming service they're using has properly cleared the copyrights. That does not seem like a conclusion that makes sense, or would have been intended by Congress. Did Congress really intend for each user to do the research before using any online music service to make sure those services had properly cleared the copyrights?

Filed Under: copyright, innocent infringement, statutory damages, whitney harper

RIAA Calls Another Critic Vexatious After She Points Out Flaw In RIAA Logic

from the time-to-get-a-thesaurus dept

It appears that someone in the RIAA's legal team discovered the word "vexatious" lately and now likes to use it. First, the RIAA declared lawyer Ray Beckerman vexatious, and now it's trying to pin the same word on a woman who is demanding a jury trial in her battle against the RIAA. We had written about this case back in August, where the woman used an innocent infringement defense to try to get the fines for file sharing decreased. That is, she admitted that she had shared the files, but rather than accepting the $750 to $150,000/per song fines that might entail, she claimed that she had no idea what she was doing was illegal, and that the law allows for such cases to be reduced to a $200/song fine.

The RIAA initially pushed back on this, but eventually relented and let the judge set a $7,400 total fine, thinking that the case was pretty much wrapped up. Except... there's the problem of the Jammie Thomas mistrial ruling, which added to a long list of rulings that claimed that "making available" files wasn't necessarily infringement. So, the woman in this case, Whitney Harper, is now pointing out that the number of files she's "guilty" of infringing should be reduced based on the Thomas ruling. She notes that while she made 37 songs available for download (hence the $7,400 fine), the RIAA only has evidence that six songs were downloaded. Thus, she believes the fine should be reduced to $1,200, and would like a jury to hear the case. You can understand why the RIAA might be frustrated, but considering how quickly it rushes out to tell other judges in ongoing cases whenever one judge rules in its favor, it seems only reasonable to have a court reconsider this case in light of the Thomas ruling.

Filed Under: innocent infringement, lawsuits, riaa, vexatious, whitney harper

'Innocent Infringement' As A Way To Lower Copyright Infringement Damages?

from the seems-like-a-stretch dept

You often hear it repeated that "ignorance is no defense" to breaking the law, but it may actually be working in one copyright infringement lawsuit. Ray Beckerman has the details on a case where the RIAA is suing a teenager who claimed "innocent infringement" as a way to get the damages lowered from the $750 to $150,000 per file that the RIAA always pushes for. So, while the RIAA pointed out that there was a copyright notice on every CD, the court sided with the girl who pointed out that there was no such copyright notice on Kazaa or the songs she downloaded. In fact, she wasn't even aware that she was "downloading" -- assuming that Kazaa worked more like a radio. Of course, before others make the same argument, it does pay to recognize that the facts in this case are likely to be unique to this case, and probably don't apply in many other cases. The real problem still remains the ridiculous disconnect between the amount of "damages" allowed under the law and the actual "harm" (if any) caused by file sharing.

Filed Under: copyright, defenses, fines, innocent infringement
Companies: riaa