Home › DMW Daily › September 2, 2008

File-Swapper Ordered to Pay Record Labels $40,850

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 2, 2008 - 12:58pm.
Los Angeles - The defendant in a file-sharing copyright infringement case who was found guilty after it was shown that he deliberately destroyed evidence on his computer was ordered to pay the record labels $40,850 in damages, Ars Technica reported.

A federal judge found that Arizona resident Jeffrey Howell (Atlantic v. Howell) deleted the Kazaa file-sharing application, reformatted his hard drive and took other steps after being ordered by the court to preserve such evidence.

The same case also drew interest because the judge had earlier rejected the recording industry's "making available" claim, which argues that someone is guilty of copyright infringement simply by offering songs in a shared folder on their computer -- regardless of whether any distribution has been proven to have taken place.

Still, Howell would likely have not won based on this ruling, as the record labels' investigators did in fact make copies of the songs offered on his computer.

 

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/3mdvr (Ars Technica)

http://snipurl.com/3mdvx (DMW previous coverage)

Published in DMW Daily, September 2, 2008
tags: Law | Lawsuits | P2P | Music | RIAA | Kazaa | Atlantic v. Howell | Making Available | Jeffrey Howell |



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