Judge Rejects 'Fair Use' Defense in Tenenbaum File-Sharing Case

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 27, 2009 - 9:43am.

Boston - U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner has rejected an accused file-swappers motion to argue 'fair use' of the copyrighted songs he allegedly shared on a peer-to-peer network, according to the Recording Industry vs. The People blog.

Defendant Joel Tenenbaum and his attorney, Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, had attempted to argue that file-sharing in general constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted materials being traded.

Judge Gertner wrote that the defendant "proposes a fair use defense so broad that it would swallow the copyright protections that Congress has created."

"In the end, fair use is not a referendum on fairness in the abstract, as the Defendant would have it, but an effort to measure the purpose and effects of his particular use against the incentives for artistic and literary creation that Congress established in the Copyright Act."

Tenenbaum's trial on charges of copyright infringement gets underway this week in Boston.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/o2zec (Recording Industry vs. The People)

http://snipurl.com/o30ro (Ars Technica)

http://www.joelfightsback.com