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U.K. Courts Rule File-Sharing is Illegal, Impose Stiff Fines on Individuals

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on January 27, 2006 - 8:13am.
London - A landmark duo of court rulings in the U.K. has for the first time found music file-swappers guilty of copyright infringement and ordered defendants to pay damages to the U.K. music industry. In the first case, the U.K. High Court granted summary judgment against a man from King's Lynn accused of file-sharing copyright infringement, ordering him immediately to pay nearly $8,900 to the British Phonographic Institute (BPI), a U.K. record label trade group. The man must also pay legal fees totaling nearly $24,000 and as yet unspecified damages. Another man from Brighton was also found guilty by summary judgment and ordered to pay over $2,600 immediately to the BPI, with additional damages likely to follow. "The courts have spoken and their verdict is unequivocal: unauthorized file-sharing is against the law," said BPI executive chairman Peter Jamieson. The BPI added that it has settled the majority of the 139 lawsuits it filed against individual file-swappers since October 2004, with some paying up to $11,500 to avoid a court case; the group is currently seeking settlements in 51 other cases launched last December.
tags: Law | File-Sharing | U.K | Illegal | Impose | Individuals |

Canadian Copyright Law Proposals Would Make File-Sharing Illegal

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 28, 2005 - 8:23am.
Toronto -- Canada's relatively permissive copyright laws may soon be tightened if the country joins 50 other nations in ratifying two treaties from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Canadian Press reported. Unlike in the U.S. and parts of Europe, in Canada it is not currently illegal to upload songs or movies onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. The two WIPO treaties would change Canadian copyright law to outlaw unauthorized file-sharing, and also make it a crime to circumvent copyright protections on CDs -- much like the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "Clearly, once we get implementation [of the treaties] there'll be no doubt . . . it'll be illegal to engage in unauthorized file-sharing," Graham Henderson, head of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, told Canadian Press. The amendments to Canadian copyright laws have been approved in pre-committee meetings by all political parties, and will be introduced in Canada's House of Commons later this spring.
tags: File-Sharing | Illegal | Canadian Copyright Law |

RIAA Mistakenly Sues Deceased Elderly Woman for Illegal Song-Swapping

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 7, 2005 - 3:12am.
Charleston, W. Va. -- An 83-year-old, deceased West Virginia woman is among the individuals recently sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for illegally offering songs for download on the Internet, the Associated Press reported. Robin Chianumba told AP that her elderly mother, Gertrude Walton, who passed away in December, actually hated computers. "My mother wouldn't know how to turn on a computer," Chainumba told AP. "I am pretty sure she is not going to leave Greenwood Memorial Park (where she is buried) to attend the hearing." Chianumba added that she sent the RIAA a faxed copy of her mother's death certificate several days before the lawsuit was filed, in response to a letter from the RIAA notifying her of the impending lawsuit. "Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy told AP. "We will now, of course, obviously dismiss this case."
tags: RIAA | Illegal | Elderly Woman | Song-Swappings |

French ISPs to Start Cutting Illegal Downloaders' Connections

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 19, 2004 - 5:13am.
Paris -- An agreement between French Internet service providers (ISPs) and the local music industry may allow government authorities to pull the plug on people who download music illegally, according to French news daily Liberation. Spearheaded by the French Ministries of Industry, Culture and Finance, the agreement could be signed as early as this week, Liberation said. If the agreement is approved, record labels monitoring peer-to-peer (P2P) networks would be able to file complaints about specific repeat offenders. In turn, a judge would be able to order an ISP to shut down that individual's Internet connection. Studies show that file-sharing is becoming increasingly popular despite the efforts of the international music recording industry. According to the OECD Information Technology Outlook 2004, the number of people using P2P networks to download music, movies, images, games and software from the Internet increased by 30% compared to the same period last year.
tags: French | Illegal | ISPs | Downloaders' Connections |

Survey: 40% of Parents Unaware File-Sharing of Copyrighted Material Illegal

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 17, 2004 - 5:15am.
Los Angeles -- A new survey conducted by Nielsen NRG for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has found that, despite the MPAA and RIAA media and legal campaigns intended to thwart illegal file-sharing, nearly 40% of parents are unaware that file swapping of copyrighted materials is illegal. Over 40% of the 396 parents who participated in the recent telephone survey know that their kids download music and movies over the Internet, and 55% of them know their kids did not pay for the content, while another 15% are unsure. In addition, one-third of those parents who have downloaded movies and music learned how to do so from their kids. "The same caring and conscientious parents who dedicate themselves to making sure that their kids are safe and conduct themselves lawfully and ethically in the real world abandon that role in cyberspace," said Robin Raskin, former editor-in-chief of FamilyPC. Rich Taylor, vice president of public affairs for the MPAA, added that, "Once parents take the time to get the facts and have the increasingly important 'download discussion,' they are taking yet one more step in keeping their family safe and raising good 'digital citizens.'"
tags: Copyright | File-Sharing | Survey | Illegal | Parents |

Second Court Rules DVD Copying Software Illegal

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 5, 2004 - 6:46am.
New York -- A second federal court has ruled that 321 Studios' software that allows users to make copies of DVD movies violates copyright law, and ordered the company to stop selling its DVD X Copy application. Following a California federal court's ruling last month that declared St. Louis-based 321's software illegal, last night the Southern District Court of New York also ruled in favor of the Hollywood movie studio plaintiffs, who argued that the software facilitated piracy. The company has maintained that DVD X Copy allows users to make back-up copies of DVDs that are within their traditional "fair use" rights for goods they have already purchased. While the company said on Friday that it plans to appeal the rulings, it has recently released a new version of DVD X Copy stripped of its ability to defeat the encryption scheme on DVD movies -- while noting that the missing "ripper" may still be easily found elsewhere on the Internet.
tags: Law | DVD | Software | Illegal | Second Court |

AD.C. Appeals Court Says RIAA Subpoenas for File-Swapper Identities Illegal

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on December 19, 2003 - 4:40am.
Washington -- In a major setback for the recording industry's legal campaign against music file-swappers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that the streamlined subpoena process currently being used to compel alleged file-swappers' Internet service providers to reveal their identities is illegal. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed thousands of such subpoenas with a number of ISPs -- including Verizon -- which sued the RIAA saying the subpoenas violated their users' privacy. A lower court agreed with the RIAA's argument that the subpoena process, which doesn't require a judge's approval, was justified under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The appeals court ruling will mean that the RIAA now must file a more cumbersome "John Doe" lawsuit against alleged file-swappers to get their identity from an ISP. "We are not unsympathetic either to the RIAA's concern regarding the widespread infringement of its members' copyrights, or to the need for legal tools to protect those rights," the court wrote in its ruling. "It is not the province of the courts, however, to rewrite [copyright law] in order to make it fit a new and unforeseen Internet architecture, no matter how damaging that development has been to the music industry." At this point, it is unclear what effect if any the ruling will have on the hundreds of lawsuits that the RIAA has already filed -- and in some cases reached settlement agreements -- against individual file-swappers using the now illegal subpoena process. "Today's ruling is an important victory for Internet users and all consumers," said Verizon vice president and associate general counsel Sarah Deutsch. "Copyright holders seeking personal information about Internet subscribers will now have to file a traditional lawsuit. These requests will undergo scrutiny by a judge, thus preserving the privacy, safety and legal rights of every Internet subscriber."
tags: Law | RIAA | File-Swapper | Illegal | AD.C |