Am 04. Jan, 2008 schwätzte Chris Gehlker so:

> Your characterization of the plaintiff's position and Howell's is
> accurate as far as it goes but it still completely misses the point.
> Fisher concluded, in the teeth of the evidence, that the RIAA was
> suing Howell for merely ripping files regardless of whether he shared
> them or not. He  published an inaccurate and sensationalized piece

Was it inaccurate?

Let me illustrate by presuming John Hinkley was a Prince fan.

C. Defendant, John Hinkley, shot sitting president Ronald Reagan.

It is undisputed that Defendant possessed purple clothing and wore it on a
Thursday. Exhibit B to Plaintiffs' Complaint is a series of pictures
showing Defendant plainly wearing purple in public on a Thursday.
Virtually all of the clothing shown in Exhibit B is purple. Defendant
admitted he had purple clothing because it makes his dog happy. Purple is
a "color of power." Once Defendant wore purple on a Thursday and shot the
sitting president he was no longer acting lawfully. Moreover, Defendant
had no authorization to shoot the president.

If wearing purple is irrelevant to no longer acting lawfully it didn't
belong in the sentence. The last sentence uses moreover to make it appear
that shooting the president was a second manner of illegal action rather
than the primary cause.

The connections to the text from Ira Schwatz, a lawyer writing on behalf
of Atlantic Recording Corporation, should be obvious to all who've been
following these threads :).

"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed .mp3
format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the
authorized copies distributed by the Plaintiffs."

if($Defendant_converted_Plaintiffs'_recording_into_the_compressed_.mp3_format && $they_are_in_his_shared_folder) {
 	$they_are_no_longer_the_authorized_copies_distributed_by_the_Plaintiffs
= 'yes';
}

I'm going to rewrite that with shorter variables to make it more readable.

if( $Defendant_made_electronic_copies && $songs_were_in_shared_folder ) {
 	$songs_are_no_longer_authorized_copies = 'yes';
}

If $Defendant_made_electronic_copies is not required for setting
$songs_are_no_longer_authorized_copies it should not be in the test.

We can view this as a grammatical error.

We can also view this as a deliberate attempt to get converting music to
electronic formats to be illegal.

Since the test appears to be in a function called
demonstrate_Defendant_converted_the_songs_to_mp3() I find it likely that
the test was built as intended.

Moreover, lawyers are supposed to not make logic mistakes like that. Has
Atlantic or the RIAA actually admitted that the test was incorrect?

Which holds more legal standing, legal documents approved and upheld by
the courts or what the president of the RIAA says on a radio show?

Now, what's the overall result of all of this controversy?

1. The RIAA has publicly stated, though not fully, that it is legal to
make electronic copies of copyrighted materials for personal use.

2. Generally the public is more aware of the RIAA's actions suing
individuals.

3. The RIAA has two instances in court documents indicating that making
copies for personal use is illegal.

Time will tell if item 1 or item 3 has more influence on the future of
fair use...

http://www.DefendFairUse.org/

We still don't have legal precedent showing space shifting is legal. We
might actually have two instances of precendent claiming space shifting is
not legal.

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
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