What the RIAA really said.

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2008-01-01 at 22:12 -0700, Chris Gehlker wrote:
> On Jan 1, 2008, at 8:47 PM, Craig White wrote:
> 
> > The stipulation regarding Kazaa by the defendant states that the
> > defendant was interested solely in exchange of pornography. It's clear
> > that Kazaa had other uses besides illegally sharing music files.
> 
> I can't find any evidence for this on the <http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ 
>  > site which claims to have a complete archive of the public  
> documents in Atlantic V. Howell. Please provide a link.
----
http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=atlantic_howell_071207RIAASupplementalBrief

see page 18
----
> 
> Note that the court found that Howell had a "right to use for personal  
> enjoyment copyrighted works on CDs he purchased":
> <http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=atlantic_howell_070820OrderGrantSumJudg 
>  >
> 
> Note that the court found "Howell’s final contention is that a  
> computer malfunction or a third party put his personal files into his  
> shared folder. However, no evidence has been presented in support of  
> that scenario." It seems clear that Howell couldn't present any  
> evidence that the files got in his Kazaa shared folder other than by  
> his putting them there and the court clearly didn't believe his  
> 'malfunction or third party' contention.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the documents are all there for anybody to  
> review and this is a very pedestrian case of a guy who used Kazaa and  
> got caught.
----
here is one of the really big problems...the burden of proof is a bar
that is set way too low.

see...http://www.azoz.com/topics/lawsuits/JammieThomas.html

(arizona link, don't know the guy)

If you read the right hand column, he summarizes the issues from Capitol
v. Thomas really well...

****
The jury instructions indicate that the judge pre-decided that:

      * Downloading is copyright infringement; 
      * Making files available through peer-to-peer is copyright
        infringement, even if no one downloads them. 

The RIAA did not have to prove:

      * That Thomas downloaded anything; 
      * That she had a copy of Kazaa; 
      * That she was the actual person sharing the files in question. 
      * That she was aware of alleged sharing of files on her computer. 

I'm not even sure how they got past the copyright ownership issue.
****

If you can't see the problems here, I am not going to convince you of
anything.

Yes, it's clear that you and I are aware of the assumption of guilt
merely by installing Kazaa and there isn't a chance that I would ever
install something like that on any computer that I own or use.

Craig