Court Ruling Could End P2P Music-Download Lawsuits

dirtyp · Mayor's Aide Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 74

U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake has rejected the legal theory that the Recording Industry Association of America has used to attack P2P downloads. Jeffrey and Pamela Howell said their music copies were for personal use and they didn't know P2P application Kazaa made them public. The decision could be devastating to the RIAA.
A federal court has dealt a body blow to the recording industry's efforts to sue people who use peer-to-peer software to download music from the Internet. In fact, says one copyright lawyer, the P2P decision could mean the end of the Recording Industry Association of America's litigation strategy.
The defendants, Jeffrey and Pamela Howell, say they made legitimate copies of their CDs for personal use and they didn't know Kazaa was making them public. Asked in a deposition if he was sharing music files online, Jeffrey Howell said, "I was not, no. The computer was, but I was not. The computer in some form ... made files that I did not know available on the Internet."
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