Court rules against RIAA
The Inquirer Thu, 01 May 2008 5:09 AM PDT
TORCHBEARING peasants are making their way toward Castle RIAA following a Federal Court ruling that, "Merely making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work available to the public does not violate a copyright holder's exclusive right of distribution."

Judge disputes key RIAA file-sharing argument
TG Daily Thu, 01 May 2008 7:11 AM PDT
A federal judge has struck down a key RIAA file-sharing argument and as a result reversed an earlier judgment against an Arizona couple accused of illegally sharing music files. In the case of Atlantic v. Howell, US District Court Judge Wake said that the RIAA has not proven the couple actually distributed music files. The RIAA claimed that the couple made the files available to other peer to ...

RIAA �making available� piracy argument rejected in the courts
Geek.com Thu, 01 May 2008 7:15 AM PDT
As many of you may remember the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is currently suing Pamela and Jeffrey Howell for copyright infringement committed back in 2006 through Kazaa. The couple have argued that the music they had on their PC came from CDs they owned and did admit they had installed Kazaa. However, they [...]

RIAA gets aggressive over music downloads
KGO-TV Bay Area Thu, 01 May 2008 0:03 AM PDT
RIAA goes after college students for illegally downloading music.

Campuses swimming in flood of infringement notices from RIAA
Ars Technica Wed, 30 Apr 2008 7:08 PM PDT
As the school year winds down, the RIAA is sending out a flood of copyright infringement notifications to schools. The group says its business as usual, but campus IT workers tell Ars that the increased workload due to the notices is "daunting." Read More...

Court Rejects RIAA Claim In Lawsuit
FMQB Wed, 30 Apr 2008 2:12 PM PDT
A U.S. District Court Judge has reversed his own ruling in a legal battle between the RIAA and a couple it had sued for copyright infringement in 2006. The RIAA sued Pamela and Jeffery Howell over their use of the Kazaa file sharing software, which allowed copyrighted songs to be made available for sharing online.

Court Deals RIAA Setback in File Sharing Suit
Overclockers Club Wed, 30 Apr 2008 7:20 PM PDT
A U.S. District Judge denied a request by the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) for a summary judgment against an Arizona couple accused of illegally sharing music files through the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing service. RIAA asserted the presence of the music files in a shared folder constitutes copyright infringement. The defendant, Jeffery Howell, claims he did not place the music in ...

Judge Puts Brakes on RIAA's "Making Available Argument"
GigaLaw.com Wed, 30 Apr 2008 2:04 PM PDT
The recording industry's music piracy fight was dealt a setback when a federal judge rejected the RIAA's "making available" argument in a lawsuit against a husband and wife accused of copyright infringement.

Judge Rejects RIAA's Music Copyright Infringement, Distribution Claims
TechWeb via Yahoo! News Wed, 30 Apr 2008 1:05 PM PDT
Merely making copies of music available does not equal distribution, or primary copyright infringement, the judge said.

Be careful....The body of that jugement tells a different tale. Yes the judge did rule in favor of the long standing practice stemming back to the Xerox case, but....He also ruled that agents of the media companies can count their sample downloads as distribution. A complete reversal of the long held standard that compnies like MediaSentry who download files on behalf of the record industry can't claim infringement because they are "authorized" my the copyright holder. THis could turn into an ugly situation since it would most likely be used by the publishing companies to (once again) attack libraries as well as widen fishing trips.

Think about it....They hack into your computer, do a search for other computers and then nail you for every copy of every copyright protected file regardless of whether or not it is in a p2p share folder since the hacker was able to get a cvopy of the song, it counts as illegal distribution!

We still need laws that well define fair use for average people. We also need to limit the scope of bad laws like DCMA that circumvent the few fair rights we have(think section 1200 copyowner definitions) while leaving behind vague open-ended new rights for copyright owners. The courts are not going to change much in this space without them.

Why does everyone think somebody is going to hack in and just magically have full access to every single file on your machine?

Oh sure, windows is exploitable; you can generally cause it to crash; ie, kill a service, get it to run bad software, which usually kills it anyway.... Most of the time, your still not actually gaining entry.