The gallant attorneys for the RIAA have won at least a symbolic victory in their battle against music customers. The jury in the case against a Minnesota woman deliberated only for a short time before awarding the record companies over $9,000 in damages for each of the 24 songs the woman uploaded to music sharing site Kazaa. The $222,000 award won’t even pay for legal fees in the case, but that’s not the point. The RIAA won. The law rules. Don’t we all feel safer?

There are two points. One, this “victory” won’t even put a dent in people sharing music online. Two, a key ruling by the judge in the case is likely to be challenged somewhere along the line. Reporter Jeff Leeds of The New York Times called it a “hotly contested technical question,” and it was the lynchpin of the verdict itself.

…for jurors to find her liable, the record labels did not have to prove that songs on Ms. Thomas’s computer had actually been transmitted to others online. Rather, the act of making them available could be viewed as infringement, the judge ruled.

The RIAA can’t possibly be rejoicing over this, because — as the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted: “Every lawsuit makes the recording industry look more and more like King Canute, vainly trying to hold back the tide.”

We badly need copyright law to be rewritten in a way that both producers and customers can live with. Otherwise, the record industry is doomed, for suing your customers is generally not a good business practice.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Disruptions, Technology, Copyright. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.