LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
RIAA Lawsuits Against Students Settled
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Friday, May 02 @ 09:46:42 EDT
Contributed by Anonymous
File Sharing
Anonymous writes "The RIAA has settled out of court with the four students it sued last month. The lawsuits targeted the students for running file-sharing directory services, which linked to MP3s (and other files) other students were sharing from their own machines. The settlements involve cash payments by students of between $13,000 and $17,000 each, paid over the course of four years.

Seth Finkelstein's commentary is here; the CNET story is here. Seth points out that these are intimidation tactics as much as attempts to get court precedents set, and so the out-of-court settlement for (to teenagers) large amounts of cash is a perfect PR victory."

 
Related Links
· More about File Sharing
· News by James Grimmelmann


Most read story about File Sharing:
Interpreting Cary Sherman

Options

 Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

 Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend

Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.

Why did the students settle? (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, May 02 @ 12:00:56 EDT
It sounded like they were running a pretty generic search engine plus:
1) they had no control over the other people's drive contents
2) the other people didn't even need to "join" the network
3) it was not geared toward any specific file format or content type
4) they didn't host any of the infringing files themselves
5) they weren't making a profit from the service in any way

It looks like they were on better standing that Kazza and Kazza defended themselves successfully.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: RIAA Lawsuits Against Students Settled (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, May 02 @ 12:56:56 EDT
Seth is very correct, this is not a game.

The students probably had no choice but to settle. I think (judging from the most recent California case) that the actual sharing network IS legal. The question is; did each of the students have at least one music file on his (or her) computer that he could not prove he owned. That of course would have opened up an entirely new can of worms and very real additional risks to the students. It is very possible that they could not risk defending the search engine because of the threat of criminal charges against them personally.

A possible solution, could we sweet talk the right organization into taking it on (like the Yale Law School), would be to set up (very carefully) Peng's sharing network (with no possibility of infringing material being on the primary machine). Also the stated primary purpose would be for sharing legal briefs!

My guess is that the RIAA would not be dumb enough to touch this one, by one never knows.

Tom


[ Reply to This ]


Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die

Contributors retain copyright interests in all stories, comments and submissions.
Everything else copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.

This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions
set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later.
The latest version is currently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/.

You can syndicate our news with backend.php

Page Generation: 0.192 Seconds