Post by RPankn on Dec 10, 2005 21:28:22 GMT -5
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals; probably second only to the Fifth Circuit -- the 'F' standing for fascism -- as an enforcement arm of corporate cartels such as the RIAA, and the glee with which they enforce its pronouncements. Among those on the bench at the Seventh Circuit are Chief Judge Richard Posner, all but an acknowledged tool of Corporate America as the father of the 'Law & Economics' School. Yet most law school teach students they're supposed to respect the bastard.
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 9, 8:58 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court late Friday upheld the music industry's $22,500 judgment against a Chicago mother caught illegally distributing songs over the Internet.
The court rejected her defense that she was innocently sampling music to find songs she might buy later and compared her downloading and distributing the songs to shoplifting.
The decision against Cecilia Gonzalez, 29, represents one of the earliest appeals court victories by the music industry in copyright lawsuits it has filed against thousands of computer users. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago threw out Gonzalez's arguments that her Internet activities were permitted under U.S. copyright laws.
Gonzalez had rejected a proposed settlement from music companies of about $3,500. A federal judge later filed a summary judgment against her and ordered her to pay $750 for each of 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing over the Internet. [I don't know about you, but this sounds like extortion and racketeering to me.]
Gonzalez, a mother of five, contended she had downloaded songs to determine what she liked enough to buy at retail. She said she and her husband regularly buy music CDs and own more than 250. [Brilliant strategy RIAA, just brilliant. Your customers are pointing the way in terms of where the market is going, and you sue the hell out of them for it and then pregnant dog that album sales are down. How many of us have actually went out and bought an album because we got a copy of a track from someone we know?]
However, the appeals panel said Gonzalez never deleted songs off her computer she decided not to buy, and judges said she could have been liable for more than 1,000 songs found on her computer. [If she bought the CD, she now owns a license to the song and can make any number of copies for herself, which kind of negates the RIAA's claims, don't you think? Nice legal tap dancing Seventh Circuit.]
"A copy downloaded, played, and retained on one's hard drive for future use is a direct substitute for a purchased copy," the judges wrote. [But she didn't; she bought the CD and the license that goes with it.] They said her defense that she downloaded fewer songs than many other computer users "is no more relevant than a thief's contention that he shoplifted only 30 compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later." [So let's get this straight: she obtains a copy of an mp3 file from someone who ripped it off a CD or mp3 file they purchased, but the panel compares this to shoplifting. I don't think these old fogies knew what the hell they were talking about when they wrote this decision because most of them are probably still using 8 tracks.]
Gonzalez could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Geoff Baker, said comparing Gonzalez to a shoplifter was "inflammatory" but declined to comment further until he had more time to review the decision, which was released late in the day.
Gonzalez was named in the first wave of civil lawsuits filed by record companies and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America, in September 2003.
"The law here is quite clear," said Jonathan Lamy, a senior vice president for the Washington-based RIAA. "Our goal with all these anti-piracy efforts is to protect the ability of the music industry to invest in the bands of tomorrow and give legal online services a chance to flourish." [But pirates seek profit by infringing on copyrights, whereas this woman wasn't selling copies, Jonathan. She wanted to evaluate a CD before she purchased it, which I would have LOVED to have done with several CDs I purchased because I liked one or two songs, only to regret buying them later because the rest of the album sucked.]
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051210/ap_on_hi_te/downloading_music
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 9, 8:58 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court late Friday upheld the music industry's $22,500 judgment against a Chicago mother caught illegally distributing songs over the Internet.
The court rejected her defense that she was innocently sampling music to find songs she might buy later and compared her downloading and distributing the songs to shoplifting.
The decision against Cecilia Gonzalez, 29, represents one of the earliest appeals court victories by the music industry in copyright lawsuits it has filed against thousands of computer users. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago threw out Gonzalez's arguments that her Internet activities were permitted under U.S. copyright laws.
Gonzalez had rejected a proposed settlement from music companies of about $3,500. A federal judge later filed a summary judgment against her and ordered her to pay $750 for each of 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing over the Internet. [I don't know about you, but this sounds like extortion and racketeering to me.]
Gonzalez, a mother of five, contended she had downloaded songs to determine what she liked enough to buy at retail. She said she and her husband regularly buy music CDs and own more than 250. [Brilliant strategy RIAA, just brilliant. Your customers are pointing the way in terms of where the market is going, and you sue the hell out of them for it and then pregnant dog that album sales are down. How many of us have actually went out and bought an album because we got a copy of a track from someone we know?]
However, the appeals panel said Gonzalez never deleted songs off her computer she decided not to buy, and judges said she could have been liable for more than 1,000 songs found on her computer. [If she bought the CD, she now owns a license to the song and can make any number of copies for herself, which kind of negates the RIAA's claims, don't you think? Nice legal tap dancing Seventh Circuit.]
"A copy downloaded, played, and retained on one's hard drive for future use is a direct substitute for a purchased copy," the judges wrote. [But she didn't; she bought the CD and the license that goes with it.] They said her defense that she downloaded fewer songs than many other computer users "is no more relevant than a thief's contention that he shoplifted only 30 compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later." [So let's get this straight: she obtains a copy of an mp3 file from someone who ripped it off a CD or mp3 file they purchased, but the panel compares this to shoplifting. I don't think these old fogies knew what the hell they were talking about when they wrote this decision because most of them are probably still using 8 tracks.]
Gonzalez could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Geoff Baker, said comparing Gonzalez to a shoplifter was "inflammatory" but declined to comment further until he had more time to review the decision, which was released late in the day.
Gonzalez was named in the first wave of civil lawsuits filed by record companies and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America, in September 2003.
"The law here is quite clear," said Jonathan Lamy, a senior vice president for the Washington-based RIAA. "Our goal with all these anti-piracy efforts is to protect the ability of the music industry to invest in the bands of tomorrow and give legal online services a chance to flourish." [But pirates seek profit by infringing on copyrights, whereas this woman wasn't selling copies, Jonathan. She wanted to evaluate a CD before she purchased it, which I would have LOVED to have done with several CDs I purchased because I liked one or two songs, only to regret buying them later because the rest of the album sucked.]
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051210/ap_on_hi_te/downloading_music
