Yesterday, a federal judge threw out the $222,000 judgment against Jammie Thomas, who was found guilty for sharing a bunch of crappy songs a year ago and ordered to pay the RIAA the aforementioned fine. The judge, Michael Davis, said that he misled jurors when he told them that simply making files available on a peer-to-peer network was the equivalent of copyright infringement, and that there was no proof that Thomas had in fact shared the files. In response, comment sections of Web sites around the world were filled with voices that curiously sounded like that of Nelson Muntz. [CNet]
September 25th, 2008 // 2 Comments
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I know there’s a lot of hyperbole in the blogosphere over these RIAA back-and-forths, but this really is kind of huge: the RIAA’s most sympathetic Federal judge actually recanting his previously held view that availability=piracy is a death blow to the RIAA’s core argument. I mean, it’s not the Supreme Court’s Grokster ruling in terms of influence, but in a way it’s a subtler and more important ruling (Grokster’s conclusion was, in retrospect, kind of obvious).
Wow … sometimes the snow really *does* come down in June, doesn’t it?