district-court
Music Biz Gives Up Trying to Block Pirate Bay in Norway
Had been trying to force Norwegian ISP Telenor to prevent customer from being able to access BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. It’s been a long time coming, but at last TONO , a Norwegian royalty collecting group founded back in 1928, and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) have given up their bid to force Norwegian ISP Telenor to prevent subscribers from being able to access BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay. The affair first began in earnest last March when Telenor refused to block the Pirate Bay, reminding the copyright holders that “ISPs are not complicit in the actions of its customers on the Internet.” Then in November the country’s Norway’s Asker and Bærum District Court ruled in favor of Telenor , finding that it is not illegally contributing to any copyright violations by The Pirate Bay and that there is subsequently no legal basis for forcing it to block the site.
Continue reading »RIAA Wants Equal Punishment for Both Commercial and Non-Commercial Infringements
If you guys thought the notorious file sharing battle RIAA launched against Jammie Thomas-Rasset in 2009 about which we reported quite a number of times is over…well, you're wrong. A brief sum-up: RIAA: We are greedy! The initial court ruling , which ordered the defendant to pay damage fees to music industry of $1.92 million(!!!) for sharing 24 tracks (!!!) on p2p client Kazaa, was recently cut down to $54,000 by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis who thought the amount in the first decision was “monstrous and shocking” .
Continue reading »RIAA Rejects Reduced File-Sharing Judgment
After having offered to settle the case with Jammie Thomas for as little as $25,000, down from the $1.92 million original verdict, and from the most recent $54,000 judgment reduction on appeal. Last Friday the case of accused file-sharer Jammie Thomas grew more complex after Judge Davis of the United States District Court lowered the original $1.92 million verdict against Jammie Thomas, the first person convicted of illegal file-sharing in the US, from $80,000 per song to $2,250 per song, saying “statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages.” If you recall, back in June 2009, the jury awarded the recording industry $1.92 million in statutory damages as a punishment for using the KaZaA file-sharing program to download 24 songs which amounted to $80,000 per song. “The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music,” reads the ruling .
Continue reading »ISP Stands Up For Torrent Site Owner’s Privacy
In conjunction with the local anti-piracy outfit Antipiratbyrån, three movie companies took legal action last year in an attempt to obtain the personal details of the owner of the SweTorrents BitTorrent tracker. They asked the Södertörn District Court to demand that TeliaSonera give up the information because SweTorrents was infringing on their copyrights. The application was made under the IPRED legislation introduced earlier that year, which was put in place to make it easier for copyright holders to track down and identify potential copyright infringers.
Continue reading »RIAA Digital Music Price-Fixing Case Reinstated
Judges note, among other things, that record labels didn’t dramatically lower their prices for online music as compared to physical CDs despite the fact that they “experienced dramatic cost reductions in producing” it. It’s been an open secret that record labels have long colluded with one another to ensure maximum profits with limited competition and consumer choice. A group of plaintiffs has taken the RIAA to court over the matter, and after initially having to watch the case dismissed at the District Court level back in 2008, has now convinced a three-judge panel at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate the case.
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