No Summary Judgement on Filesharing, Copyright Infringement Still Illegal
The RIAA was handed a small blow today as a District Court judge in Arizona denied Summary Judgment on the question of whether leaving files on a shared directory is Copyright Infringement as a matter of law. While this does not really lend any saving grace to the p2p community at large, it does give the RIAA the heavier burden of a trial to show that actual copyright infringement had occurred (for which they get $150,000 per instance of infringement). This also puts the hurt on RIAA’s “making available” and “offer to distribute” theories.
– Maxim Price