file-sharing

Electra Entertainment v. McDowell: Is a thirteen year old still innocent (infringer)?

Zohar Efroni — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:17:21 -0800

A federal district court in Georgia ordered a jury trial last week on the question whether a thirteen year old defendant was an innocent infringer or not. In Electra Entertainment Group Inc. V. Sarah McDowell (2007 WL 3286622 (M.D.Ga.), a teenager defendant admitted to have used P2P networks for exchanging sound recordings, but objected the demand of plaintiffs (the record companies) to pay maximum statutory damages of $750 per infringement, in this case 48 times, which makes the fine figure of $36k.

9/27: RIAA v. The People: Four Years and Counting

Amanda Smith — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:14:48 -0700

Start: Sep 27 2007 - 12:45pm

End: Sep 27 2007 - 2:00pm

Name of Speaker:

Fred von Lohmann

Speaker's Bio:

Fred von Lohmann (SLS '96) is Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for EFF. Before coming to EFF, he was a research fellow with the UC Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and an associate with the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster.

Topic Description:

Four years ago, the recording industry inaugurated an unprecedented campaign of lawsuits against individuals who use peer-to-peer (P2P)file sharing networks to share music. Nearly 30,000 lawsuits later, has it worked? If not, what should be done instead? And what have we learned about the mechanics of federal civil litigation against
thousands of unrepresented individuals?

Drawing on a recent EFF report summarizing the first four years of the recording industry litigation effort, Fred will discuss the recording industry's tactics and describe alternatives that may be on the digital music horizon.

Free and Open to the public (no rsvp required).
Lunch will be served.

Lessig joins RIAA board of directors

Balazs Bodo — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 01:01:35 -0700

Here are some of the April Fool's news from the file-sharing universe. The scary thing is, that they are (or should be) all real alternatives, and each and every prank shows a solution to the current problems.

Lawrence Lessig joins RIAA board of directors