From: Henry Mitchell <hmitchell_at_fastmail.fm>
Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 14:27:21 -0800

I realize this is getting off topic, but...

I don't know specifically which college kid, but if we're thinking of
the same one, I think he just didn't have the resources/willingness to
fight the RIAA; by most accounts, he actually stood on pretty solid
legal ground but didn't want to face the hassle of defending himself,
even if some group decided to back him for his legal fees.

Napster did, in fact, store copyrighted MP3s on their servers. This is
a big reason why they went down. Remember how they were
"fingerprinting" those MP3s on their servers by filename to try to block
  copyrighted material, then the users circumvented that by misspellings
like "Metalica?" You may be confusing Napster with other services like
Kazaa, but note that the RIAA isn't going after Kazaa or its developers,
in part because they don't have any servers on which to store MP3s.
They are going after users who are sharing their copyrighted MP3s
through Kazaa (acting as servers). I haven't heard that they sued
anyone actually downloading copyrighted MP3s though, only making them
available to be downloaded - which really doesn't make sense to me.

I actually do believe David's statement - if it weren't true, Dell,
Compaq, etc. would be sued for providing hardware to the end users who
share MP3s through Kazaa, make illegal copies of DVDs, pirate software, etc.






Fred Maxwell wrote:
> David McIntyre wrote:
>
>
>>Archos can't be held responsible for
>>someone else's use of their hardware to violate copyright
>>laws.
>
>
> Don't kid yourself. The RIAA sued a college kid for "contributory
> infringement" of copyright because he created a search engine that others
> used to find MP3s (among other files) on a campus network. Look at Napster.
> They were held responsible for the use of their hardware and software by
> others violating copyright laws. Napster didn't store the MP3s. The MP3s
> didn't pass through Napster's servers. All that Napster did was provide a
> way for people to share files yet they were held responsible when those
> sharing the files broke copyright laws.
>
> Regards,
> Fred Maxwell
>
>
>
Received on 2003-11-07