[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The argument is that even if a defendant has never copied or distributed a file illegally, the fact that he or she possesses a computer with a shared-files folder on it that contains copyrighted files "made available" over an Internet connection, this in and of itself constitutes infringement of the "distribution" rights of the sound recording copyright holder under Section 106(3) of the Copyright Act.

[NonValueAdded]

Trackworthy stuff.

[weegee]

Watch out or the RIAA will put on their flak jackets and join SWAT again.

[TC Rider]

How would this ruling effect libraries where both the works are available, plus the technology (xerox machines) to duplicate them.

[HAL9000]

My understanding is that simply displaying a URL is allowed - but using the URL in an active link can cause legal problems.

As a hypothetical situation, let's pretend that Free Republic is an illegal music site. Here are two examples to illustrate the difference -

Legal: http://www.freerepublic.com

Illegal: http://www.freerepublic.com

Both of the lines above contain similar information, but the second line has a link that actively functions as an infringing device.

Of course, the user could simply copy and paste the URL in the first line into the browser's location box to arrive at the same location - but that line is simple text protected by the First Amendment.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ping

[sbMKE]

Where is the legality in backdooring into people's harddrives and pulling files -- it's not illegal when the RIAA does it? How again is this different than someone walking in my front door and burning off a copy of files from my pc uninvited?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Highlighting this:

***********************************************

RIAA Research Behind Claims
The roots of the "making available" issue lie not in the RIAA lawyers' draftsmanship skills but in the limited investigation upon which the lawsuits are predicated.

The RIAA's research begins and ends with its investigator, Tom Mizzone, who works for "antipiracy" company MediaSentry.

Armed with proprietary software, Mizzone uses a pretextual P2P file-sharing account on Kazaa, Gnutella, iMesh, LimeWire and other P2P software providers to locate shared-file folders that contain recordings whose copyrights are owned by the Big Four.

Mizzone takes a screenshot, downloads a few of the songs and, through another proprietary process, determines the dynamic IP address assigned to the screenshot.

Then the RIAA, armed with a court order, goes to the Internet service provider to get the name and address of the owner of the Internet-access account to which the dynamic IP address had been assigned at the time the screenshot was taken.

The RIAA then closes its investigation and simply sues the owner of the account identified by the ISP.

[montag813]

Is there a foolproof way to maks one's IP address when using a torrent client such as uTorrent?

[montag813]

I am not involved in this because there is so little music worth downloading these days.