My Favorite Quotes from Judges in RIAA Cases

One of the things that I tend to follow is the antics of the RIAA.
Personally my favorite resource for this subject is Recording Industry vs. The People. It is one of the feeds I check each and every time I have Google Reader open. Apparently, many others share my interest in this blog.

It is likely that due to how often I only view it in the reader that I missed an interesting feature of the site. At the very bottom of the individual entries, there is a long list of quotes. Here are my top five:

• "The concern of this Court is that in these lawsuits, potentially meritorious legal and factual defenses are not being litigated, and instead, the federal judiciary is being used as a hammer by a small group of plaintiffs to pound settlements out of unrepresented defendants."
• "Merely making a copy available does not constitute distribution….The statute provides copyright holders with the exclusive right to distribute “copies” of their works to the public “by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.” 17 U.S.C. …106(3). Unless a copy of the work changes hands in one of the designated ways, a “distribution” under …106(3) has not taken place."
• "Plaintiff … must present at least some facts to show the plausibility of their allegations of copyright infringement….However, …. Plaintiffs have presented no facts that would indicate that this allegation is anything more than speculation."
• "Plaintiffs contend that unless the Court allows ex parte immediate discovery, they will be irreparably harmed. While the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian “suspension of disbelief” to accept that the harm is irreparable, especially when monetary damages can cure any alleged violation. On the other hand, the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member’s Internet files can be equally harmful…..Moreover, ex parte proceedings should be the exception, not the rule."
• "[W]ithout actual distribution of copies…. there is no violation [of] the distribution right." 4 William F. Patry, Patry on Copyright § 13:9 (2007); see also id. N. 10 (collecting cases); Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146, 1162 (9th Cir. 2007)(affirming the district court’s finding "that distribution requires an ‘actual dissemination’ of a copy")"

Sorry for not putting in the Judge or Case but it just didn’t lay our nice. They are all quotes taken from the referenced site and I would encourage you to go there and look. Another thing I should mention is that this is one of those blogs where the comments are well worth reading. This blog has over 3,000,000 page views, which makes for a large community knowledge and opinion base. Feel free to find your favorite quote over at this blog and post it comment here with it. Thanks for Reading.