From GrokLaw, which usually focuses on the SCO case, but today has a great entry about the RIAA case. The RIAA case is currently being heard in a federal appeals court:
One of the three judges told the RIAA attorney to stop using "abusive language", such as calling file-trading "piracy".Here's the exact language the judge used, which Copyfight transcribed and TechDirt brought to my attention (thank you Copyfight for the transcript. EFF has an mp3 of the arguments in court, by the way also. Say, I think Groklaw started something.):
"Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new, and the question is, does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new. And that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it 'theft.' You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. Address that if you would. And curtail the use of abusive language."
The whole piece is worth reading. Another enlightening quote from the transcription of the oral arguments:
"One academic study found that 90 percent of the content exchanged on file-sharing networks is copyrighted, [RIAA lawyer] Frackman noted."[Judge]Noonan pressed further, asking whether the authorized exchange of 10 percent of an estimated 750 million swapped files -- games, live recordings and public-domain works such as Shakespeare -- met the criteria the Supreme Court set forth in the Betamax case. 'That sounds like a lot of non-infringing use to me.'"
It sounds like a lot to me too... It would be hard to argue that 75 million files is not a significant amount of non-infringing use.
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