In an appeal against the music industry's $22,500 judgment against a mother of five, the court has ruled against the mother by comparing her actions to shoplifting CDs from a retail store. In her defence, she claimed that she was only downloading music to sample songs before purchase and also claimed this was permitted under U.S. copyright legislation. However, the three-judge panel threw out her arguments.
Gonzalez originally received a civil lawsuit when the RIAA filed their first round of lawsuits back in September 2003, however she rejected the $3,500 out-of-court settlement proposed by the music industry, so this case had been brought to court. When this case originally took place, a federal judge ruled against her and ordered her to pay $750 for each of the 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing online, which amounted to $22,500 in total.
According to her defence, she and her husband are a regular purchaser of music with over 250 CDs purchased so far. However, even though she claims to have only downloaded music for sampling, according to the appeals panel, she never deleted the music off of her computer that she decided not to purchase and even though she did not have 30 out of over 1,000 songs on CD, the appeals panel compared this to like saying she that she only shoplifted 30 compact discs.
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The court rejected her defense that she was innocently sampling music to find songs she might buy later and compared her downloading and distributing the songs to shoplifting. The decision against Cecilia Gonzalez, 29, represents one of the earliest appeals court victories by the music industry in copyright lawsuits it has filed against thousands of computer users. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago threw out Gonzalez's arguments that her Internet activities were permitted under U.S. copyright laws. Gonzalez had rejected a proposed settlement from music companies of about $3,500. A federal judge later filed a summary judgment against her and ordered her to pay $750 for each of 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing over the Internet. The full article can be read here. |
It is a real shame to see the RIAA targeting putting a fairly good customer through court, all because she had 30 songs which she did not have on any CD to back, but then again it would not have looked good either for the RIAA if they lost this case. While the court may compare her actions to shop lifting, for the 30 songs she downloaded and claim not to listen to, it is not like she actually caused any store a physical loss of stock, something which physical shoplifting would have done and she probably would never have purchased these songs anyway if she didn't have access to a file sharing network. In fact, as she has a a 250 CD collection, chances are that she would not even have half that if it were not for her sampling music.
In my opinion, probably the best example for the RIAA to
make of would be someone who downloads and shares out music, but never purchases
anything. In this example, it is the equivalent to suing someone who picks up newspapers left lying about to read and debate whether to buy and then leaving these behind for others to have a read at. But then again, there is also a chance that the lady may have tried purchasing as much as she could from her downloaded collection in an aim to try and fight her case by showing she has purchased most of the songs she downloaded. If this is the case, she would have been a lot worse off if she was forced to pay $750 a track for a lot more music she didn't have on CD.
Source: Forbes news
