Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

This one is great news, the RIAA has lost it's "driftnet" style "secondary copyright infringement" case against a woman in Oklahoma. Hopefully this will start the precedent ball rolling, from court cases, to in general how the issues involved are viewed - so if possible we can avoid more legal battles involving such nonsense.

Basically the "secondary copyright infringement" that the RIAA sought boiled down to the RIAA blaming a person who was an ISP account holder liable for the actions of another person using that account (when the first person had no knowledge of the infringement).

The judge called bullshit, awarded the defendant a judgment for attorneys' fees, and broke it down as such:

Judge Lee set out the three elements of a claim for contributory copyright infringement: direct infringement by a third party, knowledge by the defendant that third parties were directly infringing, and substantial participation by the defendant in the infringement. "Merely supplying means to accomplish infringing activity [e.g., an Internet connection] cannot give rise to imposition of liability for contributory copyright infringement," according to the opinion.

That sounds quite logical and reasonable, props to Judge Lee. And once again middle finger to the RIAA.

For more info, see Ars: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070207-8786.html.