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[ga] Supreme Court Will Not Hear Whitney Harper RIAA Case

  • To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, imatx26@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, fbi.dallas@xxxxxxxxxx, icann-board@xxxxxxxxx, OnGuardOnline@xxxxxxx, SenateWebmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, senator@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, info@xxxxxxx
  • Subject: [ga] Supreme Court Will Not Hear Whitney Harper RIAA Case
  • From: "Jeffrey A. Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:07:37 -0600 (GMT-06:00)

All,

  FWIW, some 5 years ago now i along with others warned
ICANN and limewires registrar that there was questionable activity
going on there.  Further I also warned my local FBI office, the FTC,
and ICE's Julie Myers that LimeWire was a dangerous web site.  Seems
that those warnings were either ignored, or never even read/considered.

Now as a result this poor 16 year old girl gets nabbed for what seems
to me to be very questionable circumstances accordingly.  FWIW to me
anyway, that's just not right!  Justice IMO has NOT been served very
well here. >:(  So I hope that the president will negate the 5th circuits
ruling and the Supreme courts decision accordingly.

See:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/1129/Supreme-Court-rejects-case-on-fines-for-illegal-Internet-music-downloads
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/11/29/scotus.music.downloads/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/innocent/

(November 29, 2010)  SANS
The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case involving a high school
student sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for
illegally downloading 37 copyrighted songs. Whitney Harper, who is now
a Texas college student, maintained that she did not know at the time
she downloaded the music that what she was doing was illegal.  Under the
innocent infringer defense, Harper claimed her damages should be US $200
for each song, or $7,400.  The judge in her initial trial agreed, but
the ruling was reversed by the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals, which
said the record companies had included copyright notices on CD covers
and disallowed her innocent infringer status.  Harper's defense team
argued that because she was downloading the music from the Internet and
did not have the CD covers, the warnings did not provide actual notice.
In a dissent, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that he would grant review to
Harper's appeal to look more closely at the Fifth Circuit's
interpretation of the innocent infringer provision.

Regards,
Jeffrey A. Williams
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very
often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability
depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
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