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The Free Culture Movement, whose proponents tout peer-production (aka amateur production), wants nothing more than copyrighted works by professional creators for free. Its quite obvious. After prattling endlessly about the virtues and viability of their movement, and how peer-produced creative goods will obviate the need for strong copyright laws or displace professionally produced goods, the first thing our Free Culture friends do is demand access to copyrighted, professional works, the stuff that actually contributes to our culture (whereas much of peer-production is stuff you couldn't give away for free, look at Linux).
Luckily for society, there are many instances where creators win over the Free Culture Movement. The most recent situation stems from a case brought by the RIAA against an individual it accused of using Kazaa to illegally trade music files.
The defendant's attorney put up quite a fight, leveraging arguments that sound eerily similar to Free Culture Movement mottos: sidestep the issue of piracy and blame the copyright holder for everything, downplay piracy, refuse to acknowledge that piracy is theft, refuse to acknowledge that you're trading copyrighted media rather than peer-produced media because the former is a lot better. And for this, the defendant's attorney got quite a handslap from the judge. U.S. District Judge Terry Means ruled on May 16 that it was entirely likely that the woman was violating copyright law via the Kazaa file-sharing program -- and ordered that her attorney (Thomas Kimble) be sanctioned for wasting the court's time with "frivolous" arguments.
"Frivolous motions for sanctions that harass the opposing party's attorney, chill that attorney's zealous representation of his client, and needlessly increase the cost of litigation cannot go unpunished," wrote Means, whose court is in the northern district of Texas.
Kimble claimed the lawsuit was "predatory." Kimble refused to talk to the RIAA's national lawyers and only the local lawyers. Kimble offered to let the RIAA inspect Heslep's hard drive, but only in exchange for a payment of $10,000 if it showed she was not currently engaged in copyright infringement. (The RIAA rejected the offer.)
The judge ordered Kimble to personally pay the RIAA's costs and attorney fees for the time they spent defending against his "frivolous" charges. This decision is good for innovation and culture, since direct infringement suits will not affect technological development and business models, as indirect suits may (see article by Mark Lemley and Anthony Reese). But more importantly, the judge showed how dodging the issue of copyright enforcement can result in frivolous banter that matches what peer-production usually creates.
posted by Noel Le @ 12:36 AM | Free Culture Movement
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