File-swapping fine upheld by appeals court
A Chicago woman who downloaded songs for free from the Kazaa file-sharing network violated copyright law and must pay a $22,500 fine to the record labels, a federal appeals court has ruled. I don’t like how the court said they didn’t care if it was 30 songs or 1,300 songs. Nearly everyone has songs they have downloaded or shared for free, but not many have tens of thousands and burn them for sale.
In the first U.S. case of its kind, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday rejected Cecilia Gonzalez’ arguments that she was merely “sampling” downloaded music to see which CDs she might want to purchase–and that her sampling was protected under copyright law’s “fair use” exception. Gonzalez’ claim that “she obtained ‘only 30’–or ‘only 1,300’–copyrighted songs is no more relevant than a thief’s contention that he shoplifted ‘only 30’ compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later for any he liked,” the court said.
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