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Judge Rejects Record Industry's Attempt To Silence Student
Back in July, a grad student from Providence named Joel Tenenbaum was ordered by a federal jury to pay four record companies $675,000 worth of damages for illegally downloading and sharing music, and to destroy all of his illegally obtained songs. In a memorandum (PDF) released on Monday, though, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner explained her reasoning for not ordering Tenenbaum to refrain from "promoting" illegal file sharing, much to the chagrin of the record industry that sought to silence him.
As HuffPo reports, the record companies maintain that the student had been encouraging friends to visit a Swedish Web site where he found many of his illegal files. Tenenbaum insisted he wasn't involved with the site, and Gertner agreed not to restrict what she interpreted his rights to free speech. As she wrote, "The word 'promote' is far too vague to withstand scrutiny under the First Amendment," adding that, "plaintiffs... have no right to silence defendant's criticism of the statutory regime." Tenenbaum's lawyers, meanwhile, have said that they will seek a new trial and a reduction in his penalty.
In the memorandum, Gertner also expressed sympathy for the youth of today, who grew up online and thus see nothing inherently wrong with file sharing. She said she was "deeply troubled by the rash of file-sharing lawsuits, the imbalance of resources between the parties, and the upheaval of norms of behavior brought on by the Internet." Gertner implored Congress to consider serious changes to current copyright laws, saying that, "there is a deep potential for injustice in the Copyright Act as it is currently written."
We have to be honest here: we're sorta in love with this judge. Not only did she stand firm in protecting Tenenbaum's right to express a healthy dissent against current legislation, she also gets his dissent -- which is especially reassuring. The Internet's changed the game, and record companies shouldn't be hunting down rogue dorm downloaders. The only thing we would argue is that perhaps most kids aren't quite as oblivious to copyright law as Gertner asserts. Maybe we're wrong, but we think most basically understand that downloading and sending songs isn't exactly kosher. But then again, neither is jaywalking. And for most of us nowadays, the two are nearly indiscernible. [From: The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, and Wired]
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Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsCooperDec 9th 2009 11:57AM
That's the problem, and that's what the judge laments. You say that jaywalking and stealing are pretty much the same. It's pretty scary to think that a whole generation believes that.
Jaywalking, if it ever actually appears in any city code today, was likely outlawed to protect people from themselves. I suspect the law came about back when cars were relatively uncommon and people just sort of wandered across streets knowing that a horse would generally slow down or otherwise avoid them.
Stealing (what you casually refer to as "file sharing") is just what it is - taking something that isn't yours without paying for it. Unfortunately, it seems that very few people these days have ever actually had to work very hard at anything and thus they cannot comprehend the significance of having something stolen from them.
Having said that, I too applaud the judge's refusal to overstep her bounds and trample Tenenbaum's free speech rights. I also partly fault the record industry for failing to protect their merchandise, especially when they know (or ought to know) that their target market thinks stealing stuff is "no biggie."
DaveDec 10th 2009 6:50PM
File sharing isn't the same as stealing....or at least not the same as what people traditionally think of as stealing. If I don't pony up the dough, I'll never get a big screen plasma HDTV in my house without stealing one. However, all I have to do is turn on the (very free) radio, and with a little bit of station-hopping and patience, I can pretty much hear any song I want...for free. Internet radio makes finding free broadcasts of rare/obscure songs and genres easier to find than ever before. I can have friends over and let them listen with me to both types of radio, also for free, and I can do that as often as I want without ever paying a cent. (Outside of the cost of the radio or computer/internet service, of course.) If I download a song that I can hear for free 10 times a day on public radio, is that really the same as "taking something that isn't yours without paying for it?" If I was busting out my old tape recorder and making cassettes, I'm not sure people would be so willing to say it was, and that's what puts this issue in a grey area for so many people these days.