"Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection — only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans" [BoingBoing]
(Photo: Kamoteus and Joe Mad)

Although it won't affect other cases, the RIAA was handed a small smackdown this week when a U.S. district judge rejected their request for a summary judgement, and ruled that putting song files in a shared directory was not enough proof that infringement had occurred.

The judge said that the RIAA "must prove that the songs were actually downloaded," which is not a distinction past judges have made. Whether or not this ruling will cause other judges to look at the RIAA's future claims in a different light remains to be seen, however.

Wake's ruling pretty much contradicts many of the legal arguments the RIAA has presented in those peer-to-peer lawsuits the organization has brought against individual users. However, not that many cases actually make it to court, mainly because defendants often opt for settling for a few thousand dollars instead of shouldering expenses for a jaunt through the civil legal system.

In March, a court told EMI it couldn't demand that MP3tunes turn over all the music stored by customers on its servers. Robertson writes on his corporate blog that the request is absurd:

Files are not MP3tunes' possessions any more than the contents of a safety deposit box are owned by the bank that houses them. The storage provided by MP3tunes is the user's own space. A Locker is empty when someone opens an account and that customer decides what files are placed into their Locker. All files are stored at the request of the user. People who choose to utilize remote storage should be guaranteed the same level of privacy they have for the files stored on their local hard disk.

As you may be aware, the major record label EMI has sued MP3tunes, claiming our service is illegal. You can read about the case here. Much is at stake — if you don't have the right to store your own music online then you won't have the right to store ebooks, videos and other digital products as well. The notion of ownership in the 21st century will evaporate. The idea of ownership is important to me and I want to make sure I have that right and my kids do too.

"Court Ruling Denies EMI Access to Millions of Personal MP3 Files" [MIchael Robertson]

On February 19, 2009, stations will stop broadcasting analog signals. Consumers will be unable to receive signals over the air unless they shell out $60 for a digital converter box. Few people know about the transition, or the $40 coupons the government has made available to subsidize the cost of the converter boxes. Where we see a problem, The Singing Regulators see a song.

Bloomberg reprinted the lyrics to Away in a Farm House, sung to the tune of Away in a Manger:

Away in a farm house, no show can I see. I lost all my coupons to get DTV. My friends in the city, they all said, "Relax!'' That's easy to say when you're wired with co-ax. Looking for help, I went down to the store, I asked for more coupons, they just said "what for?'' They sold me a monster, takes up my whole wall. I yearn for the days of my old analog. In Two-Thousand Nine after Super Bowl Week, My analog set will become an antique. I hope that the public will know what to do, For most of my neighbors do not have a clue...

Oh BlackBerry! FCC Carolers Poke Fun at Issues: Cindy Skrzycki [Bloomberg]
PREVIOUSLY: $40 Coupons For Digital TV Converter Boxes
The Conversion to Digital Television Is Going To Be Unpleasant

(Photo: clofresh)

Copyright law says the RIAA can elect to seek statutory damages "instead of actual damages and profit." The law also says that $750 is the minimum amount per infringement if you go the statutory route, which explains where the RIAA came up with that ridiculous figure.

But the defendant is claiming that $750 per song counts as an unconstitutional violation of due process because the figure is unreasonably high when compared against the actual value of a downloaded song—and that she should pay the wholesale price per song, which she estimates at 70 cents. By her argument, the $750-per-song fee is 1,071 times higher than the actual damages suffered by the RIAA.

From the judge's order:

[Plaintiff] shall set forth with more specificity the categories of expenses they incurred in making the song recordings, such as, for example, royalties. Plaintiffs shall also state with specificity which categories of expenses, if any, (a) they are unable to quantify or (b) they cannot quantify without unreasonable burden or expense—and in the latter event, they shall explain why.

"RIAA Must Divulge Expenses-Per-Download" [Slashdot]

RELATED
pdf of electronic filing of the judge's order [Pike & Fischer]
"§ 504. Remedies for infringement: Damages and profits" [Cornell University Law School]
(Photo: Getty)

"Please why oh why? Comcast Must Die!"
"And I just sigh 'Comcast Must Die."
"'Cause they just lie, Comcast Must Die."
"'Goddamn!' cussed I. 'Comcast Must Die!'"

Submissions can be sent to bobosphere@gmail.com.

Theme Song Needed [Comcast Must Die]

As an example: we like Apple. We like iTunes. We think, overall, Apple is just the sort of shot-in-the-arm that the music industry needs. And Apple is a pretty trustworthy company. But that didn't stop them from silently degrading the rights iTunes customers have over their ability to copy the songs they purchased to other machines or hard copies (we remember this very clearly, but we're having a hard time Googling it up, not really quite certain of the germane search terms. Anyone got a reference citation for this?).

Anyway, Reuters has an interesting look up at the murky concept of ownership in the digital age, highlighting the dangers of letting a company licensing you thousands of dollars worth of media but not allowing you to directly control it as property. What happens when you want to switch away from iTunes? You have to buy all your songs somewhere else, on a different DRM format. What if you want to backup your iPod? It's not easy... they are designed to make the process as difficult as possible. There's nothing here that anti-DRM folks don't already know, but it's an interesting primer on the issues surrounding what companies are trying to tell you what your rights are compared to the rights consumers have enjoyed when making purchases for centuries.

Although we really do believe music, like soylent green, is "the peoples," please rest assured the image is posted with our pointed tongues gorily transfixed through our cheeks.

Do you own songs bought online? Well, sort of [Reuters]

So we were delighted when fire-of-our-loins Gina Trapani... um... Matt Haughey over at Lifehacker pointed out this blog detailing all the stuff you can get for free over iTunes. Oh, it's not all cream — Dolly Parton's on there. But well worth adding to your RSS feed, if only to download the occasional song through iTunes that isn't helping fund the RIAA's lawsuit campaign against small children and lonely old grandmas without a computer.

Free iTunes Downloads (Thanks, Lifehacker!)