MP3 Lawsuit Question

[NL5]

Do any of you, especially lawyers/law students, believe that the reason only uploaders/"distributors" are only getting sued is due to the fact that they would have to prove that a downloader does NOT have rights to that music. What I mean is, if I own an album, and I download an MP3 from that album, that is legit, because I purchased the rights to that album (for my personal use). People sharing files are automatically in violation of copyright law by distributing music that they are not licensed to distribute.

 

[isasir]

Um, people that are downloading music ARE being sued.

 

[NL5]

Link?

I've only seen people that are sharing files being sued.

 

[NL5]

http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/howto-notgetsued.php

Says only people "sharing" are getting sued at this point.........

 

[DaWhim]

because downloaders > uploaders. they will have problem presecuting them. didn't you see RIAA make a big mess out of it last time?

 

[Spencer278]

Because you can't prove someone downloaded the file unless you servered the file. So if you let them download it then they didn't break the law.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Spencer278
Because you can't prove someone downloaded the file unless you servered the file. So if you let them download it then they didn't break the law.

That makes sense to me, except I remember reading on one case where the RIAA compared some woman's files to those being traded on Napster a year or two prior. A lot of people here made the argument that if the woman used the same encoding software with the same sourcefile, it's possible that she hadn't downloaded the files. (But, those arguing forgot about the id tags (ie "cracked by musicstealer")

 

[NL5]

hmmmmm.