Response to: Debate over "making available" jury instruction as Capitol v. Thomas wraps up (updated)

This is an extension and updated version of the article reviewed by Anna about a week ago.

Judge Davis gave instructions to the jury after the trial of Capitol vs. Thomas, this was instruction number 14, "The mere act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network without license from copyright owners does not violate the copyright owners' exclusive right to distribution," reads the proposed jury instruction. "An actual transfer must take place." Most judges agree with the label company saying making a file available on a peer-to-peer network is the same as infringement. When the question arose whether the songs were distributed or not the reply was, "That's the way the system works, I know that each one of the 25 songs was distributed." After weeks of the trial Judge Davis amended the instruction to say that the "act of making available for electronic distribution... violates the copyright owner's exclusive copyright." That decision should make it easier for the jury to find Thomas liable.

The beautiful part of our judicial system is that people need to be proven guilty, and to be proven guilty one need to be caught in the act or red-handed so to say. Although "that's the way the system works” (Kazaa), there is no hard evidence that other users have downloaded Thomas’ 24 songs, they could have been terrible. If you can own an assault rifle and not be accused of killing you be able to post illegal information and not be accused of distribution. The sum of damage that Capital Records is asking for is ridiculous besides, close to 10,000 per song allegedly distributed that amounts to over $220,000 to be paid by a private citizen to a cooperation that is ludicrous


http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071004-debate-over-making-available-jury-instruction-as-capitol-v-thomas-wraps-up.html