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Record Labels to Ask Potential Jurors: Have You Ever Read or Visited Ars Technica or TorrentFreak?

posted by martyb on Tuesday February 04 2020, @06:33AM   
from the Have-you-ever-read-a-book,-magazine,-or-newspaper?-Which-ones? dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Ars Technica:

Music-industry lawyers plan to ask potential jurors in a piracy case whether they read Ars Technica.

"Have you ever read or visited Ars Technica or TorrentFreak?" is one of 40 voir dire questions that plaintiffs propose to ask prospective jurors in their case against Grande Communications, an Internet service provider accused of aiding its customers' piracy, according to a court filing on Friday.

[...] Record-label attorneys also want to ask potential jurors if they "know what a peer-to-peer network is," have "ever downloaded content from any BitTorrent website" such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, obtained music or video from "any stream-ripping service," been "accused of infringing a copyright," or "ever been a member, contributor or supporter of the Electronic Frontier Foundation."

The full list of questions by each party were made available by TorrentFreak as pdfs:

• Questions by the record labels.
• Questions by Grande Communications.

Have you now, or ever been, a member of the Pirate Party?

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Original Submission

• Re:good jurors are so hard to find! Re:good jurors are so hard to find! (Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday February 04 2020, @05:41PM (4 children)

  by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday February 04 2020, @05:41PM (#953667) Journal

  The Supreme Court of the United States narrowly considered time shifting to be fair use because at the time, video programming was primarily broadcast on a linear schedule. The logic doesn't apply quite so well to subscription video on demand services, be they included with a traditional cable television service or sold separately.

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• Re:good jurors are so hard to find! Re:good jurors are so hard to find! (Score: 2) by exaeta on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:43PM (3 children)

  by exaeta (6957) on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:43PM (#954802) Homepage Journal

  What about "device shifting"? Say I have an "unapproved" device. I think copying the stream would therefore be "fair use".

  --
  The Government is a Bird

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  • You agreed to a restriction on playback devices You agreed to a restriction on playback devices (Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday February 07 2020, @12:30AM (2 children)

    by Pino P (4721) on Friday February 07 2020, @12:30AM (#954935) Journal

    When you signed up for a subscription video on demand service, you agreed to an express written restriction on playback devices. Courts in SoylentNews PBC's home country have uniformly upheld such restrictions in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes, 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc., RealNetworks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Ass'n, Inc., and DVD Copy Control Ass'n, Inc. v. Kaleidescape, Inc.

    By contrast, free-to-air broadcasts are not subject to such a restriction.

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    • Re:You agreed to a restriction on playback devices Re:You agreed to a restriction on playback devices (Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday February 09 2020, @01:25AM (1 child)

      by exaeta (6957) on Sunday February 09 2020, @01:25AM (#955851) Homepage Journal

      I donno, you may argue that such terms are anticompetitive. If the contract is anticompetitive, it doesn't matter if you agreed to it, because antitrust law overrides contract law.

      --
      The Government is a Bird

      Parent

      • Re:You agreed to a restriction on playback devices (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday February 09 2020, @03:41AM

        by Pino P (4721) on Sunday February 09 2020, @03:41AM (#955886) Journal

        How often do private antitrust suits actually succeed?

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