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from the Have-you-ever-read-a-book,-magazine,-or-newspaper?-Which-ones? dept.
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:
Have you now, or ever been, a member of the Pirate Party?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 05 2020, @06:10AM (3 children)
This time is a bit different from all the "go after the uploader/downloader".
TFS
TFA
So, directly, they may have never tried to go after the downloader (I doubt it, but lets assume it's right; I don't have time to dig after such cases)
However, it looks like they do (now?) have a specific problem with the downloading part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 05 2020, @08:41AM (2 children)
Those questions from TFA are to potential jurors not defendants. Of course they are going to want to exclude downloaders and people sympathetic to copyright infringement.
They always have a problem with downloading, but in this case they are once again not going after the downloaders. They are going after the company they say facilitated the downloads.
I'm not claiming it's an absolute, but the majority of cases where people are sued you will find it is for uploading. The ones that don't seem to be are usually for BitTorrent, where they can credibly claim that being in a swarm meant supplying copies to others in the swarm. My suspicion is that they really don't want a legal judgement that explicitly says "downloading is legal, it is the uploader that made the infringing copy".
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 05 2020, @09:04AM (1 child)
If they consider downloads as not-illegal, they have no case against someone that facilitated something not-illegal, do they?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 05 2020, @11:24AM
A has a pirate copy of a movie. B does not.
Grande Communications possibly facilitates something.
A and B now both have a copy of the movie.
There is no question that a copyright infringement occurred. The questions are did GC facilitate it and is that illegal? (or civilly liable - they are being sued not charged)
The question they are avoiding is did A or B commit the infringement?
I think they think the answer is A, but as long as that is never declared in court they can keep claiming that downloading is illegal.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.