Aimster shutdown upheld
Decision may affect rulings on other services
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 7/1/2003
A federal appeals court in Chicago yesterday upheld an injunction that shut down the file-sharing service Aimster to stop its users from illegally swapping copyrighted music recordings.
The decision may call into question another recent federal court ruling, which allowed continued distribution of two other file-swapping programs, Grokster and Morpheus. In that case, a judge in Los Angeles said Grokster and Morpheus were not legally responsible when users of the programs swapped files illegally.
Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, hailed yesterday's ruling.
'We're delighted by this decision which makes clear . . . that companies cannot profit from copyright infringement,' Sherman said.
Yet Johnny Deep, who founded Aimster and has since renamed it Madster, also celebrated the ruling.
'It's a stunning victory for us,' Deep said. Deep said that although the court left the injunction in place, the court's opinion, written by Judge Richard Posner, laid out a series of tests that the file-sharing service would have to meet in order to resume business. Deep said that his company could easily meet those tests and would therefore prevail at trial.
Posner wrote that the service could continue if it could prove that people used the software for legitimate purposes, such as trading non-copyrighted music files.
Also yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties organization, launched a grass-roots lobbying campaign to block a plan by the RIAA to sue thousands of individuals engaged in illegal file-swapping.Under the plan announced last week, RIAA investigators will subpoena Internet service providers to get the names of users who swap large amounts of copyrighted music. These people will then be subject to civil or criminal penalties for copyright infringement.
EFF is trying to persuade Congress to modify federal copyright law to make file-swapping legal under a new system for collecting music royalties that ensures that music producers are compensated for their work.
EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann proposed 'compulsory licensing,' which would require music companies to allow Internet users to swap and listen to whatever tunes they pleased. In exchange, Internet companies and makers of related technologies such as MP3 players and CD-ROM recorders would pay a special fee to compensate musicians and composers. The fee would be paid by consumers through price increases, and the money collected in escrow accounts, to be divided in accordance with a prescribed formula. For instance, artists whose tunes are downloaded more frequently would get a larger share of the money.
Mitch Glazier, the RIAA's senior vice president for government relations said a compulsory licensing plan would require some sort of federal regulatory body to set the fees and make sure the money is distributed fairly. In effect, said Glazier, 'the EFF is advocating having the government regulate the Internet.' Glazier prefers the RIAA approach -- aggressive pursuit of file-swappers modeled on the cable TV industry's prosecution of those who sell illegal set-top boxes.
'If you look at the case of cable signal theft and satellite signal theft,' said Glazier, 'you can see that it does work.'
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
This story ran on page D2 of the Boston Globe on 7/1/2003.
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