Big Stick
As we all might have guessed, the RIAA has settled out of court their suit against the 4 University students, for a piddly $12,000 – $17,500 each. Despite the fact that this probably doesn’t even cover their legal bills, the RIAA has hailed this as a great victory.
The students, of course, were in a bind. Going to Court meant huge legal bills. And, as they were caught with infringing files on their hard drives, they might have been found liable for the Direct Infringement claims. As I’ve argued previously, the Contributory Infringement claims were a crock. It would have been salutary to see them get laughed out of Court.
We’ll never get to see that happen now, and the RIAA still has a ‘big stick’ with which to harass and intimidate people who would engage in perfectly legitimate activities, like the construction of a Search Engine.
Posted by distler at May 2, 2003 10:08 AM