US High Court Won't Consider Defense Against Music Piracy Lawsuit
November 29 2010 - 10:46AM
Dow Jones News
The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to consider whether a
Texas woman who was sued for downloading music illegally can argue
that she was too young and naive to know she was violating
copyright laws.
Several record companies, including Warner Bros. Records Inc.
and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, sued Whitney Harper in 2007 for
illegally downloading music on Internet file-sharing networks. A
federal judge ruled the companies were entitled to collect damages
from Harper for illegally downloading 37 copyrighted songs.
The record labels sought a minimum $750 penalty for each song,
as provided by the federal Copyright Act. Harper, however, sought
to trigger the "innocent infringer" provision of the act, which
allows for penalties as low as $200 per violation if the defendant
had no reason to believe her acts constituted copyright
infringement.
Harper, who acquired the songs when she was a 16-year-old, said
she did not realize she was downloading the music, thinking instead
that file-sharing networks were similar to Internet radio
stations.
The record companies said Harper was a "long-term, massive
infringer" of their copyrights.
The companies argued, and a federal appeals court agreed, that
Harper could not assert the innocent-infringer defense because the
companies had clearly placed copyright notices on the CDs of their
musical recordings.
The Supreme Court let the appeals court ruling stand.
Harper had argued that the copyright notices placed on CDs were
irrelevant in the digital setting, where the music files contained
no copyright notice. She warned that a win for the record labels
would mean that downloading music on the Internet could never be
deemed innocent infringement.
The record companies said they have "transitioned away" from
suing individuals for infringement, preferring other mechanisms to
stop music piracy. They said Harper's case was one of very few
still working their way through the federal courts.
The case is Harper v. Maverick Recording Co., 10-94.
-By Brent Kendall, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9222;
brent.kendall@dowjones.com