JM used our newssubmit to tell us about the German Courts vs. America Online. Restrictive online copyright protection may have been bolstered by a German appeals court, which has upheld a ruling against America Online that found the Internet giant responsible for pirated material swapped on its service.
The plaintiff in the case was a German music company, Hit Box Software, which sued AOL Germany for copyright violation when users swapped illegally copied music files via AOL's online service. The Munich court also set up payment guidelines for damages. |
Hit Box claimed that three instrumental versions of pop hits, among them "Get Down" by the BackStreet Boys, were downloaded at least a thousand times on AOL in 1997, according to media reports.
The digital recordings were meant for karaoke tracks, which Hit Box sells on CD for US$15. The company was seeking a reported $50,000 in damages but the decision Friday put off any ruling for damage amounts.
The original court ruling had also stated that ISPs could only be responsible if they did not immediately block access to pirated material upon learning of its existence on their systems. AOL claimed at the time that it had followed the court's ruling to the letter of the law, according to press reports.
Nevertheless, the case shows a growing impatience by courts for pirated material, the easiest of which to propagate online are music files.
The most notorious of all swapping sagas, of course, is that of Napster, which just this week lost its famous case to the major record labels for copyright infringement
Source: dailynews.yahoo.com
