Judge Hints at Mistrial in RIAA v. Jammie Thomas
Found on Wired on Sunday, 03 August 2008
The federal judge who presided over the nation's only peer-to-peer copyright-infringement trial announced from the bench here Monday that he is likely to declare a mistrial.
At issue is whether the RIAA needs to prove that copyrighted music offered by a defendant on a peer-to-peer network was actually downloaded by anyone.
The judge's decision, which he said would be issued "hopefully before the end of September," is likely to have wide-ranging implications in the RIAA's file-sharing litigation campaign -- 20,000 lawsuits and counting.
Just imagine what happens if the RIAA/MPAA doesn't need to prove infringement: lawsuit are brought to everybody who accesses a P2P network. Then it's up to the user to prove that he did not make any music accessible. That's an "in dubio contra reo" way.