This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Legal
Supreme Court refuses to hear innocent infringer case
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 1 December 2010
The US Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal of Whitney Harper, one of the file-sharers targeted by the Recording Industry Association Of America’s barrage of sue-the-fans litigation from the last decade. Had it taken the case it would have been the first such lawsuit to reach America’s highest court.
As previously reported, although the RIAA has now abandoned its self-harming sue-the-fans strategy for combating file-sharing, a number of old cases are still working their way through the system. These are the cases where the targeted fan chose not to settle out of court; the most famous ones, of course, involve Jammie Thomas and Joel Tennenbaum.
But the Whitney Harper scenario was a bit different than the other high profile cases in that it centred on the concept of the ‘innocent infringer’. Harper admitted to illegally accessing music online but said that at the time when she was file-sharing she did not know doing so infringed copyright, equating P2P file-sharing networks with online radio services.
Although the ‘innocent infringer’ claim is not a complete defence in US copyright law, it does mean a court can ignore the minimum damages set out in statute, which insist a defendant pay at least $750 for every copyright they infringe. Given Harper is accused of file-sharing 37 tracks, if you applied the statutory minimum she’d face damages of $27,750.
The Texas judge who first heard Harper’s case decided she should be considered an ‘innocent infringer’ and ruled she should pay just $200 per copyright violation, so $7400. But when the RIAA appealed, a higher court said Harper’s chosen defence did not apply in file-sharing cases, and upped the damages to the statutory minimum.
It was that ruling Harper wanted to take to the Supreme Court. Had she done so and won, anyone who could convince an American judge or jury that they file-shared in ignorance of the law could get away with much more modest damages. But only one of the Supreme Court judges considering Harper’s application said he would be willing to consider her appeal, which wasn’t enough for such a hearing to go ahead, meaning the original appeal court ruling – that the innocent infringer defence is not valid – stands.
The dissenting Supreme Court judge was Samuel Alito who expressed some concern that part of the record industry’s argument centred on the fact that the copyright restrictions that govern sound recordings are clearly stated (albeit in the small print) on every CD. Alito wondered if, for the Napster generation, who may realistically not own any CDs and only access music via small print free illegal download networks, such an argument was sound in denying Harper’s claim to being an innocent infringer.
