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Bit Parts

By Stan Soocher
May 28, 2008

Copyright Infringement/File Sharing

The U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona decided in a music file-sharing case that the phrase 'offering to distribute,' included in defining the term 'publication' in Sec. 101 of the Copyright Act, doesn't amount to a 'distribution' under Sec. 106(3) of the Act. Atlantic Recording Corp. v. Howell, CV-06-02076-PHX-NVW. '[A] distribution must involve a 'sale or other transfer of ownership' or a 'rental, lease, or lending' of a copy of the work. The recording companies have not proved an actual distribution of 42 of the copyrighted sound recordings at issue,' the district court noted. The court went on to find: 'The recording companies motion for summary judgment also fails because they have not proved that a KaZaA user who places a copyrighted work into the shared folder distributes a copy of that work when a third-party downloads it. ' If the owner of the shared folder simply provides a member of the public with access to the work and the means to make an unauthorized copy, the owner is not liable as a primary infringer of the distribution right, but rather is potentially liable as a secondary infringer of the reproduction right.'

Copyright Infringement/Summary Judgment

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