Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas

A federal district court's ruling has taken away -- at least temporariily -- a key legal weapon in the fight against music piracy online. The court's decision will make it harder to stop file sharing on peer-to-peer networks -- a prime source of music piracy -- by demonstrating that it violates the Copyright Act. Besieged by, and in decline from, downloads by the 10s of millions from music placed...

A few days ago, a District Court in Minnesota reversed course on its own prior holding and decided that, in copyright law, it is not actionable to "offer to distribute" a copyrighted file without permission, but instead only actionable if you actually distribute the file.  The opinion raises a number of interesting questions about how copyright law should and does work, perhaps most notably forcing...