US Appeals Court Throws Out 'Sampling' Defense In Downloading Case
The defense put forward by a woman named in the first wave of civil lawsuits
filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against the users
of peer-to-peer downloading services has been rejected by the US Court of Appeals
for the Seventh Circuit. Cecilia Gonzalez had argued that she was downloading songs in order to decide
which she liked enough to purchase on CD, and pointed to the size of her CD
collection as evidence of this. However, the three-judge appeals court panel upheld the $22,500 judgement against
her on the grounds that she did not delete the tracks from her hard drive that
she did not intend to buy. "A copy downloaded, played, and retained on one's hard drive for future
use is a direct substitute for a purchased copy," they reasoned. According to reports in the legal media, they also dismissed her assertion
that she downloaded fewer songs than many of the defendants in similar cases
as "no more relevant than a thief's contention that he shoplifted only
30 compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later". .
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