About this news article

In an Arizona court case of Atlantic v. Howell, that involves an alleged illegal file sharer, the RIAA claimed that the ripping of a sound recording to any kind of shared folder results in this recording becoming unauthorised.  However, the main problem here is that a shared folder covers a broad range of possibilities and not just a folder used by P2P software to share content online.  For example, a shared folder could also mean a folder shared with a network media player, where content can be streamed and played from by the network media player.

The U.S. District Judge denied the RIAA's claim, ruling that the sole act of putting content in shared folders does not violate copyright law.  As a result, the judge rejected the RIAA's "making available" theory, making note that unless a copy of work changes hands in one of specific ways, a distribution has not taken place.  It also rejected the "offer to distribute" theory by Judge Karas.  The judge also held the RIAA's evidence inconclusive as it was unclear if the defendant was actually the person to put the files in the shared folder.

This ruling could have quite a significant effect on other RIAA lawsuits, as it makes it more difficult for the RIAA to prove content has been distributed from someone's shared folder, particularly since most ISPs and especially most file sharing programs don't log user's file sharing activities.