Innocence lost – Fifth Circuit hears defense in music downloading case

Description

Abstract: When it comes to copyright notices involving recorded music, can ignorance of the law be a defense? It’s an increasingly important question in today’s age of digital file sharing via the Internet. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals provided one answer in the case of a woman who used a file-sharing program to share 544 digital audio files — including a number of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted recordings — with other users of a peer-to-peer network.