In re Aimster Copyright Litigation
| In re Aimster Copyright Litigation | |
|---|---|
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| Court | United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit |
| Full case name | In re Aimster Copyright Litigation. Appeal of: John Deep, Defendant. |
| Decided | June 30, 2003 |
| Citation(s) | 334 F.3d 643 (7th Cir. 2003) |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority: Richard Posner | |
| Court membership | |
| Judge(s) sitting | Richard Posner, Kenneth Francis Ripple, Ann Claire Williams |
In re Aimster Copyright Litigation, 334 F.3d 643 (7th Cir. 2003), was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit addressed copyright infringement claims brought against Aimster, concluding that a preliminary injunction against the file-sharing service was appropriate, because the copyright owners were likely to prevail on their claims of contributory infringement and the fact that the services was capable of having non-infringing user was not enough reason to reverse the district court's decision. The appellate court also noted that defendant could have limited the quantity of the infringements if he had eliminated an encryption system feature and if it had monitored the use of its systems. This made it so that the defense did not fall within the safe harbor of 17 U.S.C.S. § 512(i). and could not be used as an excuse to not know about the infringement. In addition, the court decided that the harm done to the plaintiff was irreparable and outweighed any harm to the defendant created by the injunction.
Recording industry owners of copyrights in musical performances brought contributory and vicarious infringement action, a type of secondary liability, against a website operator called Aimster (renamed and currently called Madster), a company such as Napster which facilitated the swapping of digital copies of songs over the internet.
Owners of copyrighted popular music claimed that John Deep ("Deep")'s Aimster Internet service was a contributory and vicarious infringer of these copyrights. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 252 F.Supp.2d 634, Marvin E. Aspen, Jr., granted preliminary injunction for plaintiffs, which shut down Defendant's service until the suit was resolved, Aimster appealed from this preliminary injunction to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
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