Google has nothing relevant to add to EMI’s copyright infringement...
Google has nothing relevant to add to EMI’s copyright infringement case against “used” digital music reseller ReDigi, U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan in New York said in an order denying Google’s request to file a friend-of-the-court brief. Google had told…
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the judge EMI’s claims could blur or undermine the legal distinctions that make possible the cloud-computing industry, such as the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in favor of Cablevision’s remote-DVR service (WID Feb 2 p7), which added legal clarity to the right of cloud providers to store things at the direction of a user without incurring liability for potential infringement. In a two-sentence order, Sullivan said EMI and ReDigi are “fully capable of raising these issues themselves -- and have every incentive to do just that.” EMI made the same argument at greater length in a letter to Sullivan opposing Google’s request to file a brief, saying the search company gave a “nearly verbatim rehash” of one ReDigi claim, that the reseller is either not distributing “copies” under the Copyright Act or is protected by the first-sale doctrine. Google’s concerns “are not even at issue in this case,” EMI said: The label doesn’t challenge a user’s uploading a song to a cloud locker service and streaming it back to himself, or “space-shifting” the song to other devices for personal use. The case is all about ReDigi and its users “copying files for purposes of transfer and sale, for profit, to other users,” EMI said. The label said Google had “quite clearly” taken sides in the dispute, contrary to the search company’s claim, arguing that EMI’s preliminary injunction motion should be denied because damages owed the label by ReDigi could be “easily calculated” later.