Making Available finally recognized for the sham it is

From A Groklaw article today:

In Atlantic v. Brennan, the courts have finally recognized RIAA’s “making available” argument for the sham it is. Groklaw has a link to the full ruling, which includes:

At least one aspect of Plaintiffs’ distribution claim is problematic, however, namely the allegation of infringement based on “mak[ing] the Copyrighted Recordings available for distribution to others.”… This amounts to a valid ground on which to mount a defense, for “without actual distribution of copies … there is no violation [of] the distribution right.” 4 William F. Patry, Patry on Copyright § 13:9 (2007); see also id. n.10 (collecting cases); Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146, 1162 (9th Cir. 2007) (affirming the district court’s finding “that distribution requires an ‘actual dissemination’ of a copy”).

Also, finally, the judge rejected the claims as being speculative, as they all rested on the “upon information and belief” statements.

Maybe things will start going in the right direction…

On a side note, if you still haven’t read it, check out the Google Labs paper “Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population” (USENIX FAST ‘07).