Napster, copyright, etc.

[heidi.h.tandy.c92 at alumni.upenn.edu]

No: HPFGUIDX 12616

Even though I'm not a moderator, I'm writing this message on behalf 
of the Moderating Team, since I have more experience with 
intellectual property law than the rest of them put together 
(DISCLAIMER - this isn't legal advice, and doesn't create an attorney-
client situation). 

The moderators have deleted the post this morning from a listie which 
gave information about finding certain works copyrighted by JKR on 
Napster and on a website. 

This was done because, as you may be aware, last week, the court of 
appeals for the 9th Circuit held that Napster is engaged in 
violations of copyright when it allows users to distribute music 
without a license to do so. The court said Napster was doing 
something called "contributory infringement" when it facilitated the 
passing of that information among users.

None of us wanted to get ourselves or Yahoogroups in the same kind of 
trouble, and the Moderator Team is concerned that the annoucement 
about the audio versions of JKR's copyrighted books constitutes 
contributory copyright infringement.

Because of this, they removed the post from the group's Archives, and 
ask that all listies avoid discussions of how to find the books on 
Napster or other "peer to peer" sites, or at any URL which contains 
substantially all of the text of the books, in any format.

Please don't consider this a "Howler" directed at ANYONE - we just 
wanted to let you know why the moderators took this action.

If you've joined the list in the past month, I also wanted to let you 
know that there are a lot of messages from early to mid January on 
this same issue - you might want to take a look at them. 

Have a great day!