Harvard’s Berkman Center submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the case of Capital Records, et al. v. Noor Alaujan:

The amici parties in the brief are individual members at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, acting not in the interest of any of the parties in the case but in the interest of helping the Court balance the competing claims of the Plaintiffs and Defendants.

This case requires balancing rights of copyright holders, who allege harms caused by the distribution of their songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks, with protections for individual consumers accused of copying and distributing these songs on such networks. The briefing outlines some of the factual matters in the case, such as possible errors in the methods by which these users are identified, as well as more substantive legal issues such as potential fair use defenses and the question of whether merely storing files in shared folders violates Plaintiffs’ rights of public distribution.

In this brief, amici parties urge the Courts to exercise caution in granting uniform remedies, given the diversity of possible factual and legal defenses that might be raised by individual users.

Makes me proud to be a Berkperson.

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