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The Recording Industry Association of America — known throughout college campuses for blanket accusations of music piracy and legal scare tactics — will have to curb its wanton copyright-infringement lawsuit-slapping ways. The RIAA uses a "making available" clause in copyright law that allows it to quickly target anyone it suspects of copyright infringement. If you have a file-sharing client and copyrighted media on your machine, you've helped spread illegal files, the RIAA's lawyers reasoned. But last month, a federal judge from the southern district of California threw out this legal theory — and put the music industry's strategy in jeopardy.


In Interscope v. Rodriguez, the judge ruled that the tactic was invalid because it was based on speculation. The RIAA regrouped and submitted a new complaint, claiming it had detected an individual downloading and distributing copyrighted files at a specific time and place. Good luck with that. According to copyright attorney Ray Beckerman, the RIAA can't actually determine when an individual is copying or distributing files. Beckerman suggests that all recording-industry defendants have their cases dismissed.