The Joel Tenenbaum case opened today with a full, slogging day of jury selection, the defense reeling from Boston federal judge Nancy Gertner’s last-minute decision to remove Tenenbaum’s proposed fair use defense from the closely watched copyright case.
Tenenbaum’s hopes of letting the jury determine whether his acts of alleged infringement constituted fair use under the Copyright Act were dashed by an order e-mailed to the parties this morning at 1:37 am, granting the record label plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment on the fair use defense. Judge Gertner’s order, handed down less than eight hours before trial got under way, said the fair use defense proposed by Tenenbaum failed because it would “shield from liability any person who downloaded copyrighted songs for his or her own private enjoyment” and would “swallow the copyright protections that Congress has created.”
Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica
