Jammie Thomas-Rasset, who was the first individual to take a RIAA file-sharing case to court, has rejected a offer from the RIAA to close the case if she paid $25,000. Thomas, a mother, has been fighting the RIAA for years since she got a threat letter sent to her.

According to Thomas's lawyer, “I think it proves our point. They want to use this case as a bogeyman to scare people into doing what they want, to pay exorbitant damages."

Total solidarity with all victims of the MAFIAA lawsuit campaigns!

A British jury voted to acquit OiNK admin Allan Ellis of "conspiracy to defraud the music industry" for running a large bittorrent indexing site.

The site was portrayed as a cash cow by the prosecutors, but clearly Allan hadn't made a killing off it. Any money he made would have gone to keeping the site online which is no cheap thing. After two years of fighting the charges, Allan can now walk free again with no chance that the case will be appealed.

More at TorrentFreak

Solidarity!

Theodore Reppe, a well known net activist and crypto-anarchist was charged with posting false information on the internet and causing 38 euros in damages. As many of you may remember, he had his house raided earlier which was likely due to his name being on the wikileaks.de domain name. He also runs a Tor exit node, allowing users (and leakers) to access the internet anonymously. Somebody used his exit node to do something that was illegal in Germany however the courts found that he was not guilty of it as clearly he did not commit the act despite it being tracked to his IP address.

From http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/metadata/

Arizona's Supreme Court, in a surprising but welcome ruling, has
declared that electronic metadata is part of the public record under
state law, in a case involving an Arizona police officer who suspects
his superiors of backdating a document related to his work performance.

Phoenix, Arizona, police officer David Lake had filed a federal lawsuit
against the city alleging employment discrimination.

He'd also filed a public records request to obtain documents related to
his work, including notes written by his supervisor documenting his
performance. When he subsequently sought the electronic metadata for the
records, because he believed at least one of the paper documents had
been backdated, the city refused.

The city argued that metadata " digital information that can reveal when
a document was created and subsequently accessed or modified " was not
part of the public record. Releasing such information to the public
would result in an "administrative nightmare" and force public officials
to spend "countless hours" trying to identify the metadata, the city
claimed.

Two lower courts agreed with the city, noting a distinction between
"record" and "public record."

But the state Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that "if a public entity
maintains a public record in an electronic format, then the electronic
version, including any embedded metadata, is subject to disclosure
(.pdf) under our public records laws."

Supreme Court Justice W. Scott Bales wrote in the ruling that metadata
"is part of the underlying document; it does not stand on its own. When
a public officer uses a computer to make a public record, the metadata
forms part of the document as much as the words on the page."

The court responded to the city's claim that supplying metadata would
place an unnatural burden on city workers by noting that the request for
metadata could easily be satisfied by supplying requesters with
documents in their original electronic format, rather than printing them
out.

Several media organizations, as well as the Reporters Committee for
Freedom of the Press, wrote an amicus brief in support of Lake's request.

"The decision is important because we live in an electronic age where
maintenance and preservation of public records in electronic format is
quickly becoming the norm," said David Bodney, who helped write the
brief. "Public bodies should not be permitted to withhold that
information from public inspection."

Although the ruling applies only in Arizona, the case could influence
other courts. The Supreme Court in Washington state is set to hear a
similar metadata case.

(Hat tip: Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press)