Last week, we talked about how the Washington Post fucked up its RIAA story about a case where a dude ripped his CD into his Shared Folder for Kazaa. The RIAA says that just making the files available equals infringement even if nobody downloaded them. But that’s not what the law says, and now the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a Brief in Atlantic v. Howell Resisting RIAA’s “Attempted Distribution” Theory:

Sure, it would make it quite a bit easier for the RIAA if they could go to court and simply say “this person had our songs in their shared folder, we win.” But that’s not the law. If the RIAA wants to bring tens of thousands of lawsuits against individuals, they have to play by the rules and prove their cases. That means proving that actual infringing copies were made or that actual infringing distributions took place. It’s not enough to prove that they could have taken place.

Download the EFF amicus brief (249.94 KB PDF).