Napster, Aimster, Posnerster: Aimster, one of the many Napster derivatives, has been shut down, temporarily, in a lawsuit by the RIAA for being a "substantial contributor" to the copyright infringement its users commit daily. Judge Posner, writing for the Seventh Circuit, does his usual turn with an opinion by giving us history, philosphy as well as law. The issue is whether Aimster, by virtue of its providing the technology, can be tagged as a contributor to the delinquency of its users as they degrade the copyright status of the songs traded back and forth.

Judge Posner, gives considerable attention to the old Sony case which involved the Betamax as tool of the consumer who wanted to tape t.v. shows and remove their commercials. The Court refused to shut down Sony from distributing the machines, because there was evidence of non-infringing use, which defeats the contributor status. However, in the Aimster case

[i]t is not enough, as we have said, that a product or service be physically capable, as it were, of a noninfringing use. Aimster has failed to produce any evidence that its service has ever been used for a noninfringing use, let alone evidence concerning the frequency of such uses. In the words of the district judge, “defendants here have provided no evidence whatsoever (besides the unsupported declaration of Deep) that Aimster is actually used for any of the stated non-infringing purposes. Absent is any indication from real-life Aimster users that their primary use of the system is to transfer non-copyrighted files to their friends or identify users of similar interests and share information. Absent is any indication that even a single business without a network administrator uses Aimster to exchange business records as Deep suggests.”

So, on the one hand, too bad for Aimster. On the other, it's going to be easy to come up with such evidence. The opinion only stems from an appeal from an order granting a preliminary injunction. The trial must still occur.