Recording Industry Association Of America Wins Lawsuit Against Music Downloader

Phoenix, AZ (AHN) - Jeffrey Howell lost a copyright infringement case filed by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2006. The lawsuit is one of the closely watched copyright infringement cases over charges of evidence tampering.

In his decision issued Monday, Judge Neil Wake, ruled that Howell willfully and intentionally destroyed evidence of his peer-to-peer activities after he was informed of a pending legal action by the RIAA.

RIAA accused Howell of using the KaZaA P2P network to make copyrighted files for download. Howell admitted placing the file-sharing software in his computer, but maintained the songs he downloaded were for personal use and he did not even placed the music files on the program's shared folder.

The association argued that making the music files available for download is already copyright infringement, but Wake ruled in April that it must involve a sale or other forms of ownership transfer.

After Howell learned of the lawsuit, he uninstalled KaZaA and reformatted his hard drive. RIAA cited his intentional removal of evidence as proof of copyright infringement.

Wake will inform Howell of the amount of damage he has to pay RIAA in a written order he will receive from the Arizona court.