KAHULUI, Hawaii, Dec. 23, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Michael Jay Rossi, President of InternetMovies.com Inc., will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case "Rossi vs. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)" for the wrongful shutdown of his Website in 2001. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that good faith belief under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is subjective and not objective.
The MPAA stated, under penalty of perjury, that in 2001 www.InternetMovies.com made available for illegal download the third installment of "The Lord of the Rings," which was not actually finished until 2003. The MPAA issued a cease and desist order to InternetMovies.com's ISP to shut down the site.
According to Rossi, "MPAA communications with my ISP were unreasonable and outrageous and without just cause or excuse and beyond all bounds of decency -- violating the DMCA. The courts must have overlooked that I could not have made a movie downloadable 3 years in the future, which shows that the MPAA was not within the boundaries of decency and that the court should not have ruled in favor of the MPAA."
First Amendment litigator James H. Fosbinder, who is representing Rossi, said InternetMovies.com never had the capacity to provide movie downloads and characterized the statements cited by the court as "hyperbole." He criticized the panel for failing to "even mention" the First Amendment and argued that if a similar standard were applied to print media, it would authorize a copyright owner to "shut down the New York Times on a mere suspicion." The "good faith" standard has been held, under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, under federal securities laws, and in other contexts, to include an obligation to make a reasonable investigation into the truth of an allegation before making it, Fosbinder said. The MPAA should have purchased a membership and determined whether movies were in fact available for download before invoking the protections of the DMCA, the attorney said. He added that the membership price was about $3.00, and analogized the MPAA's tactic to seeking suppression of a book based on its cover without buying or reading it. The court's interpretation of the DMCA creates "a second class of First Amendment protection for a new mode of communication," Fosbinder said. If the interpretation is correct, then the act is unconstitutional, he declared.
First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
www.InternetMovies.com is calling for membership support to help fight against any further abuse of the DMCA.