Background
Recording industry owners of copyrights in musical performances brought contributory and vicarious infringement action, a Type of Secondary liability, against Internet website operator called Aimster (renamed and currently called Madster), a company such as Napster which facilitated the swapping of digital copies of songs over the internet.
Owners of copyrighted popular music claimed that John Deep ("Deep")'s Aimster Internet service is a contributory and vicarious infringer of these copyrights. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 252 F.Supp.2d 634, Marvin E. Aspen, J., granted preliminary injunction for plaintiffs, which shutdowns Defendant's service until the suit has been resolved, Aimster appeals from this preliminary injunction to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
The defendants argued that, unlike Napster, they designed their technology in such a way that they had no way of monitoring the content of swapped files. Someone who wants to use Aimster's basic service for the first time to swap files has to download Aimster's software and then has to register on the system. After doing this he may designate any other registered user called a buddy, withwhom he may communicate directly whenever both of them are online, and having the capability of interchanging music files. If the user does not designate any buddies, then all the users of the system become automatically his buddies to share files.
Read more about this topic: In Re Aimster Copyright Litigation
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