User:Psykonautiks/sandbox

United States v. LaMacchia (D. Mass. 1994), decided by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, ruled that, under the copyright and cybercrime laws effective at the time, committing copyright infringement for non-commercial motives could not be prosecuted under criminal copyright law.

The case involved a 21 year old computer hacker named David LaMacchia, a student at MIT, who used MIT's computer network to set up an electronic bulletin board named Cynosure. On the bulletin board, he encouraged others to upload software applications illegally, where others could access and download the software for free. The heavy traffic to the site drew the attention of university and federal authorities, leading to charges of wire fraud filed against him. The charges were made under wire fraud rather than copyright infringement because the Copyright Act did not include non-commercial infringement in its current scope.

The ruling gave rise to what became known as the LaMacchia Loophole: criminal charges of fraud or copyright infringement would be dismissed under current legal standards, so long as there was no profit motive involved. The court's ruling explicitly drew attention to the shortcomings of current law that allowed people to facilitate mass copyright infringement while being immune to prosecution under the Copyright Act. The NET Act, passed in 1997, was a direct response to this: the law provides for criminal prosecution of individuals who engage in copyright infringement even when there is no commercial benefit from the infringement.