California Cracks Down on Music Piracy

California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a bill targeting music piracy. In an ever-increasing digital age, music is one of the most affected industries in terms of intellectual property violations. In fact, earlier this week the US District Court found that the music streaming service, Grooveshark, violated various artists’ copyrights because its employees directly uploaded the infringing music files. Therefore, the passage of the Bill could not come at a more appropriate time. Essentially the Bill incriminates those who sell flash drives and other storage media devices containing “containing the ‘commercial equivalent’ of 100 or more recordings.” Previous laws looked to the number of devices sold rather than the amount of content uploaded on the device. As technology improves, smaller devices can hold massive amounts of data, necessitating a change in the way the law analyzes the sale of illegal audio recordings. New York enacted a similar law in 2011, yet it remains to be seen which other states follow New York and California’s lead.