Scottsdale man Jeffrey Howell, who is accused by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) of making 2,000 songs available for filesharing via Kazaa, has been going head to head with the RIAA.

Although he has no legal representation, Mr Howell has taken on the RIAA, claiming that he wasn’t filesharing and saying that people should have the right to download songs to their computers. It was initially reported that Mr Howell was being targeted not just for filesharing, but for downloading songs from his CD collection to his hard drive.

Mr Howell has taken the RIAA to issue over the RIAA’s theory that making files available for distribution is infringement of copyright. He might have no attorney, but he does have one supporter: the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The foundation has filed an amicus curiae brief backing up Mr Howell and slating the RIAA. This has got people very excited because it goes directly against the RIAA’s “making available” stance. If Mr Howell achieves anything here, he might well make the future a lot brighter for those who choose to download songs using filesharing services like Limewire or Omemo.

Anything could happen in this case.

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