Dowling v. United States
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| Dowling v. United States | |||||||||||
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 Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued April 17, 1985 Decided June 28, 1985 |
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| Holding | |||||||||||
| Copies of copyrighted works cannot be regarded as stolen property for the purposes of a prosecution under a statute criminalizing the interstate transportation of such property. | |||||||||||
| Court membership | |||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor |
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| Case opinions | |||||||||||
| Majority by: Blackmun Joined by: Brennan, Marshall, Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor Dissent by: Powell Joined by: Burger, White |
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| Laws applied | |||||||||||
| Copyright Act of 1976, National Stolen Property Act of 1934 | |||||||||||
Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case that discussed whether copies of copyrighted works could be regarded as stolen property for the purposes of a law which criminalized the interstate transportation of such property.
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[edit] Background
Paul Edmond Dowling ran a bootleg recording business distributing Elvis Presley records through the United States Postal Service. Dowling, a zealous Presley fan, worked with William Samuel Theaker to produce records of unreleased Presley recordings such as those from concerts and television shows. The two men used the services of a record-pressing company in Burbank, Los Angeles County, California, although after a short production period the parties separated due to Theaker's suspicions of an FBI investigation. Dowling and Theaker then turned to Richard Minor to press the records.
Dowling used his extensive knowledge of Presley to find music to bootleg. Theaker handled the marketing and sales. When the two suspected the FBI was investigating, they partnered with Minor, in Miami, in order to move the operation away from the west coast. Theaker would mail and collect order forms and ship them to Maryland, where Dowling would complete the orders and distribute the goods. Dowling would regularly send several hundred packages per week, spending $1,000 on postage in the process. Minor also received many of the packages to sell on through his own means.
[edit] Dowling's trial and appeals
The federal government brought its initial case against Dowling in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, arguing his guilt on the basis that he had no legal authority to distribute the records. Dowling was convicted of one count of conspiracy to transport stolen property in interstate commerce, eight counts of interstate transportation of stolen property, nine counts of copyright infringement, and three counts of mail fraud. The charges of mail fraud arose out of his use of the United States Postal Service to distribute the records.
Dowling appealed all convictions besides those of copyright infringement and the case moved to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he argued that the goods he was distributing were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud", according to the language of 18 U.S.C. 2314 - the interstate transportation statute under which he was convicted. The court disagreed, affirming the original decision and upholding the conviction. Dowling then took the case to the Supreme Court, which sided with his argument and reversed the convictions. From Justice Blackmun's majority opinion:
The phonorecords in question were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" for purposes of [section] 2314. The section's language clearly contemplates a physical identity between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods. Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
[edit] Significance of the case
Dowling is significant in law because it is one of the few times that a Supreme Court case has directly discussed whether or not copyright infringement can be seen as theft for the purposes of prosecuting someone under a theft-related statute. File sharing advocates argue that it has particular relevance in debates concerning whether copyright infringement can be seen as a form of theft (both in terms of strict legality as well as colloquial definitions of the word). They maintain that the Court's finding that Dowling's bootlegged records could not be regarded as stolen property according to 18 U.S.C. 2314 tend to support the argument that copyright infringement is legally distinct from theft.
