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Juror From RIAA Trial Speaks
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Oct 09, 2007 08:41 PM
from the tell-us-what-you-really-think dept.
from the tell-us-what-you-really-think dept.
Damon Tog notes a Wired blog posting featuring quotes from a juror who took part in the recent RIAA trial. Some excerpts: "She should have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars... Spoofing? We're thinking, "Oh my God, you got to be kidding."... She lied. There was no defense. Her defense sucked... I think she thought a jury from Duluth would be naive. We're not that stupid up here. I don't know what the f**k she was thinking, to tell you the truth."
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Verdict Reached In RIAA Trial 1001 comments
jemtallon writes "The jury in the previously mentioned Captiol v Thomas story has reached a verdict. They have found in favor of the plaintiffs, Capitol, and ordered that she pay a $222,000 fine for 24 cases of copyright infringement."
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So did the jury ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
They got to choose what her financial penalty was.
They purposefully picked an amount that had absolutely no relationship, whatsoever, to the financial damages that may have been incurred. This was not a matter of law. This was a bunch of citizens sitting in a room and purposefully deciding to ruin the life of somebody that they didn't like.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
May I introduce you to the U.S. Congress?
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
They were legally required to assign a penalty appropriate to the crime, but they did not do so. They ignored this obligation, choosing instead to "send a message" to a woman who they did not like.
They used the law as a weapon to destroy a person who offended them personally. They succeeded only in proving that feeble people, when given power, tend to abuse it, and that Duluth has plenty of feeble people.
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the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume we agree that the defendant was, as this juror said, an obvious liar, and guilty on all counts.
Should she really lose her house or retirement savings over this?
I'm personally against stealing copyrighted music. But this penalty is waaaaay out of proportion to the crime, IMHO.
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. every juror has an obligation to understand the concept of "jury nullification". End of story.
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Says who?
Even if you had a right to jury nullification (which you don't) the jurors didn't much seem interested in finding for the defendant. The evidence of infringement was overwhelming, the defendant repeatedly lied to avoid a judgment. The jury had the option of fixing penalties at $750 per song. They opted for more than 10x that.
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Informative)
On that, I have to agree with you. Though I have to admit, it doesn't do much for my personal opinion of the naivete of Duluthites.
Says who?
Says anyone who understands why we have juries of our peers rather than juries of government-appointed experts, when the latter could incontrovertibly do a much better job of deciding the facts of the case.
Jury nullification, not the USSC or the presidential pardon, represents the final and most effective of the "checks and balances" on government abuse of power.
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
You not only have the right to do so, but the civic duty. In this case, being charged thousands of dollars per song she wasn't commercializing is simply ridiculous.
I agree with you in principle, she broke the law and deserves some kind of punishment. The damage inflicted by her, however, doesn't fit the punishment she recieved.
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone comes to kill someone and asks you if you know where they are hiding, it is moral to lie.
If someone asks you if you believe in jury nullification, it is moral to like and say "no" since saying "yes" would get you disqualified from the jury. If you do so, you must use any reason besides jury nullification as your reason for finding the defending "not guilty" or you could face contempt charges. However if you just pick some stupid ass reason and stick to it then you are okay. "I just don't believe that she is guilty-- I can't really say why but i just do not believe it. Just a 'gut' feeling, okay?"
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you do, and this is well established in English jurisprudence. William Penn was on trial for preaching Quakerism in the streets. The jury was instructed to convict because he was indeed preaching and it was indeed against the law. The jury refused to convict. The judge sent them back. They still refused. He threw them in jail. They still refused. He put them on bread and water rations. They still refused. Finally he gave up and accepted their acquittal. And ever since then juries have been able to vote according to their conscience rather than the law.
It's also equally well established that you can't tell people about it in the context of a court case (except during jury deliberations). Otherwise you would ALWAYS have lawyers attempting to get the jury to nullify.
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
I think she was probably informed by the prosecution that she had broken the law. But I could be wrong. Those RIAA lawyers are wacky.
If I'm ever on a jury and I disagree with the spectrum for something like the 'theft' of 'intellectual property,' I'm going with not guilty. I don't think it's fair to charge 220,000 for 25 songs, which works out in the neighborhood of $9,000 per song. Let's just pretend she got songs from 25 different CDs, and that the CDs are $20 apiece. That's only $500 that she could have possibly ACTUALLY stolen. In theory. How about we then fine her half a year's salary, say, ohhhhh $15k, and her kids have to eat ramen, don't get vitamins, and get to go to community college on pell grants. now THAT'S reasonable.
$220k? Not fucking reasonable. At a dollar per song, that's 220,000 people that downloaded it from her. What the fuck? This did not happen. I personally object to the whole thing based on the RIAA's:
1. 100-year reputation of treating artists and consumers like shit
2. argument that copyright infringement is theft, when last time I checked, theft was measured by the material loss of the victim.
3. everything else. I'm getting tired.
-Nathan
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Informative)
You certainly are. You meant to say, "I think she was probably informed by the plaintiff that she had committed a tort.
civil case != criminal case.
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
OK. So when someone threatens you with a law suit but offers to settle for a much lower amount, you should always settle. Well, if that's how you feel. Your name here on slashdot offends me. It is too close to dick, which is a common euphemism for a penis. I'm going to sue you for 10 Billion dollars. You have the option, of course, for settling for a measly $5 million if you so choose. Since that is so much lower than the total amount (less than 1%), I expect that you will be settling. Send me a message via slashdot with your bank account information so I can go ahead and do a reverse ACH payment and we will consider this little matter closed. I expect you to have the money within a week.
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:the fine didn't fit the crime (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets start with the notion that copyright is meant to serve the public interest.
Follow that up with the notion that "cruel and unusual" punishment is wrong.
Yesterdays top 40 hits simply aren't worth ruining a civilian's life over.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, just from browsing the Wiki article you linked there are many examples of court cases in which Jury Nullification has either been criticized or not been held to be a viable option for juries. See U.S. v. Krzyske 836 F.2d 1013, 1021 (Upholding on appeal a judge's answer to a juror that jury nullification "didn't exist") and U.S. v. Thomas 116 F.3d 606 (2d Cir. 1997) (holding that jurors can be removed if there is evidence that they are planning on utilizing jury nullification)
Now, I'm in no way advocating the removal of the concept of jury nullification from our system, but I'm simply stating that to just throw out such a blanket action as the answer to this question doesn't help much because the action itself is under attack by significant powers in the legal realm. At least IMO, it seems like it would make much more sense to focus on electing a decent legislative body to reject these rules, rather than holding out for jury nullification that really only works as a one shot deal to begin with.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The application of law is already whimsical and often capricious. Bush had the Justice Dept. stop prosecuting Microsoft. Cops have the freedom to not give tickets to friends. DA's have the freedom to (silently) choose not to prosecute for political reasons.
And besides, we can't really expect judges to support the people's overriding of a conviction the judge would like to make. We the People are the final authority in the U.S. system, even if judges, DA's, congressmen, and Presidents claim otherwise. I submit that we just lack the balls to consistently assert our authority.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words because the system isn't perfect, we should make it worse?
And besides, we can't really expect judges to support the people's overriding of a conviction the judge would like to make. We the People are the final authority in the U.S. system, even if judges, DA's, congressmen, and Presidents claim otherwise. I submit that we just lack the balls to consistently assert our authority.
The jury already has authority on matters of fact, and it's typically the evidence that's lacking when if the judge is out to "get someone". The judge has very little leeway to interpret law, and is likely to get overturned on appeal if he tries. There are in fact supreme courts that only deal with matters of law and whether it was correctly applied. From what I've understood, the primary function of jury nullification is to counteract corrupt laws.
But when the legislative process is working properly, I'd much rather trust the "we the people" that through representative elections vote in congressmen which pass law, rather than the "we the people" biased sample of a dozen, where any single individual is given the authority to fuck the process. To give one member of the public the authority to override the authority of we the people, is not to empower the people.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
One aspect is that, if somebody is not doing well, or has done something wrong, it's ok to kick even more so s/he "learns" and gets better (the stern father penalizes).
Effects are overpopulated prisons, total weak or missing social umbrella and an increasing number of people under poorness level.
The other fact shown here is that people are totally out of touch with financial reality. Financially ruining a life of (is she a single mother?) a person with the idea to doing something "right" shows an overwhelming degree of insensitivity.
I am appalled!
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The law says you can't distribute stuff when you don't hold the copyright.
Did she distribute?
She was convicted of distribution. Actually, she was also convicted to pay more than 9000$ for each song she allegedly distributed. But there wasn't a shred of evidence that she distributed anything.
For that simple reason, she should not have been convicted.
Don't get me wrong here. I am no pirate. I fact I am probably one of the few rare examples of people who don't have a single illegal MP3 file or movie. I also believe that pirates should be punished.
But the evidence must be present. No matter how much I dislike pirates, ensuring a fair trial (with appropriate evidence) is far more important that collecting money for the greedy "content industry".
- Jesper
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"But the evidence must be present" (Score:5, Informative)
Link [eff.org]
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Re:"But the evidence must be present" (Score:5, Interesting)
Or in other words, if you leave your keys in the car then you must have authorized people to steal it, and if you leave the keys in your friend's car then you must have put somebody up to stealing it since you obviously authorized the theft by leaving the keys in it. Or your Sunday newspaper, hey it's right there on your lawn where anybody could take it so you must be ok with that. Or if you are walking down the street with no underwear on and get 'assaulted' it's not rape because, hey, you made it available that means you authorized it.
Making available != authorizing and this judge is an idiot. That part of the verdict is complete bunk. The part about her violating the copyright sounds right though.
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Re:"But the evidence must be present" (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Informative)
If you are on a jury and feel that the law was unjustly applied, nobody can stop you from putting your foot down and refusing to convict.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
That witness does not even validly qualify as an "expert witness" and has had their testimony thrown out of numerous courts as well as being threatened with legal action if they continued their work in the state of Texas. Their "facts" have been proven invalid again and again as well as being laughed at and torn apart here at Slashdot. Unfortunately her lawyer didn't mount a strong attack on this or apparently even object to their ranting in court about all the harm being done by "pirates" as being irrelevent as to the matter of whether or not his client was liable in this particular case. Further, the "expert witness" has been known to break into people's computers to look for evidence, once that happens how can you expect to be able to call anything they "find" on a computer to be valid?
The interviewed juror seemed to think spoofing was an unbelieveable claim just because he didn't know how ("we aren't stupid") and with his comment about his wife you have to wonder if he didn't discuss it with her, which would be a conduct violation on his part. Being as this jury wanted to prove "we aren't stupid around here" then it was likely that in their ignorance they decided to go with the "higher authority" and perceiving that to be the RIAA instead of one individual.
All this case proves is that the system works and I don't mean the Justice System, I mean the one that starts with you being taught to blindly accept authority by the Public School System. The jurors perceived the RIAA as the authority here and accepted all the crap they fed them.
One of the major problems with the civil justice system is that "preponderance of evidence" is too often equated with who produced the most evidence. It is undeniable that a corporation can afford to produce a greater quantity of "evidence" then an individual can and it is almost impossible to prove you did NOT do something. In this case Best Buy even had the sales records where she had purchased the albums that include the songs she was accused of sharing. There was no Kazaa software on her hard drive nor any evidence it had been there. Yes the drive had been replaced but it was testified by the Best Buy tech that this had been done before the alledged events.
She testified she ripped all those songs from cds she owned, RIAA tried to say she couldn't have done it as fast as the times indicated. Feel free to test this, grab a fast entire cd at a time ripper and race it against finding and downloading the same tunes, willing to bet the ripping process wins hands down especially if you have your cd collection right there and run it like the back up operation it is.
There is more that could be said but I am tired of ranting. Maybe Mr. Beckerman will log in and give that "cut and dry" line a proper roasting.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the appeals court decides, for instance, that the trial judge was wrong in the instructions to the jury in a material way, the case could be retried, but the retrial itself isn't the appeal.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Informative)
But in this case, as I understand things, there was a deliberate effort by the prosecution to mislead the judge and jury about the outcome of another critically relevant case in which it was decided that making available != distributing. Therefore, the finding of facts in this case may have been based on a fundamentally incorrect understanding of the law, and thus completely invalid.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The appeal is going to be a lot more interesting than the trial.
Appeals are where precedents get set. If the appellate court rules that the trial court erred in its instruction that "making available" equals copyright violation, then that will blow up the RIAA's current business model.
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Re:So did the jury ... (Score:5, Insightful)
A little hint: it's not because such a jury is going to "weigh the evidence" better than a panel of people who have received training in analyzing legal & evidentiary issues.
It's specifically because the Founders wanted a last-ditch mechanism for common citizens to protect each other if all three branches of government are operating out of the bounds of common sense.
It's only natural that the judicial system try and discourage this kind of thinking (and it's a damn shame that schools don't teach enough American Civics anymore to make people aware of their duties in this area), but that doesn't change the original intent of the Founders, and it's one damn good way for people to push back against an out-of-control government.
It's too bad there aren't more such ways. I personally think that it should be a Constitutional right to vote, regardless of whether you've been convicted of a crime or not (unlike the usual policies of disenfranchising convicted felons).
The way I see it, if your society is running in a healthy way, then there shouldn't be too many criminals & their vote won't have much of an effect on votes/elections.
If the government is heading in a direction where it's criminalizing a large chunk of the populace, however (which is a common tactic when the "leaders" of a society want to disenfranchise people who don't support them), then the votes of the convicted should provide a valuable negative feedback mechanism to the officials being elected to make them think twice about what kinds of laws they are passing.
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We're not stupid up here (Score:5, Insightful)
She could have shoplifted the cds for a few hundred dollars in fines.
Not the question of guilt, but of quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yeah, she was pretty clearly guilty (e.g. wiping the hard drive after she got in trouble). That's not the issue. It's a question as to whether the ruinous damages were justified.
They weren't.
Re:Not the question of guilt, but of quantity (Score:5, Informative)
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The jury *was* full of morons... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, $9,250 is ridiculous and doesn't send a message about anything other than the fact that, contrary to the comment of your fellow juror that you do in fact know what's going on in Duluth, you really don't know what the fuck is going on. You awarded money that was originally meant for people who were *SELLING* copyrighted songs, not "sharing" for free.
White Bronco Redux (Score:5, Insightful)
You guys have picked the wrong horse.
Re:White Bronco Redux (Score:5, Insightful)
The lesson learned is that the next person who get a fine from the RIAA, and the opportunity to settle had damn sure better have a solid defense if they take it to court. Claiming someone outside your apt hacked your wifi when you don't own a wireless router just won't cut it, even in RedneckVille, USA.
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Re:White Bronco Redux (Score:5, Insightful)
This is because the British and American systems of law are based on precedents (unlike many European systems that are derived from Roman law), and like it or not, the precedent is now there to fine YOU a quarter of a million dollars for no good reason if this stands.
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I agree but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The jury definitely had their minds made up well before their deliberations. They came to the right legal conclusion for the wrong reasons: they felt insulted.
A naive jury from Duluth. (Score:5, Funny)
Way to disprove that by fining a stupid Kazaa user a quarter of a million dollars.
Stupidity (Score:5, Funny)
Don't Lie (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to get up and give testimony, don't tell obvious lies.
The jurors have been called away from their everyday lives to sit and listen to an argument between two parties they have no interest in. The least you can do is show them some respect.
If I was on that jury, I would have counted that as a big strike against the defendant as well.
Re:Jury Instructions... (Score:5, Informative)
That's called "jury nullification" and judges hate it because there's not a damned thing they can do about it. In fact, attorneys are forbidden to mention the concept in their arguments. If the jury in this case had decided to do that, the RIAA would have had no grounds for appeal, because the jury is the *only* arbiter of fact. You can appeal decisions of the judge, but not the actual jury decision. IANAL and all that, but that's how I understand it.
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Copyright penalties are DELIBERATELY draconian. (Score:5, Insightful)
Penalties for copyright violations are deliberately draconian and have been since the beginning of the law.
The idea is apparently that:
- It's very hard to identify the violators (or even that a violation took place).
- So only a small fraction will be caught.
- If the penalties are comparable to the actual damage of the offense (a pittance), potential offenders may simply make take the chance - and be rewarded on the average by nearly-free copies.
- So the penalties are set high in proportion to this fraction.
- With high penalties the offenders' bet becomes a losing proposition, a low probability of a big hit. Paying for the content in the first place becomes cheap insurance.
- And with high penalties the copyright holders can make enough from the small fraction they do catch and convict to be "made whole" on their losses from the great mass they miss.
Of course there are problems with this. And the biggest one is with the standard of proof.
Civil law is about making things right. Two roughly equal parties with a dispute go to a court. The court decides which is more likely to be right ("preponderance of evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt"). The one found to be in the wrong pays the amount needed to make things right. If the one found in the wrong was found to have known what was right and been wrong deliberately, that typically means he pays the wronged party three times the amount of correcting the harm, rather than just the amount.
- Draconian penalties to shift the expected outcome of a rule-breaker's bet is the stuff of criminal law, with its higher standard of proof.
- A person paying, not only for his own misdeeds, but for that of thousands of others, is hardly "setting right" the result of their own misbehavior.
- If the punishment is to be, not three times, but nine thousand times the cost of the alleged offense, how fair is it to use a "more likely than not" standard? If an innocent person is to be put at risk of paying nine thousand times the price of the stuff he allegedly obtained, shouldn't this require a "nine-thousand-to-one" standard to prove the case?
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Re:Sorry, juries don't work like you think they do (Score:5, Insightful)
Your woeful ignorance of the concept of jury nullification not only bothers me, but it terrifies me. The jury is the final arbiter of truth, and a not guilty verdict cannot be overturned, "legal" or not. It has a long standing tradition in North America, predating the American Revolution. In fact, citizens of the colonies used jury nullification several times to "nullify" laws they found unjust. Since you've served on so many juries, no doubt you noticed that the jury doesn't read the verdict plus a paragraph of reasoning? Jury nullification cannot be truly removed with the current system we have in place.
That said, I also believe that she was shown guilty far beyond what the law calls for.
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Re:help her out then /. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to fuck with the RIAA, a) write a letter to your congresscritter, perhaps along with a campaign donation, and b) don't buy RIAA products. But don't think giving a bunch of money to the RIAA is going to discourage them.
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