First RIAA Lawsuit to Head to Trial 616
mamer-retrogamer writes "Out of 14,800 lawsuits the RIAA has filed in the past two years, none have gone to court - until now. Patricia Santangelo, a divorced mother of five living in Wappingers Falls, New York, found herself the target of an RIAA lawsuit and vows to contest it. Santangelo claims that she knows nothing about downloading music online and the likely culprit is not her but a friend's child who used her computer. The RIAA disagrees."
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Song choices (Score:3, Informative)
The Home Owner is not responsable for everything that goes on in the home. If Timmy is shooting smack in his bedroom and goes down for it at school because of a drug test or an arrest, Mom and Dad don't do the time.
I think the whole parenting/privacy thing of kids and computers got handled here after Columbine on
Juries can judge the law (Score:5, Informative)
Just another one of those things that isn't taught in US public schools.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification [wikipedia.org]
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Informative)
You DO realize that, when you have to explain why you have this "plausible deniability", twelve random people grabbed out of a pool screened for experts in computer science*, you'll only look like a theif, right?
*: Yes, having expert knowledge of a case can get you excluded from a jury. Experts should be on the witness stand and on the record, not in the jury box and the back door.
Pete Ashdown (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who to blame more than the RIAA? (Score:4, Informative)
Your attempts to put every voter, party and politician in the "stupid" basket is an insult to those who fight this kind of nonsense.
Instead of blaming others (a very immature tactic) consider the things you might actually do to fight this:
* Join the EFF
* Write your congressperson/senators when they do something you really like or don't like
* Tell other people how you feel outside of slashdot
* dont buy RIAA/MPAA labels, borrow them from the library if you must have them
* Join the ACLU
Dont confuse us, the intelligent and active, with lame and lazy who complain and do little, or nothing, else.
What have *you* done lately?
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:5, Informative)
It's a civil case, and people are not found "guilty" or "not guilty" in civil matters. The jury will be ruling either with or against the plantiff, and it is up to the jury to determine the amount of damages.
There are plenty of cases where juries have ruled with the plantiff but refused to award damages of more than, say, $1 - a token amount that indicates while the plantiff was correct, the jury did not feel they should be awarded much money.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
She maybe a very nice lady with a marriage that fell apart, but we don't know that.
Actually, we do [thejournalnews.com] (www.thejournalnews.com).
Patricia Santangelo is in many ways the embodiment of the suburban mom. She is the mother of five children, ranging in age from 6 to 19. She is divorced, living in Wappingers Falls after growing up in Yorktown and Putnam County. At 42, she works as a property manager for a real estate company and is trying to get her own business off the ground.
Assistance (Score:4, Informative)
However, Santangelo is listed, [yahoo.com] in case anyone wants to snail-mail her some help.
Santangelo lives about ten minutes from me. I'm going to try to round up some friends to picket and toss eggs and CDs at the RIAA scumbags on her day in court!
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Song choices (Score:5, Informative)
From Electronic Frontier Foundation, Memorandum, Date: November 1, 2005, To: Defense counsel in RIAA and MPAA individual file sharing suits, Chris Conley, EFF Legal Intern, Re: parental Liability for Copyright Infringement by Minor Children [eff.org]
For more details, read the whole thing.
Re:Not Good for the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
However, I do have something to add: a link to FIJA, [fija.org] the Fully Informed Juror Association.
Basically, if you disagree with the law, as a juror, you do not have to decide based on the law. You can say "not guilty" even though the prosecutor has pictures of the accused taking a toke from a bong.
I worked on a laptop... (Score:2, Informative)
I found about 30 gigabytes of porn on it. Almost 3/4 of the HD was porno. There was quite a bit of kiddie porn there too. Somehow she had gotten a Trojan Horse on her computer and it had turned the laptop into a porn server. The reason her connection was so slow at home was that her machine was downloading porn to the perp!
Since then, I've NEVER assumed ANYTHING about any computer!Re:Juries can judge the law (Score:3, Informative)
This is very useful because just like when a judge nullifies a law, setting a precedent, a jury nullification is just as powerful and this would set an incredible precendent for the future of p2p and legality.
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My question for the legally saavy: (Score:5, Informative)
The case would set precedent. The strength of the precedent, however, depends on how far the case goes. If the district court says "X," then it needs to be consistant with "X" in the future (unless it has a darn good reason not to be). But the case might get appealed. The court of appeals sets precedent for itself and all courts lower that are in the same circuit. The Supreme Court sets precedent for all circuit and districts courts.
This is how it would work in application: The district court rules "X" regarding the case. If "X" is favorable to the RIAA then it will bring future cases to the same district court. If "X" is not favorable to the RIAA then it will bring the next case to a different court that does not need to pay attention to the decision of the first court, or the RIAA may appeal the decision of the district court.
If there is an appeal, the the same scenario as above applies. If the decision on appeal is favorable to the RIAA then the RIAA will bring future cases to any district court in that same circuit because all of the district courts are bound by the precedent set by the court of appeals.
If the court of appeals decision is not favorable to the RIAA then it will bring future cases in an entirely different district because all of the district courts must follow that same unfavorable holding. Or, alternatively, the RIAA may appeal the unfavorable court of appeals decision to the Supreme Court.
The courts of appeals and the Supreme Court all have the choice as to whether or not to hear arguments on the district court cases. The vast majority of cases never make it past a district court.
Really it's all more complex than this, but that's the basics.
Re:Not Good for the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
The jurors are supposed to and expected to vote based on the laws. That's why the judge's instructions specifically instruct them to consider the evidence and detemine whether the defendant broke the law.
From the Juror's handbook found at the above referenced fija.org:
"As recently as 1972, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the jury has an " unreviewable and irreversible power... to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge.... (US vs Dougherty, 473 F 2d 1113, 1139 (1972))
Or as this same truth was stated in a earlier decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Maryland: "We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge. If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused, is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic of passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision." (US vs Moylan, 417 F 2d 1002, 1006 (1969))."
The loophole is that there is no punishment for jurors who blatantly disregard the law when considering their verdict. Therefore, jurors do have th power to decide based on their conscience, or their political viewpoint, or their mood of the day, or a flip of a coin. (Perhaps someone should set up a website describing your right and duty to flip a coin to decide a verdict - then that would make it the right thing to do!)
Jury nullification is not a loophole, it exists to remind the government that it has a fourth branch..."The People".
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:3, Informative)
Two words: pro bono. There are tons of lawyers out there itching like mad to take this case. And lawyers are supposed to spend a certain percentage of their hours working for free, in order to 'give back to the community'. Seriously [cornell.edu].
Damages (Score:4, Informative)
The RIAA can sue for ... wait for it (it'll make you sick) ... $750 to 30K per song. That's without proving willful (intentional) action. If the RIAA can prove intent, the statutory limit is $150K per song.
That doesn't mean they'll get the maximum, but that's the values given in the US Code. See 17 USC 504 [cornell.edu].
That's why I think people cave, the possibility is out there that they will lose everything they own.
Outrageous? Absolutely. Thank our past congresscritters and Presidents for that one. Oh, and the likes of Disney and the heirs of Gerschwin, for that matter.
Re:Juries can judge the law (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:3, Informative)
No, she's not.
She is the respondant against whom the petitioner is seeking relief. If she had actually stolen something from these people, the state would prosecute her; as it is, she may or may not be found liable for damages done to the petitioner. Ironically enough, she would probably be in better shape if this *were* a criminal matter: criminal convictions require demonstrable harm, intent, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Civil actions merely require that the harm of a false victory for her outweighs the harm of a possible false victory for RIAA by 1% (to use the 51% / 49% description someone mentioned).
And incidentally, despite the fact that the media keeps saying the tortious action was "downloading", the actual tortious action by statute was *uploading*.
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the statute considers reproduction to be infringing, regardless of which direction you do it in. And courts have found both uploading and downloading to be infringing.
Re:Not Good for a Pictionary. (Score:1, Informative)
In the case of jury nullification, if the verdict was an acquittal, the defendent can not be retried.
Re:It's more significant than the common sense asp (Score:5, Informative)
Ohio for instance, untill reletivly recent, didn't have any laws pertaining to self defense. If you punched a guy that was clubbing you, you were just as guilty of asault as the original asaulter. Jurry nullification has basicaly made the asault laws unenforcable or at least weakened them to the a point were a prosecuter couln't win a case by charging a man being beaten for fighting back. In that situation, the law was deam unjust and unenforcable. This still leave someone the burdon of proving the facts were as claimed though. It isn't an out for someoen to provoke a fight and then pretend to be inocent so it can still be enforced.
Jurry nullification in this case could come in the form of you have to be certain a said person was the one actualy responcible for the copyright infraction. In a civil trial you have a lot more roo for dougbt then a criminal trial so nullification could actualy just implse stronger requirments for proof while keeping the laws enforcable for those blatently violating it. Analogies suck in these situations because you can change what parts of the laws that can be applied by the actions of the jurry. Copyright law is pretty specific in that the person violating it is the one causing harm. The store that let sold you the cds or cassete tapes even though it was likley you were going to copy somehtign doesn't get charged with anyhting. Simularly, you providing your computer to someoen else, shouldn't automaticaly mean you are guilty of somethign thye might have done or somethign that a mistake might have made people think you have done.
This will be an interesting case to watch unfoled. I'm sure the evidence and the weight the evidence carries with be questioned and it may become somethign admissable but unenforcable by the rulling of the jurry. IE, ip logs and screen names (with auto logons) are not enough to prove you were at your computer at a certain time and participating in ceretain activities or had control over those activities or if the listing of names of copy protected material actualy means the protected works were availible and the copy was actualyt being violated. (garage bands cover songs and create thier own songs with the same names and song already names and can distribute them) If the jurry negates or nullifies any of this evidence it will be hard to prove anyone did anything.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Informative)
No. I mean, it's not my opinion. It's the law.
Doctors do not sit on juries about medicine. Police officers do not sit on juries about crime. Teachers do not sit on juries about teachers. My wife was rejected for jury duty when she said she was an EMT.
It's a slippery slope towards juries which are selected for a lack of knowledge, which is no longer a jury of one's peers. Either the jurors are allowed to use the facts which they know to make decisions or they are restricted to a process of guessing based on intuition. Guessing is going to favor testimony from skilled con-men over the truth every time and would undermine the effectiveness of our entire justice system.
Non-expert juries in fact are one of the pillars of our justice system. If you want a fact or an expert opinion, you have to get it out in the open, on the stand, where the other side can rebut it.
And skilled con-men have to be within the ballpark of reasonability, or they're going to not only be shunned by their profession, but they're going to wind up in prison for giving false testimony. (Do you REALLY think that someone who lies on the stand and causes you to lose your case won't be among your next targets?)
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'd like to see this go to a jury. (Score:4, Informative)
No [levellers.org] they're [totse.com] not [jurorsrule.com].
This is one of the biggest lies that Judges and Lawyers to this day try and convince jurors.
Jurors not only have the right, they have the duty to decide whether the Judge is being a cockhead, the law is stupid, or that dumb slut had it coming.
Next time you think Jurors are required to decide on facts, or don't have the ability to rewrite law from the box, I urge you to pay attention at the next Michael Jackson molostation case, or if ever OJ Simpson decides to remarry.
You do not recall correctly. (Score:3, Informative)