Jammie Appeals, Citing "Excessive" Damages 403
Peerless writes "Capitol v. Thomas defendant Jammie Thomas has officially appealed the RIAA's $222,000 copyright infringement award. She is seeking a retrial to determine the RIAA's actual damages, arguing that the jury's award was 'unconstitutionally excessive': 'Thomas would like to see the record companies forced to prove their actual damages due to downloading, a figure that Sony-BMG litigation head Jennifer Pariser testified that her company "had not stopped to calculate." In her motion, Thomas argues that the labels are contending that their actual damages are in the neighborhood of $20. Barring a new trial over the issue of damages, Thomas would like to see the reward knocked down three significant digits — from $222,000 to $151.20.'"
"unconstitutionally excessive"? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll be the first one to agree that these damages are "ridiculously excessive" or "fabricated", but what does this have to do with the constitution? Is it just a cultural thing?
Re:"unconstitutionally excessive"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Motion for Retrial !== Appeal (Score:2, Interesting)
Any real lawyers reading this please comment.
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Actual damages are ~$20.
2) Damages for torts should be divided by the probability of being caught.
3) Virtually no one gets prosecuted, let alone convicted, of filesharing.
4) Copyright law should be enforced.
2) is based on the reasoning that those who commit torts should bear the costs of their wrongdoing rather than innocent third parties. In order to make this happen, you have to shift the costs for crimes for which no one's caught, to those who are caught, which means dividing damages by the fraction of crimes they catch someone for. (Technically, the recovery rate, but same diff.)
(And yes, for most people here, 4 is questionable, but for most Americans, and for the jury in this case, it's not.)
Re:"unconstitutionally excessive"? (Score:4, Interesting)
In parts of Europe, Wolfenstein 3D was banned because, even though it was critical of Nazis, it dared to portray them at all. In the USA, we take pride that this sort of censorship was explicitly forbidden when our nation was founded. I'm not trying to troll, but Europe chose not to do this.
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, I don't have time to read an entire zillion-piece web site to find the context for the quote you mentioned. And it's dangerous to give quotes like that out of context. Here's another quote, from page 22 of part 7:
WII interviewed file-sharers how much music they buy now compared to earlier when they were not active as file-sharers. The answers were 3% buy much more, 7% a little more, 55% as before, 25% a little less and 10% much less.
I don't know about you, but that seems pretty consistent with my personal experience. Perhaps those 3% who buy much more really do buy more than 3x as much as each of the 10% who buy much less have stopped buying, and similarly for the "a little" categories, but I couldn't find anything in the report on a quick scan to back this up. It's not exactly reliable to conclude that when you asked illegal file sharers about their activities, and they said they really bought loads more than they ever used to, this means freebie file-sharing is an overall plus.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the explanation isn't plausible, and I certainly think that if the music industry gets its act together there are several business models created by on-line file-sharing that could make them more money and make music access easier for everyone. I have nothing against any of these ideas. But that's a far cry from claiming that today's freebie file-sharing culture is really a good thing for the music business and doesn't cost them anything, particularly if your only evidence for this is that you asked some file sharers and they told you so.
Imagine you are in the dark ages... (Score:4, Interesting)
The church complains that not only they are entitled to it by divine right, but also that it's not fair you benefit from the innumerable and priceless services they provide to the community (such as hunting for heretics) without contributing what they ask for.
Knowing that the penalty may range from outrageous fines to beheading even (and especially) when confessing, what would you say when asked whether you did in fact pay your tithe?
Now replace "dark ages" with "ip dark ages".
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you steal a single apple from your neighbour, it's not reasonable to argue that the risk of being convicted after having stolen a single apple from a neighbour is 1:1000000, so despite the apple being worth $0.20, you should be fined $200000. It's an unconstitutional excess to put someone in debt for life for the crime of stealing a single apple.
A different problem is that when a huge part of the population is guilty of breaking a certain law, but the risk of being investigated are very low, and punishment very high, this has the effect of giving whomever decides who to investigate the power to essentially punish people at will.
Politicians should make law. Police should investigate. Courts should convict. (or not) That's the way it's supposed to work. With filesharing it works more similar to this:
Politicians make a law, that a huge part of the population breaks regularily.
Police essentially never investigates anyone for breaking it.
Private companies are free to, according to their own criteria, decide who to investigate.
Courts tend to convict (not surprising, since most people are guilty)
This puts a -HUGE- amount of power in the hands of those private companies. I'd guess in a average group of college-students, that company is, currently, free to bankrupt for life anyone they chose to. Well, not -EVERYONE- but close enough. (certainly 90%)
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why mod an incorrect statement up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two forms of infringement (Score:3, Interesting)
The second type would be "household infringement." This would involve infringement via a P2P network or other type that didn't involve attempts to make a profit. This type of infringement would take the number of files infringed, multiply them by the market cost per file, and then multiply that number by 100 (to get a "punishment" number that is worse than simply buying the songs outright).
In the case of Jammie Thomas, she was found guilty of infringing 24 songs. Since she wasn't attempting to make a profit, she would fall under household infringement and would be charged 24 * 0.99 (the cost of the songs on iTunes) * 100, or $2,376. This is more than the $150+ that she's looking for, yet a lot less than the $222,000 that she was originally fined for. A $2,000+ verdict isn't going to financially ruin most people, but it will also be enough of a significant amount for most people that it would serve as a deterrent against future incidents.
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that your neighbour still has the original apple, can still take pictures of it, can sell them and can prove they are genuine pictures of the apple
But if you sell copies of your picture for 0.20 and he sells his for 0.30 then you will damage his sales?
So how much is the picture worth?
Re:They planned it all along (Score:4, Interesting)
Those large damage awards are for punitive damages. They are supposed to punish the offending party. The financial punishment has to be scaled by the ability of the offending party to pay. If you have gross revenues of 2 billion GBP, like EMI had last year, then a 100 million GBP judgment against you is less than 5% of your gross income. Conversely, Jamie just got slapped with a judgment worth several times her gross income. Which is fair?
Re:From what it sounds like... (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, in this case, let's say that I have been found guilty of stealing a bunch of candy bars. I had my day in court, I took a couple of days away from the lives of 12+ jurors to hear my side of the story - and I lied my butt off. I'm found guilty. Do I now get to decide that my punishment is only the cost of the candy bars? No, the chances are that my punishment will be 'orders of magnitude' greater than the cost of the candy bars. I would expect some jail time, legal costs and fines.
Why should this person be treated any different?
Re:Know when you are beaten (Score:2, Interesting)