In Round 2, Jammie Thomas Jury Awards RIAA $1,920,000 793
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Well the price went up from $9250 per song file to $80,000 per song file, as the jury awarded the RIAA statutory damages of $1,920,000.00 for infringement of 24 MP3s, in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset. In this trial, although the defendant had an expert witness of her own, she never called him to testify, and her attorneys never challenged the technical evidence offered by the RIAA's MediaSentry and Doug Jacobson. Also, neither the special verdict form nor the jury instructions spelled out what the elements of a 'distribution' are, or what needed to be established by the plaintiffs in order to recover statutory — as opposed to actual — damages. No doubt there will now have to be a third trial, and no doubt the unreasonableness of the verdict will lend support to those arguing that the RIAA's statutory damages theory is unconstitutional." Update: 06/19 01:39 GMT by T : Lots more detail at Ars Technica, too.
A Little Perspective (Score:5, Informative)
Assuming a price of $15 per album, the defendant could have stolen 128,000 CDs and resold them and it would have been less damage than what they are collecting for two dozen songs.
Re:What are the lawyers thinking? (Score:5, Informative)
because the punishment doesn't even come close to the crime.
There's that word again. There was no crime. There is no crime.
Re:Could someone explain this to me? (Score:1, Informative)
The $1.9M judgment wasn't the product of an appeal. Judge Davis ordered a new trial after the first verdict came in because he believed that the jury instructions in the first trial were erroneous.
Re:Evolution at work (Score:4, Informative)
It's always the stupid and careless pirates that get caught in the harbor. It's natural evolution at work, a culling of the weak and unfit from the pirate fleet. Feel sad if you must for Thomas, but also feel comfort that evolution has done its job: the pirates that remain are the cream of the crop. They will bear an even more naturally skilled crew to man the next fleet of sloops and schooners.
While I don't agree with (a) your Social Darwinism theory, (b) your use of the word "pirates" as synonymous with copyright infringement, or (c) your belief that she did in fact do the file sharing, you do bring up a very interesting and perplexing point about these RIAA v. End User cases. The cases started being filed in 2003. ALL 40,000 of them are based on the Gnutella protocol (e.g. Limewire) or the FastTrack protocol (e.g. Kazaa). Meanwhile all of the sophisticated, high volume, 'swashbuckling', file sharers switched to BitTorrent long ago, yet the RIAA hasn't brought a SINGLE case based on BitTorrent. So the litigation scheme was almost by design calculated to ensnare 'low hanging fruit', the people at the low end of the file sharing totem pole, and to ensnare many innocents, since there is obviously no basis for assuming that the person who pays the phone bill is a copyright infringer.
Re: Well here goes . . . (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps NYCL will correct me on this, I've seen great litigators who never step foot in a courtroom and would be a disaster at trial. On the other hand I've seen great trial lawyers - both criminal and civil - who don't have the finesse to be a great litigator.
Re:Throwing on purpose (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't stealing music.
The punishment for stealing music worth less than $250 retail is a class 1 misdemeanor, 6 months in jail and/or a $2500 fine.
This is copyright infringement, and it is a whole different beast than stealing.
To test this, try stealing music you've already purchased - it's impossible. But you can sure infringe on the copyright on music you have already purchased!
Seriously?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:should they have JUST talked about money? (Score:5, Informative)
I would also be interested to know if that $1.9 million award included legal fees as well as compensatory and pun[i]tive damages
1. No it does not include legal fees.
2. It does not include any compensatory damages; the compensatory damages would have been approximately $8.
3. The damages are "statutory" damages which are similar to "punitive" damages.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What are the lawyers thinking? (Score:5, Informative)
No-one is this dumb, but in the interest of education, it's called a tort [wikipedia.org].
Re:Justifying piracy (Score:2, Informative)
For most people there is absolutely no benefit received from work that is already completed and sold. If as an electrician I design and wire someone's electrical system I get paid once, there are no future payments if the house is sold or if guests come use the system I installed.
Re:Justifying piracy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well . . .Here's How (Score:5, Informative)
All they had to do was find 12 citizens just like themselves.
The federal jury is essentially creation of the federal courts.
You do not get to handcraft your own:
In civil cases, each party shall be entitled to three peremptory challenges. ... All challenges for cause or favor, whether to the array or panel or to individual jurors, shall be determined by the court. 1870. Challenges [cornell.edu]
The federal juror is 18 or over, a US citizen resident in the district for at least one year, writes and speaks English with reasonable proficiency and is physically and mentally fit for service. 1865. Qualifications for jury service [cornell.edu]
You could make a persuasive case for the geek being the idiot in court - to the despair of his consul and the joy of his opponent -
and the most common mistake he is likely to make is to show contempt for the jury.
Re:Justifying piracy (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, technically speaking, Steamboat Willie is in the public domain due to errors in how they did the nameplates. The copyright act of 1909 was very stringent in that regard.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
I read it as a prediction, based on certain things happening, which didn't happen.
Thing is, I made no such prediction. The GP is fond of attributing things to me which I never said.
What I predicted was that, based upon defendant's lawyers having filed the appropriate evidentiary objections to the MediaSentry printouts, the trial should be "interesting". I was wrong about that prediction, because the defense lawyers did not "voir dire" MediaSentry or Doug Jacobson, did not object to the admissibility of their testimony, and did not rigorously cross examine them. So it was not "interesting" at all; the RIAA was given the free pass I thought it was going to be denied on the technical. I made a prediction that it would be "interesting", and my prediction turned out to be wrong.
But I made no prediction whatsoever about winning or losing.
Re:Well . . . (Score:4, Informative)
If you read slashdot, you'd think that there would have been no possibility of RIAA winning because they are incompetent idiots without a clue.
Judging by the summary (No, of course I didn't RTFA.) the only real incompetent in this case was the defense attorney. What is the point of getting an expert witness if you're not going to use their testimony? Why wasn't the technical evidence challenged?
If you read the article, and followed the case, you'd realize that their technical expert turned out to have been shot down in flames [slashdot.org]: "Judge Davis ruled that Prof. Kim could testify about the 'possible scenarios,' but could not opine as to what he thinks 'probably' occurred. The court also ruled that, 'given the evidence that there is no wireless router involved in this case, the Court excludes Kim's opinion that it is possible that someone could have spoofed or hijacked Defendant's Internet account through an unprotected wireless access point. Similarly, because Kim explicitly testified that this case does not involve any "black IP space," or any "temporarily unused" IP space ...., he is not permitted to opine at trial that hijacking of black IP space or temporary unused IP is a possible explanation in this case.' Dr. Kim was also precluded from testifying as to whether song files were conspicuously placed in a shared files folder or were wilfully offered for distribution."
Re:Well . . . (Score:5, Informative)
To put $80,000 per song in perspective, look at the RIAA's 2001 marketing stats [azoz.com] (last year I could find figures for new releases). On average each new CD title brought in about $500,000 in revenue. If you figure conservatively 8 songs per CD, that works out to $62,500 per song.
In other words, the jury awarded more averages damages per song than if she'd prevented all copies of the song from ever being sold.
Re:What are the lawyers thinking? (Score:4, Informative)
umm.. no. In common spoken English it's a tort.. maybe you should learn the language.
People say "I'm being sued" .. to which you may reply "what's the tort?" or just "what for?" but if you were to reply "what crime?" they would look at you funny and wonder how you could have come to the conclusion that they had committed a crime.
Re:Justifying piracy (Score:5, Informative)
What are the laws for this situation?
For this situation, or for the one you describe?
For this situation, nothing, because no one (but you) has said their songs are worth $80000 in value.
All the jury said was each infringement is worth $80000 in damages.
It's a fine, not a repayment.
Re:Absolutely Nuts (Score:3, Informative)
For an example of this, I heartily recommend Maren Song [youtube.com].
Home recording at its best.
Re:Justifying piracy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Absolutely Nuts (Score:1, Informative)
Then you clearly weren't paying attention because the evidence clearly showed a distribution to MediaSentry which is all they needed to prove an infringement of the 17 USC 106(3) right. Case closed.
Re:Justifying piracy (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, monks copying books was what arguably underpinned the development of science - the printing press just increased the speed of propagation of ideas.
You're correct on the copyright though. Copyright laws were a variation on the theme of the "patent" and were around not much later than when the first books started to appear in print. The first copyright or privilege was granted to Aldus Manutius, for this manuscript 'Aristoteles', in 1495. However, these privileges were NOT granted to the author (who expected to be paid as any other worker), but to the publisher - to protect their investment. Only in the 18th century these privileges or patents were granted to authors. Before that time, they were exclusively granted to publishers and not automatic for every work but you had to apply to the King or Queen for every book you wanted to protect.
The funny thing is that the transfer of copyright from publisher to author started when there were huge fights over the publishing rights. Around the end of the 17th century the London and Paris publishers had a total monopoly, that ended in the UK in 1694, after which the publishers outside London started to publish all the books in a massive burst. The attempt to re-monopolize the market led to the Copyright Act of 1709, granting rights to the author for 14 years after publication, with an extension possible for another 14 years if the author was still alive then. The same thing happened in France, resulting in the notion that both the publisher and author needed some protection.
Now, noone I know has any problem with paying the author or publisher for work well done. But the perpetual copyright we have now means I no longer take it seriously.
Fight back, join the Pirate Party (Score:2, Informative)
If like me you think this is absurd, let me suggest you join the Pirate Party in your country. We recently got 7.1% of the vote in Sweden, and it's likely that soon we'll be achieving this and more throughout the developed world.
In the UK, join Pirate Party UK [pirateparty.org.uk]; elsewhere look at Pirate Party International [pp-international.net] to find your national Pirate Party.