Jammie Thomas Moves To Strike RIAA $1.92M Verdict 392
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Jammie Thomas-Rasset has made a motion for a new trial, seeking to vacate the $1.92 million judgment entered against her for infringement of 24 MP3 files, in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset. Her attorneys' brief (PDF) argues, among other things, that the 'monstrous' sized verdict violates the Due Process Clause, consistent with 100 years of SCOTUS jurisprudence, since it is grossly disproportionate to any actual damages sustained. It further argues that, since the RIAA elected to offer no evidence of actual damages, either as an alternative to statutory damages, or to buttress the fairness of a statutory damages award, the verdict, if it is to be reduced, must be reduced to zero."
Some people should realize that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Resistance is futile in some cases ;-))
Disclaimer: The above sentence was intentionally left ambiguous if we relate to TFA context. As a hint, by "resistance",
"A force that tends to oppose or retard motion." was meant.
Statutory Damages (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Statutory Damages (Score:5, Interesting)
6.7 years of continuous uploading.
(As an aside - holy shit is Google getting scary! To calculate that, I typed in "1.92 million * 3.5 megabytes" and it said "6.40869141 terabytes". Then I asked it "6.41 terabytes / 256kbps" and got 6.81574337 years. I'm starting to think we should be referring to Google as 'a logic called Joe'.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Statutory Damages (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope, as the OP explained, judges aren't allowed to use common sense if a law says otherwise. Ultimately, people vote to elect a government that will make laws telling the judges what to do. This is how the system works.
Higher court judges have more discretion at their disposal with regards to using common sense, I would bet she will still be found guilty but the amount to pay could be lowered.
Lower court judges tend to stick to the text of the law. Nothing is worse for a lower court judge career than getting his sentence overruled by a higher court judge because he did not follow the text of the law. As long as he stick to the text of the law, he is safe.
It is easier for higher court judges to establish jurisprudence. It is more risky for lower court judges although it occurs sometimes.
Smart (Score:5, Interesting)
As per one of my previous posts postulated, they are not fighting based on technical defense, but on a constitutional one, the first court case was indeed a sham to coax the jury to make the biggest most outrageous damages they could. As per NYCL they didn't even call their own witnesses or cross examine (if memory serves me correctly).
Your view of "reasonable" is WARPED (Score:3, Interesting)
That's reasonable? 18,000 for sharing 24 files? You think she SHOULD have settled? REALLY??? Sure it's less INSANE than millions of dollars but it's still INSANE.
Hell, why don't we go back to sending kids who steal bread to Australia while we're at it.
Re:Turned Around (Score:1, Interesting)
1) it's very difficult to determine the "best price"
2) copyright infringement has likely increased by several orders of magnitude in the past ten years (i.e. it's volatile--making it very difficult to estimate in the future)
3) They had likely pushed the market beyond the profitability of "best price" using monopolistic behavior.
4) The longer they can squeeze profit out of their current setup, the better, because adapting costs money.
5) Adapting likely opens a window for competitors to enter the market (of course, delaying adapting may do the same thing, risky gamble)
6) They effectively control all popular modern music and can just tell everyone to piss off?
Re:Statutory Damages (Score:3, Interesting)
While actual damages can never be determined, they can be estimated fairly easily.
Most modern P2P software works by distributing the uploading over the entire network. This is certainly true for bittorrent, and mostly true on older networks referenced in this case, if I remember correctly.
A == "number of people wanting a copy"
B == "number of copies desired per-person" == 1
C == "number of copies needed" == A * B == A
D == "number of uploaders" ~= C
X == "number of copies uploaded, per-person" == D / C == C / C == 1
On average (mean), a SINGLE copy is uploaded by any one person. Just look at your average bittorrent swarm. How often do you get a share ratio above 1.0? How often do you get a share ratio above, say, 100.0? Ever?
Actual damages here are on the order of $0.99 * 24. Probably not that exactly, but it's going to be around that order of magnitude. S why, again, is $750 or more sane?
Re:Statutory Damages (Score:4, Interesting)
(As an aside - holy shit is Google getting scary! To calculate that, I typed in "1.92 million * 3.5 megabytes" and it said "6.40869141 terabytes". Then I asked it "6.41 terabytes / 256kbps" and got 6.81574337 years. I'm starting to think we should be referring to Google as 'a logic called Joe'. :S )
You think that's impressive? Try calculating how much energy the sun has (E=mc^2): mass of sun * c^2 [google.no]. Want it in a different unit? Just say so: in kilowatt hours [google.no]. It does currency conversions and plenty other useful things too. It's not just the search results keeping google on top...
Re:Some people should realize that... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm fairly sure the judge duked out whatever he could for the sole reason that she deliberately did whatever she could to BS him. Judges are only people, and people who don't like to be BSed.
Re:Statutory Damages (Score:3, Interesting)
18k is still a fair lot of dough. Depending on what you're actually doing for a living, it can be even more than what you could pay back in 7 years (i.e. time 'til bankrupcy).
So what's the difference between 18k, 180k or 180m if you can't pay any of them?
None. I don't know about her financial situation, but if that's it, continuing the ride is the most sensible thing she can possibly do. Whether you're in for twice of what you could possibly make in 7 years or a hundred times doesn't really make a difference anymore.
Re:Can't pay the fine? (Score:1, Interesting)
>If you drunk dive and kill someone with your car you should get 24 days in jail. But download 24 songs and expect nearly $2 million in fines. We need to start reexamining our courtrooms.
That's because 24 songs is worth more. What is a 59-year-old father worth? Not much compared to, say, 24 Beatles songs. That's treasure.
It's like the old Fight Club trope. "If the cost of a recall is more than the lawsuit, we don't do one."
Re:You gotta fight! For your right! (Score:1, Interesting)
You misunderstand the arguments made, you lump all slashdotters into one category, and you assume the same people are making the same arguments.
You're trolling the wrong thread. This is the 'damages are excessive' thread, you want the 'flagrantly violating the law is okay because who gives a shit?' thread.
We don't mind corporations making money. We'd like it if it wasn't extorting millions of dollars at a time from people, even ones as dumb as Jammie.
Incidentally, I downloaded some music today without paying for it. No, it wasn't some Creative Commons stuff. I listen to the Pandora music service quite often, violating no law as I do so.
There goes your black-and-white viewpoint, I suppose. Next time try actually making an argument, or perhaps find a different news site. Until then, enjoy your fail.
Re:Statutory Damages (Score:1, Interesting)
Its always amused me how people can make pedantic arguments WRT civil vs criminial law with a straight face or spout a variety of "legal" arguments which on their face are nonsensical to all ordinary sane persons.
We can fuck up your life with civil action that we couldn't otherwise "get away" with in criminial proceedings. Even though the effective penality can be less in the criminal case.
OJ simpson was found not guilty in a court of law but double jepoardy does not extend to "wrongful death" lawsuites even though its essentially a trial for the same thing -- only the penalty is different.
The US legal system is not fair or logical. If you ever find yourself on the wrong side of it.. do yourself a favor -- shut your face and get a lawyer because being nice, helpful or thinking that the legal system is in any way shape or form based on logic or reason can end up biting you in the ass.
Its only possible to change the law through an act of congress and congress will not act against RIAA lobby money unless they hear loud and clear their re-election is tied to acting in a reasonable manner on the topics you care about.
Re:Statutory Damages (Score:4, Interesting)
That's exactly the fallacy in their logic: It's not ONE (illegal) distributor and MANY receipients (that's what this law was created for). That's not the case. You have MANY distributors, contributing a tiny fraction of the infringed work. Yet their logic is to sue all of them for the whole work.
Extrapolating, if they caught all the infringers, they would actually get more people uploading than downloading. You download one copy, as you pointed out. You don't need more than that. Yet you upload to several people, all of them counting as an upload to their statistics.
Basically, if they caught all infringers, they would come up with a multiple of the actual copies distributed.
Re:Statutory Damages (Score:1, Interesting)
As been said before, the problem is the law and not the verdict.
But I disagree with fandingo. In rare cases, not only judicial activism isn't a "dirty term", it is a necessity. The current us law, regarding copyright, with the unholy matrimony between state, government, (lots of) money, lobbyists and a dying bloated industry, should be considered unlawful. This case is a clear case of big corporations using political leverages to step on the little people.
A *minimum* of 18,000$ as statuary damages (as defined by the current stupid law) for sharing 24 songs, against an individual without an intent to make profits, is ludicrous and calls for judicial activism. This is a clear case of "not by the people and against the people". Justice calls for the courts to step in and tell the two headed giant (govt. + corporations) to fucking leave the people alone.
Re:Some people should realize that... (Score:2, Interesting)
Wasn't it the jury that made that award not the judge? Isn't there also a long history of excessive awards by juries being overturned?
Re:Can't pay the fine? (Score:1, Interesting)
The artists are rich? You mean the labels are rich. The artists don't get crap from album sales nor will they from this settlement. Don't confuse the two.
Re:Can't pay the fine? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://torrentfreak.com/p2p-collection-costs-man-huge-fine-suspended-sentence-090704/ [torrentfreak.com]
Man in France was just sentenced for 12,591 MP3 files, 426 movies, 16 full TV-series and dozens of items of pirated software. The man was sentenced to 33,000 euros ($46,200) in damages and a 2 month suspended jail sentence.
They are not quite as big of jerks over there it seems. He had considerably more than 24 songs and was only fined about 50k.
Re:Some people should realize that... (Score:3, Interesting)
How many copies of these 20 year old pop songs did the relevant labels sell in a year?
What are the actual damages? What is the theoretical maximum of that number?
What's the most "damage" that all music piracy in aggregate can do with respect to these songs?
It will probably look a lot like the total revenue for these songs in a year.
Statutory damages should not be used to completely ingore the issue of real damages.
Re:Some people should realize that... (Score:3, Interesting)