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Judge OKs Challenge To RIAA's $750-Per-Song Claim
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In UMG v. Lindor, in Brooklyn federal court, the presiding judge has held that Marie Lindor can try to prove that the RIAA's claim of $750-per-song statutory damages is a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, since she has evidence that the actual wholesale price of the downloads is only 70 cents. This decision activates an earlier ruling by the Magistrate in the case that the record labels must now turn over 'all relevant documents' regarding the prices at which they sell legal downloads to online retailers, and produce a witness to give a deposition by telephone on the subject. Judge Trager rejected the RIAA's claim that the defense was frivolous, pointing out that the RIAA had cited no authorities contradicting the defense, but Ms. Lindor's attorneys had cited cases and law review articles indicating that it was a valid defense. See the Decision at pp. 6-7."
The law is out of date. It was written at a time when the possibility of an individual sharing several copies of hundreds of songs was inconceivable. $750 per title as damages for a company that's churning out hundreds of copies for sale at market stalls is hardly totally unreasonable, since they could easily be, and probably would be selling several hundred even if the exact amount sold is impossible to judge. Still not a brilliantly just law but that's another matter.
And they call us pirates? A decent, fairly honest, average person or a dishonest, greedy juggernaut of a company - who would you rather deal with, legalities or not? I know who I wouldn't want to turn my back on.
A song that sells for $.70 wholesale should not automatically trigger damages of $750 if the same song is "stolen" or misappropriated. If I understand correctly, his Due Process argument is that the damages are grossly disproportionate to the loss, 70 cents or so. Another example would be if a car is valued at $10,000 and is somehow damaged or stolen, the raw value of goods stolen or damaged is $10,000, the cost of the car, not some arbitrary amount set by law.
A judge has figured out that there is no basis for the RIAA's damage claims. Took long enough to find a judge with enough brains to see that all the RIAA has ever done is intimidate and extort. I hope they do something really dumb and get fined big for pissing off the judge. Every attorny defending one of these cases needs to be informed of this step. It really could put an end to this stupidity.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Wouldn't just shoplifting the CDs cost less in fines if you were caught?
The prosecution for a frivolous lawsuit is calling the defense frivolous? Isn't that like the pot calling the sheet of white paper black?
... and in the DRM, bind them.
If the law is out of date it's still the law, right?
It's not the like RIAA can't buy an update to it.
That would be true if the song was some sort of one of a kind trade secret. But given the availability of these "bootleg" copies, I find it hard to believe that her downloaded copy led to ANY more people not buying the song. The prevalence of this music on the internet, and the ease of making and sharing unprotected copies, means that her download of a single copy almost certainly did NOT make it available to a single person to whom it was not available before.
If you broke into my company and stole our designs and posted them on the internet, then yes, I can make a claim for huge damages. But the cat's out of the bag already - she didn't pay her $0.99, but I find it hard to believe she contributed to even a single person not paying their $0.99.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
It just shows how incompetent the RIAA is. They're so happy with all the money they're making right now that they fail to see that a system like the one you describe would actually work. An American-based AllOfMP3 that was actually backed by the RIAA, or, at least, the artists themselves, would be quite successful. I don't know about you, but I'd rather pay $2.50 for an album than spend an entire day downloading it from eMule or BitTorrent.
I certainly appreciate the legal insight, but did you actually read the interview? I'm too lazy right now to search that article for posts from you, but I certainly read it.
It was awful.
They may be wonderful, open people in person. They might also be world-renowned legal experts for all I know. However, the answers given in that interview were terse, dismissive, and generally not well targeted to their intended audience. I thank them for their contributions to our knowledge pool, but I don't think you can honestly read the article you cited and use it as an example of an ungrateful readership.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ah yes. The argument that you ought to be punished for what somebody else did. Er... maybe did. Sounds pretty fair to me.
Software patents delenda est.
"Stop downloading music that you aren't paying for, and the RIAA will go away."
Well the RIAA has been around before you could download files (did you know they developed the so-called RIAA Equilization Curve?), so their existence isn't dependent on file sharing.
If you mean, the RIAA will stop becoming involved in lawsuits and restricting rights of people if downloading magically stopped, I can't prove or disprove this, but I offer the following thoughts:
1) At this point, it's impossible to stop downloading. It's like saying "if all people were fair and true, the police would not be needed".
2) Times change. Nobody will be satisfied with the model of buying "records" at the "record store" any more. And electronic downloads are now coming with restrictions that didn't exist just a few years ago. More to the point, the RIAA as a political entity has been actively involved in altering the political landscape to restrict users fair use rights
3) That doesn't make it correct that people download songs. However, when a person downloads a song, morally, it's the equivalent of parking at a meter and not putting in $.50 to pay for the meter. This generally results in a ticket and a fine of a few dollars. We're not in the habit of bankrupting people who park illegally, and we shouldn't be in the business of doing the same over a CD.
And the truth of the matter is that I don't mind Sony and other record companies putting rootkits, and all kinds of restrictions on their music. I just don't understand why the government is doing it's best to prop up a revenue model for these guys at the expense of individuals.
I'm sorry, I'm Canadian, racists aren't humourous here anymore I guess.
The law is out of date. It was written at a time when the possibility of an individual sharing several copies of hundreds of songs was inconceivable.
By that logic, I'd say that the law protecting the songs is out of date as well. There is no reason why a single entity should be able to control a bit of information for more than 70 years, that's just crazy. She should get off scott free!
Everything is funny.
Death.
Adultery.
Hell I have a friend who jokes about Aids and he had a few of his friends die of it.
Laughter is the best medicine.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Except, of course, that if one uploads to a third-party site, then the person doing the uploading doesn't need to use the bandwidth. They've provided the copy to potentially limitless downloaders, while only maxing out the upload for 320 secs. This is, after all, the whole point of uploading the file -- so you don't get bogged down in p2p data transfer but still manage to make the content available.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You've hit on the point exactly. The RIAA is indirectly arguing (through its high damage calculations) that if you upload a file, then you are responsible for its exponential growth in sharing -- not just what you directly shared, but the shares made of the song by others in each succeding generation.
The argument made by the parent and great-grandparent is that you should only be responsible for only your local circle of sharing, and not the further sharing of the people you shared with in the first round. In other words, just the linear spread of the song.
Something tells me the law is probably unclear on where the cutoff on responsibility lies, since the exponential spread of perfect copies is a relatively new issue. And since the RIAA cannot or will not determine what generation in the exponential spread you are, everybody is treated as if they were the primary introducer for sharing the song and hit with the high damages. That's a great example of trying to have your cake and eat it too!
So maybe what P2P software writers ought to do is add a checkbox to their program that says "I've been reamed by the RIAA...you can now download all of my songs without fear of penalty as your right to do so has been paid for".
You're using her as bait, Master!
Having been dealing with lawyers lately on a variety of subjects. You certainly seem to have never really dealt with a lawyer. Our complex systems and their complex systems don't even begin to compare. At least in our complex systems there are right and wrong answers. In law there really isnt. Law simply is not cut and dry. The laws are vaguely worded and complex and left to the interpretation of judges (whose opinions, methods, and backgrounds in relavent fields all vary greatly). The lawyers job is to take your money, take the law, and make a best attempt at convincing the judge that the law reads in your favor, in the mean time, the other lawyers job is to take the oppositions money and try to convince the judge that THEIR interpretation is the correct one. In the meantime there are a bunch of lawyers in the legislative end of government deliberately writing vague and confusing law to ensure lawyers remain employed and that law will never be cut and dry and comprehendable by the common man. That anytime anything comes up you will be forced to get a lawyer to talk to a judge, because anything else is courtroom suicide due to the complexity and vagueness of the law. If you have a lawyer telling you things are cut and dry and its a no brainer, then you probably have an inexperienced lawyer or a dishonest one (well they are all basically dishonest, but you want them to be honest with you at least). Do you honestly believe that if law was so cut and dry easy lawyers would get paid $200+/hr to do terribly little? Do you honestly believe that if it was so simple there would be so many stupid cases constantly clogging up our legal system?
In the meantime you should start charging a $2500 retainer before fixing anyones computer. See how far that goes.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
what I'm curious about is who checks that the RIAA hasn't already put a claim in for this particular song somewhere further up the chain? ie. person A shares a file that persons B,C & D download. RIAA files a suit against person A, claims $750 damages. Person A pays. RIAA now files suits against B,C & D (who are now also sharing the file) claiming $750 from each of them too, even though, in theory the claim against person A was for ALL downstream sharing too.
The original claim was not for all downstream sharing. It was simply the minimum statutory damage specified by Congress when they wrote the law.
The issue here is not that the RIAA picked an unreasonable figure; the $750 is actually the _minimum_ statutory amount they can ask for. The issue is that the statutory amounts are arguably so unreasonable as to be an unconstitutional violation of due process.
The defendant is not challenging the RIAA per se, but rather the constitutionality of the law itself.
rage, rage against the dying of the light