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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The law is out of date.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.
If the law is out of date it's still the law, right?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.
I argue that the greatest victory of the content industry, contrary to what most would say, was not extending copyrights to 75 years or establishing the draconian protections of the DMCA. Rather, the their greatest triumph has been to define the terms of the debate.
Instead of talking about temporary monopolies, we talk about "intellectual property." Instead of focusing on the "promotion [of] the progress of science and useful arts" (both the wording and the intent of constitution), we exclusively consider the so-called "property rights" of the creator(s).
And because of this, the content industry is able to conflate established property law with completely unrelated areas of law: plagiarism and government-granted monopolies. The result is not surprisingly inconsistent and the source of confusion all-around. Illegal downloaders are labeled as "thieves" instead of what they really are, copyright infringers. The public domain is not viewed as a benefit to society but as a loss of potential profits.
And they even manage to benefit both ways. They can accuse downloaders of theft, BUT THEN use the strict penalties of copyright infringement (originally intended to punish commercial infringement) against non-commercial and non-profiting individuals.
The entire issue is the ultimate triumph of sophistry over justice. Due process is violated when the punishment ($750 per song) doesn't match the crime (non-commercial copyright infringement). The intent of the constitution lays at the wayside when our arts and sciences are actually hurt because of the increased cost and difficulty of actually bringing a product or innovation to the market. The right to free speech is trampled upon when the DMCA is used inappropriately to take down embarrassing internal memos or other evidence of public fraud/deception(ex. Diebold voting machine code).
-Grym
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!