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Verdict Reached In RIAA Trial
jemtallon writes "The jury in the previously mentioned Captiol v Thomas story has reached a verdict. They have found in favor of the plaintiffs, Capitol, and ordered that she pay a $222,000 fine for 24 cases of copyright infringement."
Frankly, as much as I loathe the RIAA, Thomas' story simply didn't hold up. The prosecution was able to prove that in an attempt to evade prosecution, she had replaced her hard drive shortly after receiving a warning notice from the RIAA, not before as she claimed.
It's a shame that the defendant of this first RIAA jury trial turned out to be a liar with a bogus defense. But apparently, that's who she was. Given the facts brought out in the case, I don't see how the jury could have found for the defense.
If she's in the US, they can garnish wages, attach liens to property, etc... for a number of years (usually seven, IIRC).
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Punitive damages is a term with a special meaning. No punitive damages were awarded in this case. Statutory damages could have been as high as $150,000 per song. While that level may well be punitive in a colloquial sense, we are talking a special usage -- not a conversational usage.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
It's a civil case.
It's a civil case.
How many more times?
How we know is more important than what we know.
One thing you point out is paramount. Since this was a civil case, the fine should be only enough to promote equity rather than be punitive in nature.
Another interesting thing is that, averaged out, this adds up to $9250 per infringement. At that price the defendant could have physically stolen about 600 copies of each work (assuming around $15 per work). So it pays to remember that the fines for physically stealing copyrighted works are much less than infringing on them.
This was actually addressed in the Ars Technica writeup of the case. Normally the damages for copyright infringement are a few hundred dollars ($300 max rings a bell). In the case of willful infringement, however, damages can increase up to $150,000 per incident. The jury found that the defendant had engaged in such willful infringement, and could have awarded up to $3.6 million ($150,000 for each of 24 songs being distributed).
Fuck Capitalism!
1. Juries generally take the damages amount suggested by the plaintiff in a civil trial. Most people have no idea how much a random tort is really worth and just take their word for it.
2. Juries in America are specifically picked to exclude anyone in the slightest bit knowledgeable about the activity in question (to avoid both bias and to avoid questioning the testimony of expert witnesses due to -- right or wrong -- assumption about the dispute in question), and they are picked to avoid people who have done similar crimes in the past (again for bias reasons).
Pretty much the only people in America who haven't downloaded a song illegally are people who thing it's inherently immoral or unethical. These people would not be sympathetic to the defendant.
Now we get to see where this goes on appeal.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
> "Don't do the CRIME if you can't pay the FINE !!"
Kevin Smith on Prince
Perhaps a copyright lawyer will come by and put me in my place.
Okay.
In the 1976 Act the amounts were $250 - $10,000, and could be lowered to $100 or raised to $50,000. Congress amended this in 1988, making the new amounts $500 - $20,000, $250, and $100,000. Congress amended it again in 1999, making the new amounts $750 - $30,000, left the minimum possible floor at $250, and $150,000.
I'm thinking that the forces that got Congress to raise the statutory damages in 1999 were well aware of how cheaply copying could be done for. Likewise, the idea that not all copying was commercial and that individuals acting noncommercially could run afoul of copyright laws was well known at that time.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Generally speaking, state & local trial court verdicts are not considered binding in any jurisdiction -- only appeals court verdicts. Most states don't even publish lower court opinions -- NY, OH, & CT are the exceptions AFAIK, and they only publish a handful of lower court opinions issued each year.
Precedent will not be set until this goes to an appeals court. They may well try it, but the evidence doesn't look so good. Their only solid grounds for appeal in my opinion is over whether or not the replacement of the hard drive counts as an attempt to misplace evidence.
No, the case looks solid based on the (admittedly one-sided) write up, and it looks like the defendant doesn't have enough money to appeal.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Actually, the jury can overturn a law from the bench. It's rare, but it happens.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Libraries can count on the doctrine of first sale. At the current time, they have nothing to worry about.
It is called jury nullification and Jury veto.
I am a big proponent of it. unfortunately, talking about it gets my excluded form jury duty.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean its subject to a RICO suit. Read the site you linked to. RIAA actions do not in any way qualify under RICO statutes.
Don't automatically assume that a civil judgment will be discharged in bankruptcy. Filing for bankruptcy has become more difficult and the consequences more far-reaching. It is not an easy way out.
I2P, or even Freenet.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
When picking jurors, both the plaintiff and defendant's lawyers ask questions of each prospective juror and can dismiss them essentially at will. The plaintiffs case depends on law; so it is not in their interest to allow anyone onto the jury who knows that the jury can essentially overturn some kinds of laws. If they know that a juror knows about nullification, they would likely dismiss them, rather than risk a nullification that would set an unfavorable precedent.
But is this really true? She may not be "1337" but she does use with computers every day at work, and she knew enough to shit-can her hard drive after she got the RIAA nasty-gram. She said she never heard of KaZaA, but the evidence indicates that's not true, indeed her KaZaA user name was the same as her personal email.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Jury instructions are here: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/jury_instructions.pdf
(via http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/jury-deliberati.html )
In civil court, the idea isn't to deter certain conduct, but to equalize a wrong. Punitive damages are to deter future behavior.
The penalties in copyright law are compensatory, not punitive. Further evidence of this is that you can still be held liable for infringement to the tune of a minimum of $200 per infringement even if you had no reason to believe that the work was copyrighted. In your scenario, that'd be like reducing the littering fine to $500 even if you had no reason to believe littering was prohibited where you littered.
I made a mistake in my previous post by declaring there should be a deterrent. What I should have said is that there needs to be an additional penalty for violating the rights of the copyright holder over and above the market cost of the work.
The entire point of P2P is to side-step theis limitation. This is probably their rationalization.
In case you didn't know, if she uploaded the song to 3 people, and they each uploaded it to 3 people, blah blah blah you get the picture. Most of the time, you don't even get the whole song from any one person if it's popular enough. This should be known...
Also, it's terabyte. Who's fault is it I keep seeing "terrabyte" everywere? What a pain.
Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
Actually, it will be automatically discharged, unless RIAA contests it in adversarial proceeding. If they wanted to be real pricks they could probably drag it out for some time. This is nothing new, Scientology has done it to a bunch of their critics.
That said, bankruptcy judges typically take a rather dim view of creditors that try to do this -- the whole point to bankruptcy is to give the honest person a fresh start (there aren't supposed to be debtor's prisons in the US). Besides which, the whole point of the RIAA suits isn't to collect money. It's to get the headline of "Jury awards $220,000 to RIAA for file sharing". There is exactly zero chance that they will ever collect any sizable sum of this money, bankruptcy or not. Take a look at OJ Simpson. How long has he dodged that judgment?
Filing for bankruptcy has become more difficultThat's a myth. It's become more expensive for those filers that retain an attorney, because of the new requirements imposed under BAPCPA. There's also the added cost of the required credit courses and consoling, but this is typically not a huge expense.
and the consequences more far-reachingAnother myth. The consequences of filing BK didn't change at all under the new laws. The only 'consequence' that changed is that you have to wait 8 years before you can file again, vs 6 years under the old laws. The biggest consequence of filing bankruptcy is that it goes on your credit report for 10 years. It's a myth that you won't be able to obtain credit after a BK. I'm two years from my Ch 7 and I have a car loan at 5.5% and $5,900 worth of credit limits. I could probably obtain more if I wanted to (why bother?)
It is not an easy way out.It is what it always has been -- a last ditch safety net for those with no hope of ever repaying their debts. Unless this woman makes a huge amount of income and can realistically pay this debt back in the next five years, this sounds like the perfect reason to file bankruptcy to me. With few exceptions (student loans, taxes, child support) we don't allow debtors prisons/debt slavery in the United States.
And yes, I've been through all of this. I filed Chapter 7 under the old laws. I still maintain a relationship with the attorney that did my case. I wound up becoming his computer consultant. He would be the first to tell you that not too much changed under the new laws. 95% of his clients are so deeply in debt that they qualify for a Ch 7 even after the "means test" imposed by BAPCPA. The image of scores of deadbeat debtors with the money to repay their debts abusing the bankruptcy system was nothing more then propaganda put out by the credit industry.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That's absolutely right. The examples the GP gave were of not buying Sony laptops, minidiscs, and cameras. I'm sure Sony's CEO is going to stand up and tell all of his investors that Sony is having difficulty selling those because people keep putting them on P2P networks so everyone can download these things for free.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Lending a CD to a friend is not the same thing as copying it.
In any case, it's not $9,250 for every time the song was downloaded, it's $9,250 for each song that was made available. Each of those songs could have been downloaded once, or 100,000 times. The chances are the jury came to that figure partially considering some kind of finger-in-the-air estimate of how often the songs were likely to have been downloaded.
Put it another way, if these 20 songs were, between them, downloaded a million times, then the defendant has only had to pay about 20c per copy. On the other hand, if they were never downloaded, then the fine is a little high.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
the problem is promotion, anyone can put thier songs on the web and put up a paypal link to pay for them and get a code to download them. Anyone can get thier tunes added to iTunes for a reasonable fee. None of that helps if noone outside of a few locals who have seen you in a pub gig knows they want your music. You need to get a LOT of sales to get enough money to give up your day job and that means you need promotion on major radio stations.
The way for an artist to make big money in the music buisness is to sign on with a record company, take thier promotion and then stay popular for long enough to get out of the "abusive" initial contract. After that they can either break out on thier own or get a much better contract with a record label. It is the staying popular that is the difficult bit, one hit wonders will never reach that point.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I am a believer in Jury nullification. In this case, nullifying the judges instructions.
First he ruled that making available did not amount to infringement, then at the last minute decided it was. The judges decision and his instructions was pivotal and perhaps the entire crux of the defense along with user identification.
The "system" gets pissed, especially judges (read ego), when all their years studying in college and dedication to their craft gets squashed by a laymen like me using common sense (read Jury nullification). Oh well... They want respect but when the "system", manufactures a product like this, they appear blind or at least dismissal to what it looks like to the outside world.
My lawyer friends my disagree with my opinion but they can't have it both ways. The system can't ask for my respect and at the same time expect me to swallow this Elephant.
-[d]-
Besides, I could write a client that keeps track of which pieces I downloaded from whom. A swarm of these clients could ensure they got full copies from each of the targets. More expensive in bandwidth and they'd have to be leechers (legally), but doable.
For my more valuable unwanted CDs, I sell them on Amazon marketplace, which also works very well.
Birth is the leading cause of death.
The original easy way out, a.k.a Chapter
IANAL (and if you'd take legal advice from an AC, well, you're braver than me)
Making a copy for another person was never legal. Copies made for OWN use, legal. I understand the point that we've made these copies forever and it's just a new way to do so, but that doesn't mean it was or is legal to do it.
Letting someone borrow your copy is legal. Letting someone borrow your copy while you use your "backup" copy, not so much.
Previously you couldn't easily monitor people making copies for their friends, it just wasn't practical. One unfortunate consequence of electronic distribution is that a lot of it is able to be easily monitored - once the costs of enforcement go down, the amount of enforcement goes up.
I completely disagree with the RIAA's tactics, and the amount of the fine is completely unreasonable. Taking the approach of "all customers want to be criminals" is (hopefully) a good way to have your business go away - permanently.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.