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Juror From RIAA Trial Speaks
Damon Tog notes a Wired blog posting featuring quotes from a juror who took part in the recent RIAA trial. Some excerpts: "She should have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars... Spoofing? We're thinking, "Oh my God, you got to be kidding."... She lied. There was no defense. Her defense sucked... I think she thought a jury from Duluth would be naive. We're not that stupid up here. I don't know what the f**k she was thinking, to tell you the truth."
Why? The case was cut n dry, she broke the law and she lost.
The jury's job is to determine if she broke the law, not determine if the law makes sense.
Apparently you are lady, you put a judgement of 200K over a few songs.
She could have shoplifted the cds for a few hundred dollars in fines.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
This really was an open and shut case. There was very little doubt the woman was guilty, that's why the RIAA didn't drop the case. I think her hope was that the jury would see a bunch of rich record labels going after some poor ignorant middle aged woman, and the jury would say "fuck you" to the labels. The only gripe I have with this was the size of the award- $10K per song is pretty stiff.
Well, yeah, she was pretty clearly guilty (e.g. wiping the hard drive after she got in trouble). That's not the issue. It's a question as to whether the ruinous damages were justified.
They weren't.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
"That is a compromise, yes," said Hegg, a 38-year-old steelworker from Duluth, Minnesota. "We wanted to send a message that you don't do this, that you have been warned."
Sorry, $9,250 is ridiculous and doesn't send a message about anything other than the fact that, contrary to the comment of your fellow juror that you do in fact know what's going on in Duluth, you really don't know what the fuck is going on. You awarded money that was originally meant for people who were *SELLING* copyrighted songs, not "sharing" for free.
All of the Slashdotters who are holding up Jammie Thomas as some kind of martyr remind me of the African-Americans who embraced OJ Simpson as some symbol of racial injustice.
You guys have picked the wrong horse.
The job of the jury isn't to decide on the basis of a popularity contest; the decision is...did she break the law or not?
They got to choose what her financial penalty was.
They purposefully picked an amount that had absolutely no relationship, whatsoever, to the financial damages that may have been incurred. This was not a matter of law. This was a bunch of citizens sitting in a room and purposefully deciding to ruin the life of somebody that they didn't like.
The jury decided the penalty, and it's plain ridiculous.
Let's assume we agree that the defendant was, as this juror said, an obvious liar, and guilty on all counts.
Should she really lose her house or retirement savings over this?
I'm personally against stealing copyrighted music. But this penalty is waaaaay out of proportion to the crime, IMHO.
Wrong. Half the point of having a jury of peers instead of government officials is to add another check to the system if the jury feels the law itself is a just one.
This
This was a bunch of citizens sitting in a room and purposefully deciding to ruin the life of somebody that they didn't like.
May I introduce you to the U.S. Congress?
The law says you can't distribute stuff when you don't hold the copyright.
Did she distribute?
She was convicted of distribution. Actually, she was also convicted to pay more than 9000$ for each song she allegedly distributed. But there wasn't a shred of evidence that she distributed anything.
For that simple reason, she should not have been convicted.
Don't get me wrong here. I am no pirate. I fact I am probably one of the few rare examples of people who don't have a single illegal MP3 file or movie. I also believe that pirates should be punished.
But the evidence must be present. No matter how much I dislike pirates, ensuring a fair trial (with appropriate evidence) is far more important that collecting money for the greedy "content industry".
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
The most disturbing part of these interviews was that the jurors said they would've reached the same conclusion regardless of whether a transfer had to take place to be infringement, especially since none of the case coverage mentioned the RIAA lawyers showing evidence that any transfers took place at all. They mainly focused on how file sharing is terrible for their cartel, estimates for its effect on their cartel as a whole, etc ... They never said anything like, "As a result of her making files available, N people downloaded the song for free, which translates to $D in lost sales". Absent any evidence that transfers took place, there was no way the jury could have found her guilty of infringement if the instruction was "Infringement only occurs when a transfer takes place".
The jury definitely had their minds made up well before their deliberations. They came to the right legal conclusion for the wrong reasons: they felt insulted.
Appeals aren't decided by juries. In fact, they are almost entirely to decide legal questions and procedural questions; an appeals court more or less doesn't redecide a jury's finding of fact.
If the appeals court decides, for instance, that the trial judge was wrong in the instructions to the jury in a material way, the case could be retried, but the retrial itself isn't the appeal.
The only thing this jury proved, IMO, is that people tend to abuse any power that is given them.
They were legally required to assign a penalty appropriate to the crime, but they did not do so. They ignored this obligation, choosing instead to "send a message" to a woman who they did not like.
They used the law as a weapon to destroy a person who offended them personally. They succeeded only in proving that feeble people, when given power, tend to abuse it, and that Duluth has plenty of feeble people.
One aspect is that, if somebody is not doing well, or has done something wrong, it's ok to kick even more so s/he "learns" and gets better (the stern father penalizes).
Effects are overpopulated prisons, total weak or missing social umbrella and an increasing number of people under poorness level.
The other fact shown here is that people are totally out of touch with financial reality. Financially ruining a life of (is she a single mother?) a person with the idea to doing something "right" shows an overwhelming degree of insensitivity.
I am appalled!
I think the real lesson here is that you shouldn't lie to a jury. It sounds like the juror was pissed off that the defendant didn't respect them enough to tell the truth.
If you're going to get up and give testimony, don't tell obvious lies.
The jurors have been called away from their everyday lives to sit and listen to an argument between two parties they have no interest in. The least you can do is show them some respect.
If I was on that jury, I would have counted that as a big strike against the defendant as well.
... [$]222,000 is in no way reasonable (~9k per song).
Penalties for copyright violations are deliberately draconian and have been since the beginning of the law.
The idea is apparently that:
- It's very hard to identify the violators (or even that a violation took place).
- So only a small fraction will be caught.
- If the penalties are comparable to the actual damage of the offense (a pittance), potential offenders may simply make take the chance - and be rewarded on the average by nearly-free copies.
- So the penalties are set high in proportion to this fraction.
- With high penalties the offenders' bet becomes a losing proposition, a low probability of a big hit. Paying for the content in the first place becomes cheap insurance.
- And with high penalties the copyright holders can make enough from the small fraction they do catch and convict to be "made whole" on their losses from the great mass they miss.
Of course there are problems with this. And the biggest one is with the standard of proof.
Civil law is about making things right. Two roughly equal parties with a dispute go to a court. The court decides which is more likely to be right ("preponderance of evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt"). The one found to be in the wrong pays the amount needed to make things right. If the one found in the wrong was found to have known what was right and been wrong deliberately, that typically means he pays the wronged party three times the amount of correcting the harm, rather than just the amount.
- Draconian penalties to shift the expected outcome of a rule-breaker's bet is the stuff of criminal law, with its higher standard of proof.
- A person paying, not only for his own misdeeds, but for that of thousands of others, is hardly "setting right" the result of their own misbehavior.
- If the punishment is to be, not three times, but nine thousand times the cost of the alleged offense, how fair is it to use a "more likely than not" standard? If an innocent person is to be put at risk of paying nine thousand times the price of the stuff he allegedly obtained, shouldn't this require a "nine-thousand-to-one" standard to prove the case?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That witness does not even validly qualify as an "expert witness" and has had their testimony thrown out of numerous courts as well as being threatened with legal action if they continued their work in the state of Texas. Their "facts" have been proven invalid again and again as well as being laughed at and torn apart here at Slashdot. Unfortunately her lawyer didn't mount a strong attack on this or apparently even object to their ranting in court about all the harm being done by "pirates" as being irrelevent as to the matter of whether or not his client was liable in this particular case. Further, the "expert witness" has been known to break into people's computers to look for evidence, once that happens how can you expect to be able to call anything they "find" on a computer to be valid?
The interviewed juror seemed to think spoofing was an unbelieveable claim just because he didn't know how ("we aren't stupid") and with his comment about his wife you have to wonder if he didn't discuss it with her, which would be a conduct violation on his part. Being as this jury wanted to prove "we aren't stupid around here" then it was likely that in their ignorance they decided to go with the "higher authority" and perceiving that to be the RIAA instead of one individual.
All this case proves is that the system works and I don't mean the Justice System, I mean the one that starts with you being taught to blindly accept authority by the Public School System. The jurors perceived the RIAA as the authority here and accepted all the crap they fed them.
One of the major problems with the civil justice system is that "preponderance of evidence" is too often equated with who produced the most evidence. It is undeniable that a corporation can afford to produce a greater quantity of "evidence" then an individual can and it is almost impossible to prove you did NOT do something. In this case Best Buy even had the sales records where she had purchased the albums that include the songs she was accused of sharing. There was no Kazaa software on her hard drive nor any evidence it had been there. Yes the drive had been replaced but it was testified by the Best Buy tech that this had been done before the alledged events.
She testified she ripped all those songs from cds she owned, RIAA tried to say she couldn't have done it as fast as the times indicated. Feel free to test this, grab a fast entire cd at a time ripper and race it against finding and downloading the same tunes, willing to bet the ripping process wins hands down especially if you have your cd collection right there and run it like the back up operation it is.
There is more that could be said but I am tired of ranting. Maybe Mr. Beckerman will log in and give that "cut and dry" line a proper roasting.
The application of law is already whimsical and often capricious. Bush had the Justice Dept. stop prosecuting Microsoft. Cops have the freedom to not give tickets to friends. DA's have the freedom to (silently) choose not to prosecute for political reasons.
And besides, we can't really expect judges to support the people's overriding of a conviction the judge would like to make. We the People are the final authority in the U.S. system, even if judges, DA's, congressmen, and Presidents claim otherwise. I submit that we just lack the balls to consistently assert our authority.
IANAL either, but my fiancee who is assures me that jury nullification is alive; the courts just don't want to mentioned.
Your woeful ignorance of the concept of jury nullification not only bothers me, but it terrifies me. The jury is the final arbiter of truth, and a not guilty verdict cannot be overturned, "legal" or not. It has a long standing tradition in North America, predating the American Revolution. In fact, citizens of the colonies used jury nullification several times to "nullify" laws they found unjust. Since you've served on so many juries, no doubt you noticed that the jury doesn't read the verdict plus a paragraph of reasoning? Jury nullification cannot be truly removed with the current system we have in place.
That said, I also believe that she was shown guilty far beyond what the law calls for.
The application of law is already whimsical and often capricious. Bush had the Justice Dept. stop prosecuting Microsoft. Cops have the freedom to not give tickets to friends. DA's have the freedom to (silently) choose not to prosecute for political reasons.
In other words because the system isn't perfect, we should make it worse?
And besides, we can't really expect judges to support the people's overriding of a conviction the judge would like to make. We the People are the final authority in the U.S. system, even if judges, DA's, congressmen, and Presidents claim otherwise. I submit that we just lack the balls to consistently assert our authority.
The jury already has authority on matters of fact, and it's typically the evidence that's lacking when if the judge is out to "get someone". The judge has very little leeway to interpret law, and is likely to get overturned on appeal if he tries. There are in fact supreme courts that only deal with matters of law and whether it was correctly applied. From what I've understood, the primary function of jury nullification is to counteract corrupt laws.
But when the legislative process is working properly, I'd much rather trust the "we the people" that through representative elections vote in congressmen which pass law, rather than the "we the people" biased sample of a dozen, where any single individual is given the authority to fuck the process. To give one member of the public the authority to override the authority of we the people, is not to empower the people.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Perhaps you can explain WHY the Constitution specifically requires that people can be tried by a "jury of their peers", if not for the reason if giving common citizens a way to nullify unjust laws or judicial decisions.
A little hint: it's not because such a jury is going to "weigh the evidence" better than a panel of people who have received training in analyzing legal & evidentiary issues.
It's specifically because the Founders wanted a last-ditch mechanism for common citizens to protect each other if all three branches of government are operating out of the bounds of common sense.
It's only natural that the judicial system try and discourage this kind of thinking (and it's a damn shame that schools don't teach enough American Civics anymore to make people aware of their duties in this area), but that doesn't change the original intent of the Founders, and it's one damn good way for people to push back against an out-of-control government.
It's too bad there aren't more such ways. I personally think that it should be a Constitutional right to vote, regardless of whether you've been convicted of a crime or not (unlike the usual policies of disenfranchising convicted felons).
The way I see it, if your society is running in a healthy way, then there shouldn't be too many criminals & their vote won't have much of an effect on votes/elections.
If the government is heading in a direction where it's criminalizing a large chunk of the populace, however (which is a common tactic when the "leaders" of a society want to disenfranchise people who don't support them), then the votes of the convicted should provide a valuable negative feedback mechanism to the officials being elected to make them think twice about what kinds of laws they are passing.
For the same reason that buying animals at a pet store because you feel sorry for the way they're being treated is self-defeating. If you shovel a bunch of money down the maw of the RIAA, they'll come back for more. Contrary to the popular (and petulant) belief around here, the RIAA doesn't actually care about music piracy. What they care about is making money. It just happens that music piracy stands in the way of that goal. They're just as happy to make their money by draining legal defense funds as they are by selling CDs.
If you want to fuck with the RIAA, a) write a letter to your congresscritter, perhaps along with a campaign donation, and b) don't buy RIAA products. But don't think giving a bunch of money to the RIAA is going to discourage them.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
If she was aware that she was breaking the law, she probably didn't think the punishment would be so ridiculous.
If mp3 copyright infringement was prosecuted as this case was, 99% of the people aged 15-22 would be in bankruptcy.
This case was akin to being charged a $1,000,000 fine for a speeding citation. The statutory minimum damages are unreasonable, and the jury is even more unreasonable for assigning an even higher fine.
Looking at it from several perspectives. Yes they look guilty. But as stated above. The punishment should fit the crime. Be it this was a civil case not criminal. The same stands. The Jury was obviously pissed off by the defendant and nailed that person on not just fact, but emotion. Just look at the jurors statement! Its pretty obvious. The amount IS ludicrous. At worst the Jury should have only doubled the original settlement. I guess you could say don't piss off the jury, but thats obvious. But in this case, the jury did cross the line. Again, see juror's statement. I've spent a lot of time in the courtroom (not as a defendant). Jury's can unfortunately get to emotional and prejudicial.
There's really few options this person has now.