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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."
From TFA: But Hegg said the jury in U.S. District Court in Duluth would have found her liable even if the plaintiffs had been required to establish that Kazaa users had actually downloaded the music.
/sarcasm The article made it sound like (imho) that the jury had already decided before all arguments had been heard.
"It would have been a lot harder to make the decision," he said. "Yes, we would have reached the same result."
I'm glad to see that jurors no longer need to hear evidence/proof and have their minds made up in advance.
Two points here:
1) I can't imagine what a pathetic and aggressive loser you have to be to think that somebody should pay $3.6m as restitution for letting somebody copy 24 songs (even if you think they're guilty.)
2) It really sounds like they don't understand the difference between a defense lawyer saying "they didn't prove that this technically feasible activity didn't happen" and a woman who is actively claiming that this was the case.
I hope that the douchebags who pushed for $150k/song get hit by the RIAA because their kids installed some software without their knowledge, because only then will they realize how completely and totally fucking wrong they are.
The RIAA did not have to show that they lost $D in lost sales. They sought statutory damages instead. Statutory damages can be a bit problematic though, especially copyright statutory damages which are per work. They tend to overpunish on works such as individual songs; a light infringer can rack up even minimum damages very quickly. In this case, the defendant would have been liable for at least $18,000 once infringement was found. On the other hand, they can underpunish in other situations. Imagine someone making an illegal copy of a pre-release movie reel, but being caught before distributing it. The potential damages the individual could have caused to the success of the movie and the total cost of producing the movie may have been much more than the damages caused by the infringer of a bunch of songs, but the statutory liability is quite low (less than what the defendant in this case was hit with I believe).
My fiancee is a lawyer. I joked I would get off of jury duty by stating that I was a big fan of jury nullification. She told me not to say those words as I would contaminate the entire jury selection pool and probably find my sorry ass found in contempt of court.
"She knew she was screwing some record labels out of money,"
Maybe..potentially there was a loss of money.
This seems like a nitpic, but it is at the heart of copyright law. Yes it's wrong, but the assumption that money is lost is the tool the RIAA, and others, use to abuse the copyright law.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
> "They purposefully picked an amount that had absolutely no relationship, whatsoever, to the financial damages that may have been incurred."
They had a choice in the amount of financial damages she would pay, but any valid amount (the minimum was $750 per infringing song) was well beyond the actual financial damages. So by your logic you could argue that they decided to ruin her life by voting guilty in the first place.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
Well, yeah, she was pretty clearly guilty (e.g. wiping the hard drive after she got in trouble).
She wiped the HD *before* being notified.
I'm thinking about something here.
Usually when you rip a CD, where does the software put it? In "my music", of course. That's the default for music - and most Joe users put their documents in guess where? "My documents"
And when you install kazaa, doesn't it automatically scan for music in "my music"? In fact, I think it scans "my documents", too!
She could easily have alleged ignorance of how the software worked, i.e. she ignored she was sharing it and was only using it for downloading.
I dunno, if the judge is instructing me to decide whether or not someone is guilty or innocent under laws that a duly-elected Congress and President have passed and signed-off on, I'd probably go what he asks. There's not much point to the whole democracy thing if we completely disregard the laws our elected officials put into place.
I dunno what the deal with Slashdot is. It seems like our answer to everything is jury nullification...
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
That is a legal issue. It's going to be up to the appellate court to decide whether or not copyright can be violated by "making available" or if actual distribution must be proved.
The appeal is going to be a lot more interesting than the trial.
Appeals are where precedents get set. If the appellate court rules that the trial court erred in its instruction that "making available" equals copyright violation, then that will blow up the RIAA's current business model.
Copyright governs copying, not distribution. Distribution, or even sufficiently shown intent to distribute, is only used as _evidence_ of copyright infringement when it occurs, and should not be confused with the actual infringement itself (further, distribution magnifies potential damages that can be awarded). The copyright infringement happened when she copied the work in the first place for purposes that were themselves, in the end, not exempt from infringement (ie, putting it up for distribution on a public network, whether or not distribution actually occurred).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It seems to me that her defense really did suck. I mean maybe I'm wrong, but it's pretty damned clear to me she had all her files shared on P2P. They even went through a stage of trying to prove that she'd ripped the music herself and hadn't downloaded them, thus obliterating any possibility in the minds of the jury that it was anyone else who shared those files. Any 'defense' involving 'spoofing', shared-IPs, hacked wireless networks etc might work in a criminal case, but for this, a civil case, there's more than a preponderance of evidence to say she's guilty of copyright infringement. Her defense trying all the angles to try to get her off the hook on technicalities for this really pissed off the jury by the sound of it.
It was pretty clear she was 'liable', in hindsight, defense might have been better off working on a 'Yeah maybe she shared the files, but hardly nobody downloaded them and come on, who hasn't made a mix tape or copied a friend's CD. Is that worth several grand per song?' defense.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
So if she'd bought the songs on iTunes, she'd have had to pay, what? $321.78 (300 for the iPod, and 21.78 for the songs) that's at .99 per song - I'm not sure if other fees or taxes apply, so it might actually be higher.
So the maximum *damage* actually applicable to the RIAA is Zero. (What's that? zero? yes - zero. The RIAA is a not-for-profit organization, who's member companies were the ones who missed out on their share of $21.78 which I'm guessing is less than $12.00, of which the Artists might, if lucky receive $0.02).
So actual damages to the RIAA being zero, and at $9250.00 per song, we have an (divide by zero error) infinite multiplication of damages.
Someone should inform the Judge of this and have the verdict thrown out due to the punishment being inconsistent with the crime.
Especially now that we all (and the Judge as well) know that the reference case was overturned before the RIAA handed it to the judge, and that there actually was NO crime committed, at least not the one she was found guilty of.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Not so fast, he says it violates the copyright owner's exclusive right of distribution because copyright law says only the copyright owner can authorize copies to be made. She allegedly violated their right to authorize, by making the file available and even though no actual distribution was in evidence. For example, if you sell somebody the right to perform a copyrighted work you've violated the actual copyright owner's exclusive right to do this.
Or in other words, if you leave your keys in the car then you must have authorized people to steal it, and if you leave the keys in your friend's car then you must have put somebody up to stealing it since you obviously authorized the theft by leaving the keys in it. Or your Sunday newspaper, hey it's right there on your lawn where anybody could take it so you must be ok with that. Or if you are walking down the street with no underwear on and get 'assaulted' it's not rape because, hey, you made it available that means you authorized it.
Making available != authorizing and this judge is an idiot. That part of the verdict is complete bunk. The part about her violating the copyright sounds right though.
The other effect of jury nullification is also important. William Penn once was brought into court for preaching a Quaker sermon. A jury refused to convict him for his illegal actions. http://www.constitution.org/trials/penn/penn-mead.htm (Actually a fascinating read.) Were the members of this jury delinquent in their duty? Were they criminals? I say they weren't (and the law agrees). I say that, more importantly, they were doing precisely their duty when they refused to convict a man unjustly, based on an unjust law.
You may have the right, but not the duty. Jury nullification is best known for preventing justice in cases where the jury was prejudiced against the victim. Common examples include refusing to convict white men murdering black people, white men murdering Jewish people, white men murdering homosexual people, etc.
In civilised countries, jury nullification is NOT a right.
The idea is that the bankruptcy process should not leave you as a ward of the state,
If I had this judgement against me, I would be a ward of the state. As such, I would have no need of a job. Slave servitude is not my idea of a life. Ward of the state would be the status. Why work if it nets you nothing? It's time to find a friend to move in with so you don't need an income as any income you could possibly get would be taken. It's time for a cardboard sign and a good intersection. Un-reported income is the only income she has for a while.
The truth shall set you free!
They aren't worth bullshitting a court and lying to a jury over, either. She was punished for trying to beat the system. She definitely did something wrong, and she tried to do an end run with a lame defense to an unsympathetic infraction. The jury was smart enough to assign a punishment that fit her offense--the downloading was but one component of that.
You know how your parents always said that lying and cheating only makes things worth? $5000 punishment for a $50 crime is exactly what they were talking about.
Slashdot wants nullification of the jury's finding, not jury nullification. As much as the chant goes on, it remains dependent on a limited and narrow set of circumstances, not to upend the court system because the tiny fraction of men here disagrees with it. Wasn't the point to find the RIAA as evil and despicable? When you look as bad as the bad guys, it doesn't help much.
The jury is - almost by definition - middle aged, middle class, small-C conservative.
They haven't evaded service. They are there by choice, respect for the law, respect for the property of others, is the norm among them.
Jury Nullification in its historical - American - context has been profoundly corrupting. It sets the Klansman free on the proven charge of murder and sends the black man to the gallows on a fraudulent charge of rape.
In the article, it says that she did turn the hard drive over to the RIAA. That act is just stupid, as RIAA can plant there evidence there if they wanted to do so. Also, most computers on dial up and ADSL have dynamic ip, but as most here knows, that means the end user ip changes each time it is connected to the internet. That alone should have been able to cast the whole case in doubt. The jury is a case of people how have no understanding of computers or how the internet works.
RIAA should also be sued for tampering with the evidence by demanding that people hand over there hard drives for them to "inspect" them. By there own specials investigators, but RIAA doesn't have the right to do so. Since they are not a police force of any type.
I would watch her carefully over the next couple of years, I would give it about a 30% chance that this was EXACTLY the desired outcome: RIAA deal with her was go to court with her crappy case just to get a precedent set, safe in the knowledge she would get her house back later on in an under the table deal. I predict she will have some "lucky" windfall of money sometime soon. (perhaps winning a competition on a CD she buys hehe oh the irony and publicity potential)
watch "the money masters" on google video
If not for her blatant disregard for the law, than at least for setting such a terrible precedent that the RIAA can now use as a bat to beat over other defendants in other court cases.
Maybe that was her motivation... to set a precedent in favor of the RIAA.
And having a large damage award only makes the precedent worse.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Contempt charges for exercising a legal right? I'd hate to think that's true, so in the name of diligence I ask: any evidence to support this, as particular to jury nullification? If the claim is simply an extrapolation of the idea that someone willfully misrepresented their position (aka "lied"), and that lying in court amounts to perjury, I could almost see it... but if so, how about stating it as, "I may not have believed in jury nullification when I was being questioned in the jury selection process, but by the end of the trial -- having heard all the facts -- I believed in it plenty."
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Her lawyers are clearly morons though.
She should have gone for a guilty plea, but then majored on mitigation.
The jury should have been asked to consider this:
What matters here isn't the facts, which are clearly against the defendant, but the law, which is clearly against the people.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
How is this possibly insightful? How do you know what the "damage inflicted by her" was? How many people downloaded music from her PC? How many would have downloaded if nothing was done about it? How many dollars does that represent to the music industry?
Look, some people here like to think that the only thing the RIAA should go for in court is the cost of stamping a CD. If we assume a cost of 1 cent per disk, that is not a lot of money, even if the fine covered the cost of stamping 10,000 CDs. However, this argument is just stupid. The cost to the music industry is much greater than that. How much money was paid to Britney (or whoever) to spend time in the studio recording an album? How much money was paid to Britney as the "artist?" How much was paid to the studio engineers; the writers of the songs; musicians; the post-production staff; the caterers; the electricity provider? How much was paid for rent; the building, or use, of the stamping plant; the album advertisement? How much was paid to lawyers? All these costs and more are factored into the price of every CD you buy in the store, period. That's how it works and it's a hell of a lot more than what she was fined!
If you don't like it, don't buy the CD. Boycott the music industry. I boycott Microsoft because I don't like their business practices -- and I don't run Windows on any of my home PCs. You don't have the right to download the music created by the industry you despise and then enjoy it without payment. This is illegal and this is how you "steal" from them. You don't steal CDs, you steal money! Every business on the planet makes things for money. The goal is not to have the nicest stuff to sell, but use the things you sell to make money. If GM could make a business of selling virtual cars in a video game the company would close all of its physical plants and fire all the line workers and just sell to game players. GM has no desire to make cars for the hell of it -- cars are the product GM sells to make money. The same goes for music! The music industry doesn't care if Britney is an "artist," or if her music has deeper meaning, or any other gibberish fans like to whine about. She is simply a means of making money.
Saying that a music downloader is not a customer is not correct, either. The only person who is not a customer is one who does not have possession of the product in question. In this case, you are not a customer if you don't have Britney's music and you do not/cannot listen to it except by hearing it on the radio or watching it on TV. If you downloaded the song and are enjoying it for free, you are indeed a customer -- you just found a better deal than the one offered legally. If you were forced to get your song legally to be able to enjoy it, you would indeed be paying. And this is the message you are sending to everyone, including the music industry -- that you are a thief who likes take other people's labor without paying for it.
Honestly, most people would be honored if someone thought that their thesis or their father's painting was worth copying. (Obviously plagiarism is another issue, almost everyone would object to someone else claiming the painting or the paper was their own). If you cherish your father's painting, why would you be offended that someone else liked his painting too? The only possible harm from such things is economic, since you probably could have sold a copy of your painting/paper.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Jury nullification is best known for preventing justice in cases where the jury was prejudiced against the victim. Common examples include refusing to convict white men murdering black people, white men murdering Jewish people, white men murdering homosexual people, etc.
That isn't really Jury Nullification... eg, the Jury isn't saying that the law against murder is invalid. That's just inability to select a fair jury in an environment where overt racism is systemic in a given population. But if the racism is that systemic, the issue of Jury Nullification is moot, since the sheriff, DA, judge, etc. are probably just as racist, and chances are the case would never go to trial in the first place.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
You can always get 12 clueless idiots. Or 12 with a vengeance.
Sounds like they got at least one this time.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Quite a bit has changed in the past 200 years. Judges have whittled away that power as much as possible so that now a judge can override a jury verdict on a point of law and if a judge learns that a juror is deciding based on his disagreement with the law and not the facts of the case, he can dismiss the juror.