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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.