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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."
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
And to think this same person creates all the trouble tickets when their computer isn't plugged in.
I'd rather the judge flip a coin.
I call heads.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For what it's worth, I was recently picked to be on a jury in a (totally unrelated) criminal case, and the judge's instructions to us were very specific that it was our job as jury to decide what the facts of the case were, but that it was not our job to decide what the law said or whether the law was fair or not. I'd guess this jury received some similar instructions.
(I know that, historically, some juries have refused to find a defendant guilty when they thought the punishment excessive for the crime or didn't agree with the law. I'm just throwing this out there because I suspect it'll be relevant to some of the posts to follow.)
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.
It's sort of the perfect target for the RIAA. Somebody was caught and then stubbornly played dumb, ignoring the possible repercussions. The result is exactly what they wanted - big headlines to scare the general file-sharing public. The money reward is pocket change.
Meanwhile, will it really deter piracy? No. Does the punishment fit the crime? No. They can see all that money slipping away and there's not a thing they can do about it.
No, they decided to turn her life upside down and bankrupt her over lying to a jury. The MP3 collection was just the vehicle.
Random and weird software I've written.
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.
It's interesting that a judge would have to recuse himself if he was unqualified to understand the evidence being presented, but a member of the jury isn't.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"I think she thought a jury from Duluth would be naive."
Way to disprove that by fining a stupid Kazaa user a quarter of a million dollars.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
"I think she thought a jury from Duluth would be naïve. We're not that stupid up here" implies that Duluth juries are stupid... just not *that* stupid.
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
"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
Link
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
The obvious conclusion is that if you want to avoid bankruptcy, don't illegally share songs on Kazaa. I don't see what's so hard about that.
let's assume that the woman DID share the files.
OK, let's assume there were 50 to 100 total downloads.
100 downloads, at 0.99 cents a piece (let's be realistic here), equal = 100 dollars!
So, what's the basis to affirm that she should pay $222,000 for 24 songs? This is where the RIAA's case is illogical. They assume that the downloaders will distribute and that this will cause them many losses. But that's THE DOWNLOADERS' FAULT, not hers.
They're making her responsible for what EVERY DOWNLOADER DID. Instead of downloading from her they could have bought a CD (even pirated!) or downloaded from someone else.
And this is where "making available" doesn't equal massive infringement. The fines MUST BE PROPORTIONAL TO THE NUMBER OF DOWNLOADS.
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.
IANAL, but I have served on several juries, both criminal and civil.
Its obvious from reading some of the jackass comments on here that most of you have a) never served on a jury, and b) have no concept of what a jury does.
Contrary to what a bunch of people here seem to think, a jury does NOT have the option of totally ignoring the law. A jury has only two choices...does the evidence support the plaintiff/prosecution (civil trial/criminal trial) by a preponderance of the evidence/beyond a reasonable doubt (again, civil trial/criminal trial), or does it not. It all boils down to those two choices, and only those two choices. A ruling of "she might have broken a law but the law sucks so we find in her favor/innocent" (again, civil/criminal) is not allowable in most states, and I'd be surprised if its allowable in any.
In the eyes of this jury, not only was she at fault, she blatantly lied to the jury (in their opinion). So not only did they agree with the prosecution that by a preponderance of the evidence she did violate copyright law, they whacked her for thinking they were stupid.
Had I been on this jury and been presented with the same evidence that we've seen in the press, I'd have voted for the plaintiffs also. I'm not sure I would have gone so high on the fine, but I for damned sure would not have let her off at the bottom of the scale either.
Not only was she stupid to not settle beforehand, she's stupid for appealing. What her boneheaded lawyer should now be doing is trying to find out if the record companies would settle for a smaller amount that they have reasonable amount of being able to collect. And maybe now she'll make sure she acquires her music legally, and does not make it available for mass distribution to others...but I doubt she's that smart.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
This case brings up more questions than it does answers, unfortunately. For one, it brings up long standing technical questions. First and foremost: Any computer security expert in the IT field knows not to trust IP addresses as a valid form of authentication. However, it is used in a lot of cases such as: Forum security, IRC security, and so forth. But this doesn't exclude the fact that when you accept a VPN connection you just don't automatically assume it's from who they say they are. So reasonably speaking in the IT field this is not a valid form of identification. We've built entire infrastructures around security and most of them aren't based on IP. However, on a fully controlled environment an IP address is a valid way to identify a person. That is, if you work as an IT administrator and you're seeing gay porn downloaded to a computer used by an executive, it's reasonable to assume that it's him who's doing it. The big question is: Should it have been let to slide because of this? True security experts know that you need more layers than just an IP address, but at the same time those of us who have used the internet for a long time can reasonably assume when a person is a person? In this case, it's unreasonable to assume that someone was "spoofing" her IP. She could have been part of a botnet, but this makes things more hairy. My solution to this: Release a bot to the internet that connections to p2p networks and distributes files. Make it a huge worm. Such cases like this could never go to trial and would grind the RIAA's arguments in the dust. Oh, and the reason why they were able to extort so much money--the RIAA approached it from a distribution end, not from a downloader end. If they approached it as saying she just "downloaded" the music, it's reasonable to assume the jury would have come up with a more realistic figure. But since it was approached from a standpoint that she was a distributor and not just a downloader, it becomes more expensive.
... [$]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
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.
In Soviet Russia, the fines are... actually reasonable?
RTFA before you comment. The juror quoted was one Michael Hegg. Also, the fairness of a jury's awarding of damages is one of opinion, not intellect. See: punitive damages.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
in light of the 10 year anniversary of /. and a bunch of people completely pissed off at the RIAA agenda, someone could easily setup a paypal donation account or something of the sort and we could see if /. user base really cares about a woman who's life has been ruined by the RIAA. That would make sense, be easy, help someone who thousands of people find has received injustice, piss RIAA off, and perhaps grab headlines around the globe.
She may be guilty of sharing the songs, she may owe SOMETHING, but if so many people can plainly see the injustice, then how come no one helps another citizen? Corporations and government have already won, good game.
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?
I think we can all see the problem here. Anyone in the US who hasn't been on the internet by 2008, well, they have no clue what the hell they're talking about. Also this guy calls her a "liar", while she was off by a year in terms of when she had the HD replaced, she had it replaced *before* the RIAA notified her and the guy who replaced it testified that it was really, honestly broken.
Apparently, there was only one juror who held out for reasonable damages (the $750 minimum) and the $9,250 per song was a compromise.
Naïve? No. Ignorant? Yes.
At least she plans to appeal.
I've been around Slashdot for quite awhile. Based on what I've read, I would have found her liable. Remember, the standard of proof is "more likely than not" in a civil trial. And yes, most likely this woman distributed the tracks they say she did, in violation of copyright laws.
My intimate knowledge of how software "REALLY works" wouldn't really have much to do with this decision. Sure - maybe her IP address or MAC address were spoofed. It's possible, but unlikely, given all of the evidence supplied.
It depends on what you want to focus on. It'd be a pretty hard sell to explain to 11 people who have at best a passing familiarity with computers how spoofing and viruses introduce an element of doubt into who has what IP address on a filesharing network. It'd be easier to wonder aloud whether $750/song ($18,000) wouldn't be more than enough deterrent to casual downloading on the defendant's behalf. And it'd probably be easiest to speculate that if there are millions of people on P2P networks at any given point the odds are pretty good that even a steelworker's kids might find their way into some pretty major financial damages on the family computer without his knowledge until it's too late. I think it's easier to change minds when the argument you put forward is in terms that others can understand, process, and judge based on what they know, so if it comes down to explaining technology against trying to work out how long it'd take anybody in the room to pay off $222,000, I'd definitely try the latter approach.
In a federal civil trial the verdict must be unanimous unless both sides agree to a non-unanimous verdict; basically, if you're sufficiently motivated you can stick to your own decision and force a new trial (likely after a few days of being sent back in the little room by the judge and getting 11 people + most of the courtroom frustrated with you.) So -- depending on the Slashdotter -- the result could have been significantly different, but as it depends on either employing persuasive communication techniques or sacrificing personal comfort for the greater good... well, I don't know that I'd put money on it.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
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.
a) That it was a different hard drive. Maybe the shared folder didn't exist on the drive she turned over? But wouldn't her assertion that she was spoofed have made any dent in the credibility of the so called expert witnesses presented by the RIAA?
b) There are enough loopholes that you could prove that she didn't have the monitored IP address since almost all broadband ISP's do two things. First your IP address cycles regularly. Second the logs only go back for so many days. So the proof is hard to come by.
c) The number of open wireless networks near me is astounding. Were I to share files I'd most definitely be using someone elses network and not mine. Therefore spoofing made easy.
Attorneys aren't the brightest bulbs to begin with. In RI Attorney Brian Cuynha cannot sue the foam manufacturers in re the Station Fire because he forgot to notify them that he was filing suit against them. There is an electronic filing system and he doesn't know how to use it.
And jurors, were I to be dragged into court on an RIAA charge I'd want a true jury of my peers. My peers being I.T. people who know the difference.
If the RIAA cared about her at all they wouldn't have tried to go for a per mp3 infringement ruling. They could have argued it was just one,or gone for some other measure. Note that the RIAA did not actually want this court case, but since she wanted it, well, they decided to slap her down hard.
They did try to be nice, in their warped world view, by asking for their original small fine that is piddling in the face of this court ordered fine. I wonder at her intelligence to be honest, she was caught stealing, whatever the nature. They said uploading, but she downloaded too, both aren't especially wise. The best course of action would have been to admit it, pay the small settlement amount and move on. She did bring this upon herself.
I am distressed more by the way the government appeared to applaud the destruction of her life in this manner.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
The key line: "I think she thought a jury from Duluth would be naïve. We're not that stupid up here."
She was from out of town.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
There's a $750 minimum?? WTF? Where did that come from? Is that for anything? It seems pretty lucrative.
Ok, this post is copyright me.
Now I just wait until somebody copies it without my permission. That's a minimum $750 bucks, dude! Hand it over.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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.
I would just like to point out that my peers are technically literate and know a little something about justice (and jury nullification).
I am not actually guaranteed a trial by my "peers," but rather by the lowest common denominator of whatever turns up in a completely random sample. Anyone who is intelligent enough to think critically about the situation will be the first pass of the opposing lawyer.
The idea is nice in theory, but falls down in practice.
Aside: this is a fine example of how one person's stupidity makes her dangerous to those around her. Choosing ignorance for bliss is not simply a self-indulgent lifestyle preference, it is also directly harmful to others. I don't look down on stupid people because I am arrogant, but because they are a threat to me.
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.