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Jammie Appeals, Citing "Excessive" Damages
Peerless writes "Capitol v. Thomas defendant Jammie Thomas has officially appealed the RIAA's $222,000 copyright infringement award. She is seeking a retrial to determine the RIAA's actual damages, arguing that the jury's award was 'unconstitutionally excessive': 'Thomas would like to see the record companies forced to prove their actual damages due to downloading, a figure that Sony-BMG litigation head Jennifer Pariser testified that her company "had not stopped to calculate." In her motion, Thomas argues that the labels are contending that their actual damages are in the neighborhood of $20. Barring a new trial over the issue of damages, Thomas would like to see the reward knocked down three significant digits — from $222,000 to $151.20.'"
Can someone please explain to a European, what this compulsive need to refer to the constitution in seemingly all matters relating to the law is all about?
I'll be the first one to agree that these damages are "ridiculously excessive" or "fabricated", but what does this have to do with the constitution? Is it just a cultural thing?
.: Max Romantschuk
Agreed. At the absolute most the RIAA should have to prove how many people actually downloaded from her and then multiply that with the retail cost of the music. That's an absolute most (a better way would be to prove the people who downloaded from her would otherwise buy the actual song if they couldn't illegally download it. Given the amount of digital piracy that goes on its quite impossible for most to buy all of what they illegally pirate).
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Well, given a few assumptions, I don't think it's unreasonable.
1) Actual damages are ~$20.
2) Damages for torts should be divided by the probability of being caught.
3) Virtually no one gets prosecuted, let alone convicted, of filesharing.
4) Copyright law should be enforced.
2) is based on the reasoning that those who commit torts should bear the costs of their wrongdoing rather than innocent third parties. In order to make this happen, you have to shift the costs for crimes for which no one's caught, to those who are caught, which means dividing damages by the fraction of crimes they catch someone for. (Technically, the recovery rate, but same diff.)
(And yes, for most people here, 4 is questionable, but for most Americans, and for the jury in this case, it's not.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Imagine you are in the dark ages and you are summoned for not having paid tithe to the local church.
The church complains that not only they are entitled to it by divine right, but also that it's not fair you benefit from the innumerable and priceless services they provide to the community (such as hunting for heretics) without contributing what they ask for.
Knowing that the penalty may range from outrageous fines to beheading even (and especially) when confessing, what would you say when asked whether you did in fact pay your tithe?
Now replace "dark ages" with "ip dark ages".
Your step 2 is unreasonable. Causing a miniscule amount of harm is still a miniscule amount of harm, even if, say, the police choose seldom to investigate. (perhaps /BECAUSE/ the harm done is miniscule)
If you steal a single apple from your neighbour, it's not reasonable to argue that the risk of being convicted after having stolen a single apple from a neighbour is 1:1000000, so despite the apple being worth $0.20, you should be fined $200000. It's an unconstitutional excess to put someone in debt for life for the crime of stealing a single apple.
A different problem is that when a huge part of the population is guilty of breaking a certain law, but the risk of being investigated are very low, and punishment very high, this has the effect of giving whomever decides who to investigate the power to essentially punish people at will.
Politicians should make law. Police should investigate. Courts should convict. (or not) That's the way it's supposed to work. With filesharing it works more similar to this:
Politicians make a law, that a huge part of the population breaks regularily.
Police essentially never investigates anyone for breaking it.
Private companies are free to, according to their own criteria, decide who to investigate.
Courts tend to convict (not surprising, since most people are guilty)
This puts a -HUGE- amount of power in the hands of those private companies. I'd guess in a average group of college-students, that company is, currently, free to bankrupt for life anyone they chose to. Well, not -EVERYONE- but close enough. (certainly 90%)
tjjfv
http://tjjfv.com
Yes, the article summary used the term incorrectly, but no, 151.20 does not have more significant digits than 222,000 in this case. Both are exact numbers, are not rounded in any way, and so can be thought to have an inifinite number of significant digits.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
For the longest time, I've thought that there should be two punishment scales for copyright infringement. Let's call the first "professional infringement." This would involve infringement with a profit motive. An example of this would be the people who sell copies of DVDs on street corners. These people would face the fines currently imposed for copyright infringement.
The second type would be "household infringement." This would involve infringement via a P2P network or other type that didn't involve attempts to make a profit. This type of infringement would take the number of files infringed, multiply them by the market cost per file, and then multiply that number by 100 (to get a "punishment" number that is worse than simply buying the songs outright).
In the case of Jammie Thomas, she was found guilty of infringing 24 songs. Since she wasn't attempting to make a profit, she would fall under household infringement and would be charged 24 * 0.99 (the cost of the songs on iTunes) * 100, or $2,376. This is more than the $150+ that she's looking for, yet a lot less than the $222,000 that she was originally fined for. A $2,000+ verdict isn't going to financially ruin most people, but it will also be enough of a significant amount for most people that it would serve as a deterrent against future incidents.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Those large damage awards are for punitive damages. They are supposed to punish the offending party. The financial punishment has to be scaled by the ability of the offending party to pay. If you have gross revenues of 2 billion GBP, like EMI had last year, then a 100 million GBP judgment against you is less than 5% of your gross income. Conversely, Jamie just got slapped with a judgment worth several times her gross income. Which is fair?