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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.'"
151.20 actually has more significant digits than 222,000. (Perhaps "orders of magnitude" was the term peerless wanted?)
But who cares, when you're coming up with a cutesy way of saying something, right? (Make sure to use the terms "north of" and "south of" when comparing numerical values.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
This may be the first intelligent thing this women has done in this case. I mean she was obviously guilty, lied in an attempt to cover it up, and miserably failed to prove anything to the contrary at trial.
This position on the other hand is very well reasoned. $200k+ is completely outrageous damages even assuming a large number of people downloaded the material she made available. Hopefully there will be a judgement against this damage award that will call attention to how excessively high the statutory damages are, and might even overturn that part of the law.
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."
If they include legal fees, and what they spend tracking down file sharers, it just might be more than she has to pay.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
She is seeking a retrial to determine the RIAA's actual damage
Afterwards, they'll attempt an inquiry to determine the RIAA's major malfunction.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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
IANAL but I don't think the motion for retrial is not the same as an appeal with the appeals courts. This is a motion with the presiding judge of the trial for him to set aside the results of the trial and order a retrial based on the jury award being more then ten times the actual losses to the RIAA. The RIAA of course will file a counter motion and the judge will decide, possibly after hearing arguements again from both sides. If the motion fails then her lawyer will appeal the case. If the motion succeeds then its possible that the RIAA might try to withdraw the case rather then risk setting a precedent of 70 cents a song damages.
Any real lawyers reading this please comment.
1. Fight the RIAA, go for the jury trial
::cough cough:: is against our Constitution in America.
2. Hold your ace close and play the first round to lose
3. ???
4. Less PROFIT for the RIAA!
And now we know that #3 is:
Appeal $220k reward on Constitutional grounds! BRILLIANT!
Seriously! There is at least one juror who has already opened his mouth to the press and said something to the effect of "the punishment is so high because we want to send a message that this is a bad thing to do... mmmmKay..." Which...
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
The JURY pulled the figure out of their collective asses.
The plaintiffs do not set the damages that are awarded to themselves. The judge/jury does that.
Actually, the correct Latin is "vira" (it's one of those odd neuter words that look masculine at first glance) but as stated by another responder, the correct English is "viruses."
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
I'm going to echo the AC response to this posting, and re-emphasis an unanswered question I've posted on earlier threads about Jammie:
Is this the RIAA you are talking about, or is this the supposed pirates?
Or more specific and to the point, assuming either compensatory claim is made (either the $200,000 fine or a much reduced $200 fine) will any of the actual musicians who produced the music Jammie is alleged to have offered to be copied receive even a single penny from the settlement? Does the RIAA even have an accounting mechanism to determine who should get the money, presuming that Jammie is being convicted of a copyright violation of several explicit songs that can be named by both title and artist, including song writer and performer?
If the RIAA is truly acting as an agent for and in behalf of these musicians and seeking compensation directly for them in terms of violating the copyright of these genuine artists, I would completely agree with your statement you have made. I do not condone Jammie, but at the same time I question the legal standing of the RIAA, who only represents the record labels... and even that indirectly. A class-action lawsuit (which this court case seems to fit the rough definition of one... the class being defined as the musicians whose music was distributed illegally by Jammie) in any other industry would be considering these settlement terms to be unconscionable and unconstitutional just from the standpoint that those "harmed" have not been fairly compensated at all. It would be like an ACLU lawsuit where the lawyers kept 100% of the settlement.
All this said, there should be some mechanism in place where an ordinary musician can actually make some kind of financial compensation for electronic distribution of their music. From nearly everything I've read regarding the current state of the music industry, this mechanism simply is not in place at all, so there is little incentive for new and emerging musicians to really care about the RIAA cartel. By far the worst thing a new musician can do is sign a contract with an RIAA company, except for the hope that you can eventually hit the major leagues of the top musicians. But don't expect the label to assist you in that journey.
American Idol, Pop Idol, and other similar music competition are a symptom of an industry falling apart: The system is so rigid and unable to be able to find new talent that they have to go through gimicks like a national talent search. For every Ruben Stoddard and Kelly Clarkston that has been found by the major labels, hundreds of otherwise good musicians were passed over and thrown overboard, many of whom could have earned a professional wage to perform music, even if it wasn't necessarily living life as millionaires. It is this level of talent that the current RIAA system has completely failed.
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".
The U.S. Constitution doesn't grant rights, the rights are "unalienable". The "Bill of Rights" portion of the Constitution prohibits the government from violating those rights.
Note how everything is expressed in negatives, i.e. "shall not be infringed".
Guess her first thought then was "I shouldn't have to pay $3,000 when I only uploaded it to 5 people." Still sounds reasonable to me.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Even if someone is as guilty as sin then they deserve justice and a "punishment" that is proportionate to the "crime" ( whether or not "crime", "punishment" or "guilty" are appropriate words in a copyright case, charging a private individual a six-figure sum sounds like a "punishment" to me). "Waive your right to a fair trial and pay us $2000 now, or enjoy your right to a trial and risk us taking your house" is not justice, it is a license to extort.
If a civil court feels that a defendant has lied, it should bring a criminal charge of perjury and let a criminal court decide the punishment. It should not be the place of a civil court to punish someone, without trial, for a criminal offence ramping up the so-called "damages".
If a civil court feels that a defendant has wasted their time and the plaintiff's money by fighting bringing a meritless case, they should add to the reasonable and audit-able damages, some or all of the reasonable and audit-able costs of the case (...bearing in mind that the defendant already has their own costs and that a large, corporate plaintiff may have lawyers on staff, and that its not unreasonable for the main beneficiaries of artificial laws like copyright to bear some of the cost of enforcement ). They should not leave it to a jury to pull some figure out of a hat and call it "damages".
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Let's see... 24 songs with an average of 5 megabytes each song...
That's 24*5*1024*0.002 cents, which is 245.76 cents or US$2.46. What about that?
So say we all
it's a motion to set aside the verdict, which is quite different than an appeal.
An appeal is to a higher court.
This is a motion directed toward the trial court.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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.
Photoshop is a good example.
This product is so expensive that I am willing to bet that 90% of copies are unlicensed.
Now, if I were a professional photographer, or graphic artist, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to purchase a copy of Photoshop. (In fact, when I had access to a reasonably priced version, I did purchase it)
Ignoring music for a moment. This is a significant problem in the software industry. They have set the price so high that I'm certain that they expect, and potentially even encourage limited piracy to increase their market saturation.
In cases like that, can they even argue that there is a monetary loss? I suppose that is why set penalties are in place.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
In the real world you have been caught uploading files to 10 million of your closest friends on the P2P nets. Music that sells at $1 a track through iTunes. The $20 video, the $50 video game.
Broadband penetration in the U.S. is about 40%. The service costs $20 to $50 a month. The file sharer on any scale will have a mid-line system or better - with hundreds or thousands of gigabytes of storage.
To the civil jury you don't look like a senior on a starvation budget. You look like a petty thief and a liar, a white collar criminal who sees his free media fix as a middle class entitlement.
The civil jury isn't a traffic court, it doesn't issue fines payable to the state. That is not its job.
The civil jury compensates the injured party. It awards punitive damages when the public interest demands it.
It can be very comfortable awarding damages based on a rigorous statutory formula that treats the uploader as an unlicensed wholesaler whose total distribution has no known or knowable limits.
The precision of the number $220,000 is far beyond 6 significant digits. It is exact.
Just as if you had a physics equation s = 1/2 * a * t
you don't have a single digit of precision from the 1 or the two, those are exact and don't degrade precision at all.
There are all sorts of things that would go wrong if you started applying precision techniques to integers of all things. After you learn the formulas, you people need to learn what they mean.
Now, maybe if someone counted the money and you had a measurement of $220k, that might have 2 significant digits. But if you define an amount of money as $220k at that number, it is that number, not a millionth of a penny more or less.
Simply put, try paying the IRS a $10,000 tax bill with less than $10k and see exactly how precise $10,000 is.
Of course what the poster really did mean was "orders of magnitude".
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You forgot to close your tag.
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I think you mean "decimal point"<full stop
There you go. Now it validates!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Pompous much? If you get pulled over for going 5 mph over the speed limit, wouldn't you think a $3,000 fine is a bit much? How about when you go to trial and it gets bumped up to $220,000? Get a sense of proportion, man.