DoJ Sides With RIAA On Damages

Alberto G writes "As Jammie Thomas appeals the $222,000 copyright infringement verdict against her, the Department of Justice has weighed in on a central facet of her appeal: whether the $9,250-per-song damages were unconstitutionally excessive and violated the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. The DoJ says that there's nothing wrong with the figure the jury arrived at: '[G]iven the findings of copyright infringement in this case, the damages awarded under the Copyright Act's statutory damages provision did not violate the Due Process Clause; they were not "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense or obviously unreasonable."' The DoJ also appears to buy into the RIAA's argument that making a file available on a P2P network constitutes copyright infringement. 'It's also impossible for the true damages to be calculated, according to the brief, because it's unknown how many other users accessed the files in the KaZaA share in question and committed further acts of copyright infringement.'"

Comments

Obligatory "Mods on Crack" Post

[Jim_Callahan]

Not bagging your position here, because while it's one that I don't agree with I can see how, having not had personal experience with the vast majority of historical presidents and being presented with the continual illusion that the office of the presidency is solely responsible for not only foreign but domestic policy, you might land at that conclusion. My puzzlement stems from the "insightful" rating. I mean, really, this is a fairly widely held opinion and probably will be until the new guy starts screwing things up, just like with Clinton. And it's not exactly gleaned from a gaze which penetrates into the obscure complexities of politics and emerges triumphant bearing a gleaming truth which sloughs off years of misconceptions in the minds of the onlookers. And, finally, valid as generic expression of outrage and 'my political opponent eats babies' may be to the grandfather comment, it doesn't really have anything to do with anything in the more general sense, especially in context of this thread. In short, I'm slowly being convinced that the "mods on crack" cliche is less an amusing hyperbole and more a literal truth. (If this comment gets modded up it will be just as silly, by the way.)