RIAA Says "Wanna Fight? It'll Cost You!"

jeiler writes "Ars has the details on an RIAA strategy to double the cost of settling copyright infringement suits for students who try to quash the group's subpoenas in court. In a nutshell: settle early, pay $3,000; try to quash the subpoena and the settlement cost rises to $8,000."

Comments

Re:Really... Really?

[ericbg05]

How is this not racketeering and extortion? I mean, c'mon... It's not either of those things, I'm afraid.

My girlfriend IAL; she says this particular practice of the RIAA is perfectly legal. A party to a civil litigation can alter the settlement terms basically however they want, whenever they want (subject to public policy, of course: RIAA can't alter the terms to include the forfeit of your firstborn child or whatever). A settlement is just a contract, after all.

This makes sense, so the argument goes, because a party's costs for litigating a particular case become higher and higher as the case progresses. So, the settlement costs must increase concordantly.

It's complicated

[Sycraft-fu]

So yes, copyright infringement can be criminal. However, the RIAA's evidence is extremely weak, not nearly enough for a criminal case. What's more, not all infringement is criminal, some is civil. Same sort of thing with traffic tickets. Some can be criminal, but many are not. If you get a simple speeding ticket, that's not a criminal ticket, it's a civil one.

Now also many crimes can have a civil component as well. Take a hypothetical situation: Suppose you are the owner of Evil Corp, and my wife works for you. Because you are evil, you don't give two shits about your employees and knowingly put my wife in a very dangerous situation. This causes her death. You end up getting charged with reckless endangerment and plead to manslaughter. Ok, great, however I'm still now a single parent trying to raise kids. Something that might help is some of the vast amount of money Evil Corp has made. So I file a civil suit against you for wrongfully causing her death. I win this, and thus get a large portion of your money.

OJ Simpson had something similar happen. He was acquitted of first degree murder charges. However he lost a civil suit charging him with causing wrongful death.

There's good reason for the system to work like it does, and to have civil and criminal components to a given case. However the RIAA is abusing it. They are trying to use civil suits to be able to go after people on extremely shaky, and often outright incorrect, evidence.

It is certainly a loophole that needs closing, but you have to be careful. While the civil system does allow for things like this, it also gives you the ability to go after people like the hypothetical Evil Corp, and does so even if the DA refuses to bring criminal charges.

Re:It's complicated

[swillden]

If you get a simple speeding ticket, that's not a criminal ticket, it's a civil one.

Uhhh, this is completely wrong.

Civil cases are about injury, where one party injures another and the injured party sues for relief. Copyright law is mostly a civil issue (e.g. you created illegal copies of my recording, and damaged my ability to make money with it), though the legislature has recently added some criminal provisions in the last few decades.

Crimes are about protecting public interests. All moving violations are part of the criminal code of your state; they're laws passed to restrict certain driving behaviors in the interest of highway safety. Traffic court is generally a little different from other criminal court, in the interest of efficiency, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a criminal court.

The difference between traffic violations and most other crimes is that most traffic violations are treated as minor crimes. Crimes fall into one of three categories: infractions, misdemeanors and felonies. Most states also define various grades within those categories. Most traffic violations are infractions, which means that you cannot go to jail for them. However, there are some more serious traffic crimes which are misdemeanors, which can carry jail time, and even felonies, which can carry a lot of jail time and remove other privileges. Reckless driving is a misdemeanor, for example.

Re:It's complicated

[Free_Meson]

Isn't the whole problem that the damages sought in the civil suit are 'punitive', ie they are meant to punish the accused rather than to seek just compensation for the damage done by the infringement (which is minimal for any "non-career pirate")? And isn't it really strange that anything beyond just compensation is tried under civil suit rules?

The damages in these copyright infringement cases are not punitive. They are statutory. The copyright lobby had congress incorporate into statute the damages recoverable for copyright infringement, so that plaintiffs in copyright cases need not prove damages if they seek a judgment within the range of the copyright statute. There's an economic justification for such damages (they catch 10% of the infringers and charge them 10x, or the like) because enforcement is expensive and each person they catch would likely not be worth suing for provable damages.

Of course it's gotten much easier to catch infringers and the damages haven't been revised downwards, so the damages being awarded are nonsensical.

Punitive damages are generally used to punish defendants who knowingly choose to act negligently/wrongfully. For example, punitive damages would be applied when a defendant knowingly poisons some town's water supply because the cost of dealing with the lawsuits will be less than the cost of proper disposal of the poison. Most punitive damages awards are dramatically reduced or eliminated on appeal and in many jurisdictions the nominal plaintiff only gets a small cut (the rest going to the state). They are a trivial part of our civil litigation system that gets a lot of press because the press doesn't understand their function and ignores what happens on appeal.

Re:RIAA!

[Pop69]

They already have in the UK

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7029892.stm