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RIAA Loses $222K Verdict
jriding writes "The $222,000 verdict against Jammy Thomas for copyright infringement by P2P is no more. US District Court Judge Michael Davis dismissed the verdict, saying it was based on the faulty 'making available' theory of distribution."
About time the RIAA loses a big case like this, and have the public know about it. Bunch of crooks...
Veni, Vidi, Velcro!
What a nice day today...RIAA loses, DOJ opposes DOJ Copyright Oversight. What's next? Bush finally gets impeached?
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Read literally, I suppose this means a $222K verdict is roaming the countryside, looking for someone to ... adopt it?
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Thomas will face a new trial, in which the RIAA will have to prove actual distribution.
It's in the first fucking paragraph of the article!
Fnord.
They can, but only before the next full moon. If they fail to file before that time their lawyers will have to return to hell until the next equinox..
I have nothing compelling to say
and get them for attorney's fees and mental anguish.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The RIAA didn't lose. The judge declared a mistrial. If both sides cannot come to a settlement, there will be a new trial. The judge determined he made an error in the jury instructions. Specifically in #15, he told them that making a song available could be considered as copyright infringement. On another note, he did call the $222K reward excessive. So even if Jammie Thomas loses the next trial, it will be unlikely she will have to face such a large damage award.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
And Judge Davis went further, "implor[ing] Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer-to-peer network cases..."
How many people want to guess that "Copyright reform" turns draconian?
I regret that I only have one mod point to give per post.
Then you still lose.
Not so much; they will try her again, but they have to prove actual distribution. Note that the judge also lowered the bar for actual distribution, in a sense. Our pet theory of MediaSentry acting as an agent of the RIAA, and therefore doesn't constitute distribution, was also explicitly discarded:
âoedistribution to an investigator, such as MediaSentry, can constitute unauthorized distribution.â
Fnord.
One point brought up in the articles is that it's possible the MediaSentry downloads are unauthorized copies, which seems to be necessary since if the RIAA authorizes the copy, then technically they're not infringing copyright and hence have to basis for a lawsuit.
However, if the copies by MediaSentry are not authorized, then by not prosecuting MediaSentry for illicit downloads, aren't they undermining their own case by not going after every case of infringement?
Just idle thoughts...
If she's charged at the market rate of $0.99 per song, she'll owe the music companies $24.00 plus tax.
Let her pay it and be done over with.
slashdot rocks
Thomas will face a new trial, in which the RIAA will have to prove actual distribution.
It's in the first fucking paragraph of the article!
There's an article?
Not so fast here with the bubbly. This judge still says that copyright infringement can be shown by "circumstantial evidence", rather than the strict proof of the details of actual infringement required by the law and court decisions. And that (in another related case) downloads by MediaSentry count as infringement even thought MediaSentry is a paid agent of the copyright holder and the law has long held that a copyright owner cannot infringe their own copyrights. While all this is good news, it is yet to be great news.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Really if you want to stop the RIAA you need to start posting hate on the companies that support it. Once you start to hurt their brands and people stop buying their products, because of the negative press, and the RIAA will cease to exist. Everyone hates the RIAA, but no one hates those who fund it yet. So hate on these companies SONY WARNER EMI UNIVERSAL ...
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/not-for-publica.html
Still, Judge Davis' decision does not derail the RIAA's case against Thomas on retrial or any other pending or future case. Davis ruled that the downloads from Thomas' open share folder that RIAA investigators made, 24 in all, "can form the basis of an infringment claim."
Or how about http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/25/jammie_thomas_again/
The judge in Jammie Thomas' challenge to her landmark $220,000 fine for sharing music over KaZaa has declared a mistrial, forcing yet another court case.
I don't expect Joe Blo's blog to get this right, but I do expect ZDNet and Slashdot to.
Please help metamoderate.
AFAIK (IANAL) a mistrial means that the same evidence and INTENT is used in the prosecution of the defendant. such as:
"Thomas will face a new trial, in which the RIAA will have to prove actual distribution." (Direct from TFA)
But it is interesting to note that:
"The decision means the RIAA now has zero wins at trial, Wired notes." (from TFA)
So far, it seems that the RIAA is nothing more than a paper tiger, and there is much ado about the nothing that is the reporting of all this hoopla.
I do seem to remember (can't cite the examples at the moment) some headlines concerning individuals being brought to trial that had unbeliveable judgements levied at them for "copyright infringement", but no ACTUAL culpability against the plaintiff.
Right, still it seems "unsporting", as the British might say, about trying her again. I hope that the RIAA doesn't, but that is probably to much to expect from such an ethically bankrupt organization.
Those pesky pirates stole our verdict using P2P!
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
isn't it awesome to be part of the RIAA though? you get all this money from the record companies and get to use it without any recouping of costs. all they do is spend spend spend. track record for income is ...zilch.
Bzzzzzzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing.
From the article:
One important tidbit, little noticed yet, pointed out by Excess Copyright: "distribution to an investigator, such as MediaSentry, can constitute unauthorized distribution."
Yup, first and only... though she'll still end up guilty I bet. The only thing this does is require the RIAA to prove distribution for the monetary value of the punishment, not absolve her and require them to prove anything to get a guilty verdict (at least that's what I gather from RTFA.)
The word is CAN constitute, not DOES constitute. This is what the next trial will most likely be about.
Granted, most likely it will count because if you sell drugs to a cop you still go to jail. What might still win the case is that mediasentry is NOT a cop.
Even if mediasentry is allowed to perform the actions of a sworn in police officer, they would still have to proof there method of detection is accurate.
Further more, if it counts as distribution, so what? They got proof you uploaded it to one person. Big deal. 1 dollar per song, you need to have pretty big share going on to have to worry about that fine.
Because the really big thing in this judgement is the judge saying that the damages were excessive. That is going to hurt the RIAA the most. This judge EVEN if the case had been been proven would most likely still have lowered the damages. That could seriously hurt the RIAA. Why settle for a couple thousand when the fine is going to be little more? And if the settlement is going to be a couple hundred, how are they going to pay their lawyers?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It is (sometimes) entrapment if the police do it. It's not entrapment if people who are not the police nor working on behalf of the police do it.
A whole new trial is what I get from RTFA.
From the judgement:
Entrapment is only when the police cause a crime to happen where there wouldn't be one. If a cop comes up to a drug dealer and bought drugs from them, that is not entrapment. If a cop comes up to someone who isn't a drug dealer and pesters them to get drugs for them and they do, that is entrapment.
I'll concede that there will be a new trial, I misread it.
However, there will still probably be a guilty verdict at the end... The judge chimed in saying that distribution to an investigator such as MediaSentry still provides basis for claims. If they can prove that then don't they essentially have the verdict?
I too would like a lot of media attention but let's be realistic. With all that is happening now, they will bury news of it to where you will be forced to hunt for it. It's important news, but it will not get much public attention. In this respect, the RIAA is lucky because the timing is good for them. They may have lost a battle but the war will still continue.
What's an article? We are all slashdot readers here.
1. Paying major media companies != Paying artists
2. Going after individual infringers != Throwing out lawsuits at random in the hope of settlements and the occasional success
What's an article?
Of course they are biased: they are the plaintiff's witness. That is irrelevant. However,
Minnesota does require that private investigators have state licenses. If MediaSentry was indeed acting as a private investigator and was not licensed it is probable that none of their testimony or evidence is admissable at all. Unfortunately this was not brought up at the first trial and so the judge may not allow it to be brought up at the second.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is true... and I won't say that the amount of the judgment has no importance in regard to future legal dealings with the RIAA. However, the verdict is still the most important aspect of the case since it sets precedent. It would be nice to live in a fantasy world where a not guilty was likely.
OK, Hooray for the small guy!
But losing small court battles for six-figure judgments is really nothing for these guys. What they got in exchange was thousands of newspaper articles and blogs talking about people being sued for file sharing. The FUD Factory worked! You can't buy that kind of press. Anything under a million is a bargain.
But you can't blame the RIAA for the judge's mistake. Since they can't bring back the original jury, legally, this is like the original case never happened. I hope RIAA will be on the hook for the defendant's lawyer fees for both trials if they lose this case.
"Thomas will face a new trial, in which the RIAA will have to prove actual distribution"
Even if they do prove distribution, the claims of damages per track should be fought. It's as if the people involved don't understand how file availability works with torrent p2p sharing.
If someone downloads 5 tracks and seeds each to 1:1 ratio, what they've sent out on the net has only replaced copies (in pieces and blocks) that they got instead of someone else. In that case the net increase in copies going to others is ZERO making the damages only the lost-sale revenue for the downloader. At 1:1 seeding ratio, no additional copies go to others as compared with what existing seeding on the net would have provided had the downloader not transfered the files in and out. The lost revenue is certainly no higher than the cost of the same tracks on iTMS or another commercial source. It could be argued that the track value is even lower since a portion of the iTMS price covers bandwidth cost so that amount in not lost profits.
It is only when seeding above 1:1 ratio that a downloader/uploader has actually done something to result in an increased number of copies going to others online over what would have occurred had they not participated. For the entire group of peers, each contributes to distribution by their seeding ratio minus one to allow for availability being reduced by what went to them instead of others.
It is not reasonable to hold a particular peer responsible for the seeding action of others.
This discussion also illustrates why torrents die off if people fail to seed adequately.
Cases of higher damages should be reserved for cases where material not otherwise available is leaked onto the net in violation of a license or NDA that applies, or material an uploader bought under license violates the license and then distributes a measurable number of copies on the net.
In order to distribute, one must send the file, as opposed to (according to most of us, and apparently this judge) merely make it available for fetching.
I'd imagine that if MediaSentry got the file from her, they fetched it (via the file being made available by P2P).
I caught that too. Since that was in the commentary and not part of the actual ruling, I don't think that's binding at all for the next trial. It certainly isn't binding on any other case.
Several other courts have addressed the issue and IIRC the vast majority ruled that Media Sentry downloads don't count since they were authorized by the copyright holder.
As far as the next trial goes, I imagine this will get settled. The jury members' post-trial comments were very much in favor of the RIAA, and Jammie's Lawyer wasn't very effective as a trial attorney from what I read in the coverage.
A new trial would mean that she has to pay her attorney for more work, and she had to cancel her expert witness because of financial difficulty the last go round.
For the RIAA, they have the statement in favor of using MediaSentry downloads as evidence. They have a big jury verdict in their favor in the minds of most (assuming this doesn't get the same kind of media coverage as the big award). They aren't going to get much money out of Jammie (blood from a turnip). It seems like it's in their interests to settle this one as well. The potential for losing the next trial should be enough to scare them into being reasonable.
I bet this turns into a settlement, and that Jammie has a non-disclosure clause for the amount. I'm kind of surprised that didn't happen before this ruling anyhow.
"a", "an", and "the"
Those are the only articles I know of.
mpeaching him now would cause a close examination of all of his unconstitutional policies, and get a lot of them thrown out, or at least dragged out into the light so future presidents won't be able to use them.
Careful. You might just find that a lot of people would like what was found and that your side would be invariably painted as anti-American. What would happen is, the Nixon effect. Nixon was never really popular until after he was booted from Office. But, once all the stuff that he and Kissinger did became public, a lot of people who are big into national security and winning suddenly found that Nixon was their man after all. He was rehabilated into a "great statesmen", and now he's looked at as a good Cold Warrior. I mean, by the time a lot of the Nixon revelations came out, to some extent, many Democrats would take a look at Carter and say, Nixon would have done something, a perception that helped propel Reagan into the White House. Remember that in early Reagan years they used to actually talk about how he would chat with Nixon and Henry the K in matters of cold war brinkmanship.
To move that to today, let's say it came out that Bush had the CIA crawling all over New Orleans immediate post Katrina and was assasinating looters, but there was some operational weather problem that wrecked the plan, or that, he had secretly invaded Pakistan and Iran and had actually sabotaged the industrial capacity of any number of nations that were believed to be hiding Bin Laden, he would lock down the center-right base for sure. I mean, if Cheney's secret conversation revealed that Bush saw the coming peak oil, went through a phase of trying to secretly re-open talks with Saddam, but was rebuffed, and -then-, he invaded because Saddam did some covert anti-American thing... then, a lot of people would see the war in an entirely more positive light.
Similarly, if there did emerge some conspiracy that the struggles of the US financial system were part of a set of financial moves of the US against China or the world, then, Bush comes out ahead, again. Even if he's just paranoid and writing all this stuff down, along with Cheney, Bush comes out ahead.
I mean, the biggest asset Democrats have on Bush right now is that, they've painted him as stupid. But, if Bush is actually documented to be intelligent but evil, then, a lot more people are going to like him and you'll make a saint out of him.
This is my sig.
Courts routinely slap down punitive damages that are 10X the actual damages as being grossly unreasonable. Treble damages are the norm, so right now, she owes $72.
And if I buy a bootleg DVD, I fetch it from the shelf. Doesn't matter.
Every file transfer has a sender and a receiver. The sender is (probably, though I suppose we'll see what the courts ultimately say) engaged in distribution, no matter whether the protpcol model was "pull" or "push".
The more interesting question would be whether, by requesting a copy, an agent of the copyright holder implicitely "approves" the distribution on the copyright holder's behalf. I don't see why that would be the case.
As I've said before -- I believe this verdict was faulty, and I believe the damages were too high, so on both counts I'm glad to see this outcome... but I also believe that putting a file on a p2p network is more than "just making it available", that doing so (if deliberate) should be punishable under the civil provisions of copyright infringement, and that the law may need to be amended to make it so.
Remember, "copyright hasn't kept up with technology" does not always mean "copyright is too strong". Both are generally true, but they don't always overlap neatly.
How dare the RIAA go after individual infringers, even though it's what Slashdotters said they should do back in 2000 during the Napster lawsuit.
It's all about how you go after them. Jaywalking is illegal. So to stop it, would you mind if we shove a camera up your ass to record where you walk and a set of electrodes on your balls to we can zap you if you look like you might be heading away from the crosswalk?
I deserve to have people's work for free because I can. Artists are my personal slaves.
Actually, it's the RIAA that feels that way. Here, read this bit from Steve Albini. Scroll down to the math part.
Once you're done, read this.
You're an industry shill so I know you won't get the point, but there is a point to be made. It's the RIAA that are fucking over the artists you claim to care so desperately about - not the pirates. For every penny lost to piracy the record execs walk away with truckloads of cash. All in the name of "protecting the artist".
Total bullshit, and you know it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Ray Beckerman's (a.k.a. NewYorkCountryLawyer) comments can be viewed here
Apparently legal efforts like his are starting to pay off.
I am officially gone from
You may recall the 8th amendment, which states "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The part we are interested here in is the "nor excessive fine imposed." It would seem to many that the extremely high statutory fines in copyright infringement cases are indeed excessive. They are vastly out of proportion with the harm caused by the crime. When you are, literally, facing fines higher for copying a song than you would for shoplifting a CD with the same song on it, many reasonable people would call that excessive.
Then there's also the whole copyright law itself. The government doesn't automatically have the right to grant copyrights, it is given to them by the Constitution in Article I Section 8. It says "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Ok great, they have the right to grant copyrights... However it isn't unlimited. The reason they can do isn't just because they feel like it, the reason is to promote the arts and sciences. So if the law doesn't serve that purpose, it could well be unconstitutional. Likewise it isn't a forever kind of thing. It specifically says "for limited times". Idea is that stuff falls in to the public domain after a time.
Well one could argue that the current "Life + 50 years" statute fails at both of those. It isn't used to promote the arts, nor is it a limited time, it is used to grant near perpetual copyright to companies so they can stifle new creations.
Definitely.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
The existence of piracy does not magically give me an extra $200 a year that I could have spent on music or movies. I have the same amount of money I did last year (or less, with the wild inflation), so the MAFIAA would get roughly the same amount of money from me whether or not I could pirate things.
Via piracy I can never view every single movie ever made, or every song ever produced, which means that if I happen to see a few movies this year that I couldn't have afforded otherwise, it will *not* cut into the amount of money I'll spend next year on music and movies.
All well and good... but I fail to understand why was this summary accepted instead of the more appropiate and insightful summary submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'