RIAA Agrees To Take $200-Per-File In Texas Case

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a San Antonio, Texas case, Maverick v. Harper, in which a young woman was accused of having committed copyright infringement at the age of 16, the Judge denied the RIAA's summary judgment motion this summer, saying there were factual issues as to whether the defendant qualified for the 'innocent infringement' defense. He offered the record companies a way out, however, saying he would grant them a judgment if they agreed to take only $200 — as opposed to the $9,250 they sought from Jammie Thomas or the $750 they usually seek — per infringed recording. We have recently learned that, after the Judge denied the RIAA's reconsideration motion and scheduled a trial date, the RIAA filed papers agreeing to take the $200-per-recording amount. While $200 is still about 600 times the amount of the actual damages, it's better than paying 26,000 times the actual damages, which is what the RIAA tried to squeeze out of Ms. Thomas." This is a reversal of the RIAA's rejection of the $200 award per song last month.

Comments

Bad time to be King John screwing the serfs

[gelfling]

Trust me **AA in this bleak economic frontier you are months away from one of your people getting murdered over this. Probably outside a courthouse right after one of your lawyers congratulates him/herself over how wonderful it is to fuck people over, poor people. Let me know how that works out for your legal department.

Re:Wrong

[d_jedi]

Wow. A perfectly reasonable and absolutely correct comment gets modded as flamebait because it goes (however slightly) against the Slashdot groupthink that the RIAA is teh devil.

Re:$4.00 for infringement is more like it....

[cliffski]

So we should grab a pickaxe and run into the streets?
Because we want the right to take music for free.

Not because of Enron and the Bank bailout, or because of the tax breaks for billion dollar oil companies, or the state of US healthcare, or the False premise behind the war in Iraq, the costs of that war both in lives and money...

Oh no. Those things are only minor annoyances that we can just grumble about.

But we should *totally* be rioting in the streets because we can't copy mp3s without paying...