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Sotomayor's Position On Copyright Damages
Too Lazy to Login writes "Wired reports that, based on her previous decisions, Sonia Sotomayor will likely affirm high damages (read: RIAA excessive) in cases where copyright claims are at issue. Good thing I'm not a betting man, because I'd have guessed the exact opposite." We discussed the nominee's cyberlaw record in general last week.
Wired reports that, based on her previous decisions ...
Huh, that's odd, I only found the article to list one case -- the TopRank suing the host of a tavern in 1996. And the statement she added as:
"A willful infringement, which the magistrate judge found, combined with a willful default, however, warrant an award greater and more significant than one which corresponds so closely to an estimated loss to the plaintiff,"
Are there more decisions I missed? Are we basing our image of this woman off of one action and one statement?
It's not a good indication but it's hardly conclusive. Things have changed with the advent of the internet since then. Here's to hoping, I guess, but I think we're being a bit unfair and too hasty.
My work here is dung.
latino female
What's a latino female? Is that a codename for hispanic shemales?
It is a bit annoying that we always fall for the bread and fishes scam . . . will we ever learn!? A politician is a politician because he has two skills, one is his ability to use convincing rhetoric and the other is putting that rhetoric to the defence of the powerful, no matter they be the military, industry or some other interest group.
One more time:
Republicans: Oil and gas
Democrats: Hollywood, the movies and recording industry
_Never_ be surprised at Democratic support for DRM, the RIAA or MPAA.
Is the only answer. Throw them all out.
That's a good idea. A revolution is long overdue! I'll bring the tar and feathers. You bring the pitchforks and torches. We'll get started tonight.
Oh wait, American Idol is on tonight. Hmm, can we do the revolution tomorrow? What were we talking about again? I remember being angry about something.... hmm, Kris Allen is cool isn't he?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This is one of the more insightful things I've read in the comments on slashdot... I wish I had mod points today. I *do* forget the above, but it's true. Also, the kind of person that would go through the trouble to be a president isn't the kind of person you'd ever want to be your president.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
I don't see anything in the Top Rank decision which justifies the conclusion the Wired author has drawn. The only decision referred to was Top Rank v. Allerton Lounge, a typical 'bar and tavern' case. In those cases the statutory damages are frequently from 2 to 4 times the actual damages. The Magistrate appears to have awarded statutory damages on a 1:1 ratio. Judge Sotomayor raised the damages, but not wildly to some extreme multiple like what the RIAA looks for. It appears that her award was between 2 and 3 times the actual damages, which is within the usual range.
The RIAA seeks from 2,200 to 450,000 times the actual damages. It is well settled law that statutory damages awards have to bear a reasonable relationship to the actual damages, and in keeping with economic reality. And it is well settled law that excessive disproportion to the actual damages is unconstitutional, as a violation of the due process clause.
There is no reason in the world to think that Judge Sotomayor would consider imposing statutory damages of $750 to $150,000 as against plaintiff's 35-cent loss for the download of a single mp3 file.
In the unlikely event that the RIAA could prove the defendant was a "distributor" -- i.e. someone who disseminated copies to the public by selling them, or by other transfers of ownership, or by rentals, leases, or lending -- then of course the actual damages would be higher than 35 cents. But the RIAA would have to prove its actual damages, and then the court could award statutory damages greater than that sum, but -- under established Supreme Court precedent -- the award would be constitutionally suspect were the ratio greater than single digits.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
The facts are complicated and require thinking, and might result in a conclusion that 1) not what the GP expects to find or, 2) doesn't fit exactly inside of the predetermined possibilities.
This is Slashdot - people are confident in their computer skills and knowledge of sci-fi, which naturally translates into flawless wisdom in relation to all things. Socrates woulda loved this place.
It's not like Obama ran on a platform of copyright abolition.
There is no misrepresentation going on here, even if you had hoped that since you agreed with him on one thing that he would agree with you on another.
The folks at TechnicallyLegal (disclaimer, I'm a writer and podcaster there) wrote up a post as to why her decision in the copyright case will have little bearing on the outcome of the RIAA cases. And why her reasoning there isn't really indicitive of what her reasoning may be in those cases.
http://www.technicallylegal.org/de-fud-sotomayors-stance-on-copyright-infringement/
Modular Redundancy--Because 4 out of 5 Nodes agree
I'm waiting for her to get on the bench and come out of the closet. Hispanic lesbian female - the affirmative action trifecta.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
It is not "legislating from the bench" to declare a damages award, authorized by a statute, to be unconstitutional. The fundamental law of the United States is its constitution. When a statute violates the constitution, the judge has to say so. That is not legislating, that is applying the law. The US Supreme Court has said that "punitive awards" which are unreasonably disproportionate to the actual damages are unconstitutional.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I paid my taxes in hope this year. Unfortunately, the IRS sent me a nasty letter demanding immediate payment of the amount I owed in US legal tender. Hope is useless, it turns out. Unfortunately, the postal service charged me a pretty penny when I re-filed my tax returns and paid the amount I owed with change.
I'll start this off with the admission that I am a white, conservative, Christian, heterosexual male (some times referred to as "the source of all the world's problems"). When I read this summary I was spurred to go look into Sotamayor's previous rulings and how that might effect her future ones. I have heard the talking heads on both sides (I have a 1 hour drive to work each day and mostly listen to NPR... meh... it's something to listen to) and hadn't come to a conclusion about my opinion of her. I think the Federal Supreme Court is currently the most powerful entity in the USA, all the more so when it's prospective members have been quoted (jokingly or not) saying that policy is made from the bench.
... that transport workers, coal miners, or meat packers would not enjoy" (though wikipedia says there is a citation needed for that quote). There are other rulings listed that I agree with, and some that I don't, but as a whole I find that I generally agree with what I've read about her.
All that being said, I was hesitant to hold a specific opinion on her appointment to the FSC. So I did some research... WIKIPEDIA FTW!!!
It turns out (following the wikipedia links and using Google when they ran out for extra source material) that I... usually agreed with her. She seems to hold strictly to the letter of the law and her interpretations of it seem to be in line with what mine would usually be. She held up a man's rights to say racist, bigoted, ugly things, she dissented in a ruling that upheld a juvenile detention center's right to strip search young girls (convicted of no crime, being held in suspicion of committing no crime), and she upheld the rights of the NFL to set it's own rules for who can play in the league saying "We follow the Supreme Court's lead in declining to 'fashion an antitrust exemption [so as to give] additional advantages to professional football players
She's right, by the way, in saying that experience and culture influence judgment. It would be nice if it didn't but that is just not possible in people's brains. We are not computers. We are living, breathing, feeling, emotional, prejudiced, loving, bigoted, beings. We cannot get around that. To all those who don't like that idea, THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF HAVING 9 PEOPLE ON THE BENCH IS FOR THIS VERY REASON. We cannot trust ONE person to make the final judgment because that person will see an issue through their own clouded perspective. So we add a reasonable amount of others and appoint those who have shown that they push through their cloudy view more than most... and hope for the best.
The system is inherently flawed because it involves people. We put the best people up there and hope that it has as few flaws as possible.
I can cut a stadium full of people in half from 500 miles away.
I bet not... According to some back of the envelope calculations, there's a vertical divergence of approximately 8 miles (due to the earth's curvature) over a distance of 500 miles. So, even if you were firing said laser from the top of Mt Everest (~5.5 miles tall) your hypothetical stadium would still have to be in a valley over 3 miles deep with nothing of significance between your emitter and it.
Alternately, you'd need to be in an airborne vehicle 8 miles or so above the planet's surface. That's about a mile higher than most commercial jet traffic, so you'd need some serious wings (think fighter jet) to get high enough to hit your target. So, yeah, I bet you can't. 8^)
Note for (other) pedants: I know the parent wasn't being literal, but I thought this looked like a fun problem to work out anyway.
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.