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Thomas' Testimony and the RIAA's Near-Fatal Error
eldavojohn writes "The long and torrid trial of Jammie Thomas is in its second stage and in full swing. Yesterday, two major events took place: Thomas gave her surprising testimony and the RIAA was threatened for not disclosing new information to the opposing counsel. Thomas claimed she didn't know what KaZaA was before the trial started. She also admitted that the hard drive handed over to investigators was different than the one that was in her computer during the time of infringement. Her testimony from the first trial was that 'the hard drive replacement had taken place in 2004 and that the drive had not been swapped again since.' This is problematic because the new hard drive had a manufacturing date of 2005. The RIAA had its own troubles, almost losing all evidence from a particular witness when they added an additional log file to evidence without the defense being notified of it. The judge mercifully only removed that new evidence from the trial. It was related to whether or not an external hard drive was ever connected to the computer."
If she is innocent until proven guilty - why does she have to give up her hard-drive and "prove" her innocence? Nobody is forced to prove innocence. The RIAA should be given the challenge, without her hard drive, of proving guilt. /shrug (IE: external records, etc.)
I think the focus here should be for the defence (may actually be, I don't know) that the fees to pay be reduced to an "acceptable" level, meaning not the life-ruining, impossible-to-pay-unless-you-re-gazillionaire fees demanded by the RIAA.
She "stole" 24 songs. Let her pay a fine of a few hundreds bucks and fucking be done with it. Asking for half a million in damages should be laughed at by any sensible court system, and that's the real problem here.
The RIAA's evidence is compelling.
The IP address was hers, with no WiFi, no NAT, and a password-protected Windows box
The username chosen was the one she's used online traditionally for 16 years.
The problem is, the nearly inevitible $100K verdict will not be justice, even if it is legally correct.
Test your net with Netalyzr
In this case, a guilty verdict isn't at all a bad thing, if the damages are reasonable. If damages of $200,000 or more are awarded, then the RIAA strategy is validated. They prove that they can win, and that they can win significant damages. It would also give credence to their "Settle or we'll sue for all your money" letters, as an award of that scale could easily wipe anyone out, house and all.
For Thomas, the endgame is the reverse. I'm not at all sure she can show that she is innocent, given her testimony - which is a shame, but not unexpected. Her goal must be to somehow limit the damages to a reasonable amount. Doing so sets precedent - if the RIAA can expect only a few thousand for a case that goes to trial, then it ceases to be profitable for them to try. The settlements will become more affordable, or may go away - why spend $1,000 on an attorney to get a $500 settlement back?
Were I in Thomas's place, I would be far more worried about the Perjury thing, which is an actual criminal offense. She said one thing under oath, and then said another thing under oath, and the statements are not compatible. So, we're in a position where she might win the trial (or get reduced and affordable damages), but end up in jail with a massive fine for lying under oath. Not good.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
Where we don't care about anything important like the global economic meltdown or Iran's fraudulent elections or militants in Pakistan or North Korea going insane.
Read the masthead - we're nerds, not dorks, dork.
Nope, all we care about is being able to unabashedly steal music and then yell at the people selling it when they try to protect their interests
No, we are incensed at the mainstream music industry's blatant evil, including its bribery of Congress to get copyright lengths to insane levels. Personally, I will not respect any copyright on a work made more than a quarter century ago. Most of us DON'T infringe copyright, even copyrights on works that should be in the public domain.
You are free to consider anything I wrote moret than 20 years ago in the public domain, and anything newer as having a CC license.
Free Martian Whores!
I can.
I had a PC that was infected with malware.
It was turned not into a spam zombie, but into a torrent seeder and FTP server.
Found the stuff in a hidden folder disguised to look like a Java update in the windows folder.
In my case it was disney movies and music, not CP (thank goodness), but the same thing could have happened to her. Would jive with the HDD replacement too. I noticed the issue because the machine lagged like a bitch, and it all looked like OS related problems. I could see someone installing a new HDD to solve that type of "problem".
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Worked for Gandhi.
Worked for Prohibition.
Worked for national speed limit of 55 mph.
Seems to be working for pot.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So, rather than work to fix the law by taming your congresscritters, you prefer to break the law because it is easier than actually fixing the law and then whine when you get caught that the law is unfair. I am sure that will work out great and get things fixed up in no time.
"Voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice; what you need to do is to actually be just. This is not to say that you have an obligation to devote your life to fighting for justice, but you do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice your practical support."
"In a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law until it is changed. But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then the law deserves no respect and it should be broken."
- Henry David Thoreau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)
No sig for the moment.
I don't recall ghandi going out of his way to stay anonymous. In fact, he made a big deal out of publicly breaking the law, and accepted the punishment to show how the law was unjust.
I don't recall this woman going out of her way to stay anonymous.
I don't recall Dave1.0 mentioning anything about anonymity.
In fact, you seem to make a big deal out of some arbitrary fact that isn't particularly applicable because you have a narrative going on in your head that is pretty well disconnected from reality.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Ghandi proposed non-violent civil disobedience as an effective weapon against injustice.
No matter how bad the rhetoric of the **AA's gets, almost no one considers file sharing violent.
But it is civil disobedience.
And yes, you are correct that Jammie hasn't reached Ghandi's spiritual level yet. But that was already clear to, er, most of us, even the poster to whom you replied.
Of course, if RIAA crucifies her enough times, who knows what might happen.
Speaking as a former warranty tech, customers almost *never* remember when their last service was. 6 months off is pretty average.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)