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In Round 2, Jammie Thomas Jury Awards RIAA $1,920,000
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Well the price went up from $9250 per song file to $80,000 per song file, as the jury awarded the RIAA statutory damages of $1,920,000.00 for infringement of 24 MP3s, in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset. In this trial, although the defendant had an expert witness of her own, she never called him to testify, and her attorneys never challenged the technical evidence offered by the RIAA's MediaSentry and Doug Jacobson. Also, neither the special verdict form nor the jury instructions spelled out what the elements of a 'distribution' are, or what needed to be established by the plaintiffs in order to recover statutory — as opposed to actual — damages. No doubt there will now have to be a third trial, and no doubt the unreasonableness of the verdict will lend support to those arguing that the RIAA's statutory damages theory is unconstitutional." Update: 06/19 01:39 GMT by T : Lots more detail at Ars Technica, too.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
$1.92M for 24 songs is unreasonable? What makes you say that?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I'm starting to believe this lady was paid off by the RIAA to set an example by letting it go through the justice system with a bad defense and keep pushing their luck for the amounts awarded and setting precedents. In the back room she just gets paid everything back in double.
Really, how difficult is it to punch through the RIAA's statements? The average helpdesk technician would punch holes in their statements if called as an 'expert witness'. I'm really starting to doubt the value of lawyers in these type of cases. The Chewbacca defense might even stand.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It looks like classic civil disobedience. Break am unjust law, get punished in the maximum extent possible and appeal at a superior court, all the way to the Supreme.
That, or massive incompetence of her defense.
According to some wikipedia article the median American individual makes about $32,000/year (never mind the fact that women make $27K). Multiply that by a career lifespan of 45 years and you get $1.4 million.
They have just judged that she should pay 1/3 more than a typical American will make in their life.
What's wrong with this picture? Clearly she would have never spent that much on music...
Porquoi?
Any goon sitting at a computer can cause millions of dollars in damages at the drop of a hat. The problem is that people have assigned value to information. Personally, while this may seem radical, I personally believe that distributing information should be entirely legal in any situation except where someone is personally threatened (say, giving out SSNs and Bank Account numbers.) This would instantly destroy a lot of business, but the matter of the fact is that these businesses should have never existed in the first place. If companies could charge people for using mathematical constants or specific words, we would be in the same situation. It is inheritly wrong to charge people for information. Piracy is not theft, it never has been and never will be -- piracy is a name given to steal inherit immutable social rights.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
While it seems absolutely insane that an individual can be sued for so much for something so inconsequential, I have to say that she really made it easy to side with the RIAA.
If it weren't for her destruction of evidence and blatant perjury, the courts might be likely to have some sympathy for her. Instead, she insulted the courts in a way that made Hans Reiser look well grounded. It was obvious to anyone following the trial that she was the one sharing the files, and while she didn't need to volunteer that information necessarily, the deliberate obfuscation (returned hard drives, etc.) put her on the wrong side of the line.
I think this is a terrible precedent that was set, but really, I'm not surprised. The RIAA, of course, will never see their money, but then Jammie Thomas will never own a material possession again, either, so I guess it's even.
Assuming a price of $15 per album, the defendant could have stolen 128,000 CDs and resold them and it would have been less damage than what they are collecting for two dozen songs.
$2M for 24 songs? Sounds like jury tampering.
So all I have to do is, twice a year write an awful song, then get someone to put it up on a torrent and that's worth $160,000 right? That's a freaking awesome alternate reality! I can live like a king for playing guitar badly a couple of times a year!
By that kind of accounting, I'm worth billions. Boat salesmen will knock. Bikini clad women will swoon. I can have any car I like!
Tell the truth now, you're just trying to outdo the British, aren't you? They only used to send their convicts to Australia for a dozen years for stealing a loaf of bread. You'd ruin people's whole lives over copying a song.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Artists are now forced to take time out of doing what they want to do.
Just like the rest of us who work for a living?
The damages are enormous, but the legal fees that the RIAA has amassed need to be recouped in some fashion.
The expenses can be recouped in the following manner: the RIAA pays the legal expenses they incurred. If we get into a fender bender, and I sue you for damages, that's okay. If I spend 3 million on my legal team over it, that's me spending money foolishly. You shouldn't have to pay for it.
I did say should... applying logic or "should" statements to legal proceedings is it's own type of illogical, I know...
Everyone likes to dogpile on the RIAA, but they are only defending the rights that the law has provided them.
To absurd degrees considering how trivial an offense it was. That's what makes them bad guys.
Moral of the story: don't break the law, and if you do, try to avoid lawyers, they are very expensive. It was foolish to reject the initial $5000 settlement. Any lawyer could have looked at the facts of the case and come to the conclusion that she didn't have sufficient evidence to prove her innocence, which is very important in civil trials.
I wouldn't call standing up to a bully "foolish" exactly.
She lied about her hard drive, thinking it would get her off. I don't like the RIAA, but she deserved this.
Um, no. For lying under oath she deserves to face perjury charges, not have her punishment be magnified 1000 times.
...and I might agree with most of what you say if the content-creators (the Artists, not their representatives) were seeing this money directly.
As a recording and performing musician who is both excited by the limitless distribution and disgusted with their treatment of artists I find you personally offensive. Furthermore I also find you to be nothing more than a rhetoric spewing fool of the lowest order. I hope you choke on those party lines you parrot off mindlessly.
GTFO, troll.
Because it's a valid perspective? I don't agree with it -- John Carmack already gets paid enough for his work to keep doing it (even with piracy possibly sapping the numbers), and for being accused of downloading a couple CDs worth of songs this woman's now on the hook for enough money to record, publish and promote two platinum-level albums -- but if you're trying to figure out the jury this perspective is probably where you should start.
Wow, you feel guilt? Girls feel guilt. Pirates don't feel guilt. We feel rum. And freeeeeeeee yaaarr
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
As a lawyer, I'm not surprised by this outcome. I admit to not closely following this case. But from what I've read, her defense arguments were really weak. Oddly enough, Ars Technica says it best:
I really can't emphasize that last part enough. Winning a civil trial isn't about being "right" in any objective sense. It's about convincing normal people. If your explanations (technical or otherwise) go over their heads or seem implausible, you will lose. If the jury senses any sort of deception or dishonesty, you will lose. Sometimes if they just plain don't like you, you will lose. Clearly erroneous results can get overturned on appeal, but may cases are close enough calls that an appeal won't help.
On the facts above, I'd have found her liable too. It was clearly her computer with a username she commonly used. That creates a reasonable inference that she used Kazaa on it. While there are many ways for her to rebut this presumption, the flimsy conjecture offered doesn't cut it. Especially if she seemed less than forthright.
That said, the damages award is completely insane. I'd have given nominal damages, enough to hurt but not crippling (on the order of $100-500 per song - yes, below the statutory minimum of $750). It will get reduced on appeal, but not to that level. Maybe something on the order of a few thousand per song. My guess is that the jury really disliked her dishonesty and smacked her for it with huge damages.
I won't criticize her lawyers since I don't know all the details. Maybe these were the best arguments they had. Maybe their client chose to use this defense against their recommendations. Undoubtedly the news reports distorted the story. Whatever the case, the defense was really weak. This verdict was predictable.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
No distribution was ever shown. The RIAA Plaintiffs even said that they wouldn't show it because it's impossible to show. THIS IS INSANE!!!
I, for one, cannot wait to see the entire music industry implode in favor of artists who record at home with the low-priced equipment available, and who market through cooperatives over the Internet. Let Big Music Die Now Please!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Where are they finding these jurors at? Where is the constitution on this one? I just recently served as a juror and I was told to look at the evidence and testimony presented then come to a conclusion based on this without bias. How could anyone come to a verdict like this given the evidence from both sides? Do these people not realize at any time they could be a victim just as the defendant, open Wi-Fi anyone? This has to be a blatant violation of her 8th Amendment rights, this is wrong on so many levels it makes my head hurt.
On the bright side, sometimes when something so stupid happens, it forces a change in the law. And certainly, this verdict (a) will itself be set aside, and (b) gives added ammunition to the lawyers like myself who are arguing that the RIAA's statutory damages theory is unconstitutional.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
All they had to do was find 12 citizens just like themselves.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Didn't the artists CHOOSE to make these arrangements? If they had a hope in hell of making money on their own selling their recording on the internet without their stuff getting stolen, don't you think they would? So you are some kind of moralizing god that can tell the Artists how to run their affairs? if the money is going through a 3rd party, then it is OK to steal it, but if it goes directly to the Artist, better to pay them? I bet most people check carefully to see where their money would go before they decide to steal content, right? Let's look at a quote from a REAL artist, the fabulous guitarist Andy McKee, posting on piratebay: âoeYeah thanks a lot for uploading! It's not like I need to make a living with my music or anything. 8,676 thieves. If you really appreciate what I am doing, buy my CD legitimately so I can continue to compose music rather than work at K-Mart. I'm not Metallica. I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars, much less millions.â So even though he is signed with Candyrat, it sounds a little like he would prefer that you BUY his music, doesn't it? Have you ever tried to make a living by driving around the country doing shows? It is, after a short time, soul sucking and demeaning. But that is the only way even a great artist with fairly broad appeal can make a living in this day and age, because of morons like you.
This is the first troll post that I can sympathize with. We all know it; we are breaking the law when we download music/videos. It's just that, unlike mugging someone in the street, no one really loses out. Maybe the music execs will have to buy fewer wraps of coke. Is that such a bad thing? I don't think so.
In the end, the only winners are lawyers.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Have you ever tried to make a living by driving around the country doing shows? It is, after a short time, soul sucking and demeaning. But that is the only way even a great artist with fairly broad appeal can make a living in this day and age, because of morons like you.
Since when have musicians EVER made any significant living off of derivative works OTHER than performing live? Mozart did it, Elvis did it, Metallica did it. Artists have never been able to make a substantial income from record (or sheet music) sales. It wasn't until Beethoven that the idea of making money off of copies of musical works even really took off.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
But it's NOT a valid perspective. I know of nobody here that says people shouldn't get paid to perform work. But that's the troll/flame that he keeps on pimping until somebody actually starts believing it. He's full of it. It is those who advocate strong copyright who want to sit on their butts and collect the rent. They are the true pirates who use guns to lock down ideas. We must not allow this to continue.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
Nothing "valid" about it. He is lying when he says that we think people shouldn't get paid for working. What I demand is that they actually work for their money the same way I do. I have no divine providence over my finished work, nor should anybody else.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
Because it's a valid perspective?
You can say that again. Seriously, $2M for 24 files? WHAT THE FUCK?
Oh trust me, I have the highest contempt for the courts right now.
This verdict will be the cause of derision internationally, and will provide endless fodder for those who are fond of laughing in their beer at the USA. Unfortunately, they will have a pretty irrefutable point.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Well done, RIAA, and a hearty thank you to your minions at MediaSentry.
I now feel that I am REALLY getting my monies worth from my Internet connection. Just downloaded 1,000 songs in a collection "Best Rock Songs Ever".
Used Bittorrent, so I figure that, at 80,000 per song, I just copped 80 MILLION DOLLARS last month!That theft took just 5% of my transfer cap, so I *could* go for 1.6 BILLION if I really got cracking!
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I would also be interested to know if that $1.9 million award included legal fees as well as compensatory and pun[i]tive damages
1. No it does not include legal fees.
2. It does not include any compensatory damages; the compensatory damages would have been approximately $8.
3. The damages are "statutory" damages which are similar to "punitive" damages.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
If what you said was true, then Ray would have been crowing about it, but he isn't.
Actually, if you look at the amicus briefs I filed in SONY v. Cloud and SONY v. Tenenbaum, you will see that the only argument I made was the 5th amendment argument, leaving the 8th amendment argument to others to make.
But one of the first reactions I had when I realized that $1.92 million wasn't a typo, was that perhaps I had made a mistake, and should have made the 8th amendment argument after all.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Or there's another way to look at it. Thomas was caught with her pants down, she's clearly guilty, and she did everything she could to antagonize the system.
Now, put aside your views on copyright law and the "evil" the RIAA, was anything other than a pissed jury increasing the damages award ever likely to be the outcome of this case? Short of a jury of 12 Slashdot copyright infringement advocates advocating jury nullification, I can't see how any other result was ever possible.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
One sentence- Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright! The man has been pushing up the daisies (or sitting in the freezer, whichever you prefer) for over half a fricking century, yet his FIRST work, one made when planes were made out of cloth and antibiotics were just a dream, is STILL under copyright.
Most of us here are for fair copyright. Of course most of us would consider the outright bribery of our elected officials by multinational corporations to be treasonous. The US copyright system, which is being forced down the throats of more and more nations, was a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED monopoly in the form of government imposed copyrights We, The People got in return a richer and more diverse Public Domain for all of us.
But we have been robbed, and the contract broken. We, The People are no longer represented anymore, because we can't cut individual checks to bribe our own elected officials like the multinationals can. Until We, The People are once again represented at the bargaining table then ALL copyrights should be considered by the people of this country and all those who have American copyrights forced upon them null and void and completely ignored. Crooked laws created by bribed officials should be looked upon as the illegal acts that they are. Period.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It is, after a short time, soul sucking and demeaning
So you mean... it's like... HAVING A JOB?!?!?!?!?
"Artists" who think that one weekend's work and a year or two of sacrifices and chances should allow them to live luxuriously for years after get no sympathy for me. Buck up and welcome to reality. This recession's full of it.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Her lawyers invested all their time preparing the Chewbacca defense, and when at the court they realized that Lucas will sue them for 2M for using it, they picked the cheaper alternative.
If you feel that you have no voice in the government, the way to change the government is not through anonymous piracy. Engage in civil protest or violent revolution -- whatever works for you. But anonymous leaching, and I mean that not only in the p2p sense, but also in the "how is an artist supposed to make a living if everything can be had free" sense, isn't going to accomplish anything. Rather, it shows "file sharers" to be "what can I get for nothing" freeloaders rather than people interested in changing our corrupt government.
As for the issues in this case, the damages are clearly excessive. Although I do believe that Jamie did the deed so to speak, and that the regular retail cost of the songs is not enough (*), $2m is more than she'll make in a lifetime. Damages should be something like 20-30% of her income for a year. That would be substantial without being ridiculously high.
(*) If maximum damages = price of song, there is no incentive, aside from one's own moral compass, to pay for content.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Well, anything she currently has could be seized and sold off, within some limits of bankruptcy protection. If she ever does earn money, her wages can be garnished to some extent. No matter how much ever earns, she's not going to get keep but a fraction. She is in essence, incapable of escaping poverty for her entire life. Every extra nickel she gets will be taken. Her only hope is to live off the grid now, but that has its own drawbacks.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
At least she can have all the music she wants.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
One: Jealousy is not a valid reason why copyright is wrong.
Two: If you wire up someone's house, that person pays for all the materials, labor, and profit it takes for you to have your own house and food. $1 will barely buy a single outlet, let alone the box, wire, circuit breakers, or labor to install it. So a person who lets people have songs for $1 but keeps copyright, is hoping to put food on the table through volume sales. If it was required that the first sale cover all costs and some profit -- albums might cost $100,000. Everyone else gets the song free after the first sale, but if nobody bought the album in the first place, nobody would have the song at all. That's part of the social contract behind copyright -- the creator can let people have access to the work at an affordable price, but keeps enough control over the work that he/she can try to sell it to many people. That benefits society because instead of waiting for a patron to pay for the whole enchilada, we all get the work for a modest price while the artist takes the risk making or losing money on his/her efforts.
Three: A smart electrician (gets paid upfront) has almost no risk -- the job is simple profit. For an artist, there is an enormous risk of getting nothing after working very hard. If you don't like that some artists in essence win the lottery, then ensure that all artists get to earn a living wage. Society gets a lot of low cost high quality art from artists who do not win the publicity lottery, so it might actually cost more if artists got paid like electricians.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
All they had to do was find 12 citizens just like themselves.
The federal jury is essentially creation of the federal courts.
You do not get to handcraft your own:
In civil cases, each party shall be entitled to three peremptory challenges. ... All challenges for cause or favor, whether to the array or panel or to individual jurors, shall be determined by the court. 1870. Challenges
The federal juror is 18 or over, a US citizen resident in the district for at least one year, writes and speaks English with reasonable proficiency and is physically and mentally fit for service. 1865. Qualifications for jury service
You could make a persuasive case for the geek being the idiot in court - to the despair of his consul and the joy of his opponent -
and the most common mistake he is likely to make is to show contempt for the jury.
I know that not paying someone for their work is wrong
You don't pay people for there work every day. There are thousands of artists out there right now whose work you are not paying for. Artists you've never heard of.
Why does it make a difference if you see their work or not? It doesn't affect them.
Actually, technically speaking, Steamboat Willie is in the public domain due to errors in how they did the nameplates. The copyright act of 1909 was very stringent in that regard.
Based on this decision, my music folder is worth almost $5 billion. How come I have to work for a living, then?
Oh, right, that's not real money, and copyright infringement does not mean actual loss of money for the RIAA. Not to mention I live in Hungary, where fair use covers this. To the guy that got slapped with the $2M, however, is fucked.
Now, who's the bad guy again?
In all honesty, I don't think we want to go back to the way things were in Mozart's time, which was largely a system of patronage. It sucked. Reasonable copyright is better.
Qxe4
I always though that statutory damages are not meant as a punishment, but as a means to give the copyright holder fair compensation in situations where the actual damage is impossible to establish.
According to the CONTU report ("Committee On New Technological Uses", back when congress was working on extending copyright to software), and if I recall it correctly, the statutory damages are apparently intended to be both punitive and to allow the copyright holder to recover enough from the few moles he manages to whack to make up for the many he missed.
The precedent is a church choir director who purchased sheet music for a song that was scored out of the range of his choir (and most singers), did a transposition that made it singable, ran off a few copies for his choir, and offered the transposition back to the original author and publisher, gratis, for their next edition. Instead of "incorporating the patch", they sued for some large number of thousands of dollars (real money in those days, too) for the infringing copies of this derived work. And won.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The US copyright system, which is being forced down the throats of more and more nations, was a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED monopoly in the form of government imposed copyrights We, The People got in return a richer and more diverse Public Domain for all of us.
Somehow this is what seems to get lost in a lot of copyright discussions. Not to give a complete history of the copyright, but there was a time when we had no copyright, and people wrote books, painted, composed music, and performed it because they wanted to, and often they found ways to get paid for their expertise and talent. One common way was to do work that someone else wanted them to do on commission, whether they wanted to do it or not. Though many artists wished to have control over their own work, it was just silly to expect as much. Another artist would copy your painting, or another author might rewrite your story, and that's how culture developed.
And basically all that was fine until the the printing press arrived, and book publishers started making a fortune from printing books, neglecting to pay the authors. People recognized this as unfair and discouraging to those who might want to write a book, so they invented the idea of the copyright. The idea wasn't to ensure profitability for publishers by forcing readers to pay for the right to read a book, nor was it meant to allow authors to control the destiny of their work, but it was solely a way to help authors get a share of the huge profits publishers were already making.
Flash forward to the present, and now copyrights are being manipulated in such a way as to have almost the opposite effect that was intended. Copyrights are being used to guarantee profits for the publishers, while the artists are being denied their fair share of the profits. If anything, the Internet should allow us to go back to pre-copyright days, since distribution doesn't really require a "publisher" in the same way.
Now I'm not saying we actually should drop copyrights, but only that convention has twisted the purpose of the copyright and given bad expectations about what copyrights will accomplish. Now we think that people own, buy, and sell ideas. Further, that if you own an idea, you should retain ownership and complete control forever. That's just an unsustainable situation.
You don't win cases by giving press conferences and bragging about what you're going to do to the other side. You win cases by staying up late, going through boxes of documents. I was truly surprised everyone was reading and writing all that nonsense and buying into that hype. You don't see that on my blog.
Yes I was "hoping for the best". And for all I know defendant's counsel did a great job. They certainly worked hard, and demonstrated intelligence and enthusiasm, at least in the earlier stages.
I'm not in a position to criticize her counsel because I don't know what went on, and I don't know what pressures they were under.
All I know is that, as an outside observer, I was disappointed at the absence of a number of things I would have expected to see. Whose fault that is, I don't know.
What's next is:
1.Defendant moves to set aside verdict and for new trial.
2.Motion granted, new trial scheduled.
3.New trial: defendant wins, plaintiffs appeal.
I would also not be surprised to see the RIAA aggressively seek to enter into a confidential settlement with her, even to the point of paying her attorneys fees, to avoid this getting set aside.
Those of us making the constitutional argument on excessiveness of the RIAA's statutory damages theory will be helped by this verdict.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
No, wrong. Each song is worth like $2 with statutory damages of HOLY FUCK BANKRUPTCY.
I can't say I agree with the size of the damages, but that's no excuse to completely misrepresent the issue.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
What are the laws for this situation?
For this situation, or for the one you describe?
For this situation, nothing, because no one (but you) has said their songs are worth $80000 in value.
All the jury said was each infringement is worth $80000 in damages.
It's a fine, not a repayment.
She is in essence, incapable of escaping poverty for her entire life. Every extra nickel she gets will be taken.
You know, taking every last thing a person has leaves you with someone who has nothing to lose. One of these days the RIAA's laywers are going to win a punitive suit against the wrong person, and I just hope that I am nowhere near the building the lawfirm is in when it happens.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You have no idea what you are talking about, so listen, because I'll only explain once:
You've made the statistical mistake of comparing one artist in a generation to every artist of our day. How many composers do you know from the classical period? Have you ever heard of Andrea Luchesi? Probably not. For every Mozart, there are hundreds of Andrea Luchesis. Just as now there are hundreds of artists like Brittany Spears.
Patronage was horrible. You had to compose, perform, or do nothing, all based on what your royal sponsor demanded of the evening. You art would be filled with things only to please your king. See the music of Haydn for an example of this. In some cases, a patron would even modify the work of art however he desired. It sucks.
Besides, there was no one like Brittany: no one had her mix of innocence and sexual confidence. She was popular for a reason. If you don't understand why, it just shows that you are also out of touch with the tastes of modern culture.
Qxe4
Patronage was horrible. You had to compose, perform, or do nothing, all based on what your royal sponsor demanded of the evening. You art would be filled with things only to please your king. See the music of Haydn for an example of this. In some cases, a patron would even modify the work of art however he desired. It sucks.
I realize that you were trying to contrast patronage with what we've got now, but I don't see the real difference between what you've described and being under contract to a major label.
Put identity in the browser.
If you feel that you have no voice in the government, the way to change the government is not through anonymous piracy. Engage in civil protest or violent revolution -- whatever works for you.
I'm starting to be sick of this idea you and others repeat over and over again.
If I feel I have no voice in the government, I will do exactly as I please, just like everyone else.
For example, I can decide that I'll only follow laws to the extent I can be forced to. Thus, I might break any and all unenforceable laws, just for the sake of it.
And I don't really care if it's "the way" as you say.
Creating a government that doesn't represent the people can obviously be great for its members and the people powerful enough to manipulate them (and so, it).
Expecting everyone else to follow the rules because it's the right thing to do...
--Most of us here are for fair copyright--
Or even -minimum- copyright. The purpose of having it at all, is to encourage the creation of works. So it follows that the length of protesction, and the strength of protection should be the minimum required to stimulate such creation.
What length that is, and what strength that is, is offcourse debatable, but I haven't seen any coherent argument that todays rules aren't MASSIVE giveaways.
Does -anyone- honestly believe that there'd be less music released if copyright was for 28 years (the original terms in USA) rather than life-of-author plus 70 years ? Would *any* musicians go "Screw that, if I can only profit for the next 28 years, I'm not gonna bother!" -- does that sound plausible to you ?
Does anyone write computer-games, expecting to earn significantly from them for a period LONGER than 28 years ? I seriously doubt it, and I don't think it'll be easy to find anyone who -does- believe that.
In economic terms, 28 years is (more than!) two thirds of forever anyway. If you assume 4% deprecation pro year (i.e. that given a choice between $100 now or $104 one year from now, you consider both offers similarily attractive) then a fixed income-stream has 70% of it's value in the first 28 years.
And -that- is assuming the income-stream is fixed, which is HIGHLY unrealistic, to the contrary, I would guess that most copyrighted works have 90% of their sales in the first 5 years after release. For some classes of works, such as computergames even this is understating it, I bet most computer-games have 95% of their dollar-value in sales inside of the first 3 years after release.
As a small voice of support for your position, this is more or less how Prohibition got repealed. The cumulative affect of a very significant portion of the population simply ignoring the law until it could no longer stand. I'm not saying it can or will work for copyright, there were additional factors in Prohibition relating to the public health risks posed both by the smugglers and dangerously unregulated booze production that just don't exist in this case, but it is an analogous if not identical situation.
Having said that, I definitely feel that most of the parties involved in this dispute are being unreasonable. Content creators (or rather the huge companies that "represent" them) are clearly overreaching what they can reasonably claim both in terms of length of copyright and what rights are granted. The Government is clearly giving more weight to the rights of content companies than to rights of consumers, which is both unfair and a violation of its mandate. Many if not most of the "information wants to be free" crowd seem perfectly content to drive the people who create content completely out of business. This is doubly foolish since it both hurts the content creators, in the end, the consumers themselves. Rather like "fishing out" an area, many of these voracious consumers of content may find that should they ever succeed in in their quest they will have no content to consume.
It seems to me that while the concept of copyright is sound, its terms and duration are currently excessive. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to "unmake" regulation. I am not really sure what the answer is.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
internationally, this success creates a major problem for the RIAA's efforts to get draconian IP laws passed by foreign governments.
There is no doubt in my mind that this is very damaging to the RIAA. That's another example of the point I've been making that they have the dumbest lawyers working for them. They don't know when to stop being greedy; they could easily have asked for a lesser amount, but chose to ask for anything up to the maximum. Now look how much good they have done for their clients.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
There is a well-documented psychological phenomenon where people who can't do something believe it is easy for the people who can do it.
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