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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
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.
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.
While it's difficult to second guess the decisions a trial lawyer makes, it is hard for me to understand why defendant's lawyers gave the plaintiffs a free pass on the MediaSentry/Jacobson nonsense, and didn't even call their own expert. It is likewise difficult to understand why the jurors weren't instructed as to what the plaintiffs had to prove in order to establish a "distribution", or why it was assumed that they were entitled to recover statutory damages (as opposed to actual damages) at all, there having been no questions or instructions relating to the essential elements of that.
But I should point out that this outsized verdict (a) makes it inevitable that the verdict will be set aside, and (b) cripples the RIAA's attempts to justify their statutory damages theory as against constitutional attack. Had the jury awarded $50,000 or $60,000 the RIAA would have more of a chance to hold on to the verdict, and would have had a less embarrassing precedent to try to defend in other cases.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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.
The lawyers, no matter how good, were up against one major obstacle during both trials. And that obstacle is that the evidence overwhelmingly said she was guilty of what they were accusing her of.
I don't like the RIAA either. And I also think this award is even more silly than the last one. But that makes two juries now that have found this twit guilty. Its time for her to fess up, quit trying to play the victim, and settle for a few thousand dollars.
And if the intarwebs community wants to be taken seriously in their fight for reasonable copyright laws, they need to find a better case to rally around. One where the accused person really is innocent. Continuing to support Jammie Thomas-Whateveritis only makes us look like stupid pirates.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
because the punishment doesn't even come close to the crime.
There's that word again. There was no crime. There is no crime.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
Probably because the realization that the expert witness (I read the written testimony, and I know Yongdae Kim as a colleague: he is an excellent and honest researcher and professor) can't really contribute to the defense.
This is a civil trial, in terms of probabilities. The probability of misidentification of the computer goes way down when you remove the wireless, password protect the computer, and go from there.
The problem is, Media Sentry's evidence is pretty compelling: Identify her IP, identify her commonly used username, identify the songs, and she wasn't offering up a defense of being a poisoner/spreading bogus files.
As much as you'd like to believe it is nonsense, an honest expert witness for the defense would be forced to acknowledge all of this.
Yongdae Kim's written testimony mostly covered cases which could not have occured (no wireless, etc) and which were specifically ruled out by the judge for being irrelevant possibilities, or which would be exceedingly unlikely (a trojan on the system soley for KaZaA, IP address hijacking which, if Ms Thomas's computer was on, might result in RST storms from unexpected data, dropping the hijacker, by a hijacker who anyway was trying specifically to frame Ms Thomas), and on the stand he'd have to say so.
This is likely why Dr Kim was not put on the stand: during mock cross examination, Ms Thomas's laywer realized just how damaging Dr Kim's testimony would be in the hands of a plantiff's attorney.
Test your net with Netalyzr
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
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
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.
No-one is this dumb, but in the interest of education, it's called a tort.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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."
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.
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.
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!
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...