Slashdot Mirror
How RIAA Case Should Have Played Out
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "If a regular 'country lawyer' like myself had taken a case like the RIAA's in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset to court, he or she would have been laughed out of the courthouse. But when it's the RIAA suing, the plaintiffs are awarded a $1.92 million verdict for the infringement of $23.76 worth of song files. That's because RIAA litigation proceeds in a parallel universe, which on its face looks like litigation, but isn't. On my blog I fantasize as to how the trial would have ended had it taken place not in the 'parallel universe,' but in the real world of litigation. In that world, the case would have been dismissed. And if the Judge had submitted it to the jury instead of dismissing, and the jury had ruled in favor of the RIAA, the 'statutory damages' awarded would have been less than $18,000."
The RIAA represent imaginary goods, so their cases take place in an imaginary land.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While it may be depressing about the RIAA getting away with it's imaginary world crap, it is good to see that, for everyone else, ridiculous claims are generally seen as such in the court of law. It's good to get some of that perspective back on /.; now all we need to do is figure out a way to snap the RIAA and it's litigation machine back into the real world.
Thanks for the post, we here at /. don't always get to see the inside workings of what should have, could have, been the logical outcome.
I'm going to get modded down for this, but I don't care the RIAA is nothing better than being served up as crow bait
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
What's stopping EFF or other entities like this 'country lawyer' to find somebody infringing on someone who's willing to participate and try taking this case to court and see how much damages the court awards. or even better, set up the exact circumstance as per the case, but use different music, ie performed by artists who support the cause. Are there any law stopping people defendant/plaintiff conspiring to go to court to make precedents?
What do you mean, should have? You state, "Copyright Act holds that statutory damages should bear a reasonable relationship to actual damages". And yet the statute also states damages can can range from $750 per infringement up to $150,000.
It seems to me that the jury followed the law, they just didn't follow it in a way you would like.
Personally, I have not purchased a CD in almost 10 years, and I will not purchase another CD from an RIAA label EVER. That is the only way we can make our voices heard... DO NOT BUY FROM THEM.
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
Your fantasy-land in which intellectual property has no value, and clearly guilty people have the cases against them dismissed... that's the imaginary one.
Did you even bother to read Ray's post? I'm guessing not.
Ray points out some extremely simple things that were overlooked. Here's one example:
The jury should have been required to make findings as to (a) the date defendant commenced using an âoeonline media distribution systemâ (Kazaa) and (b) the copyright registration effective date of each work they find was infringed. The jury could have been instructed that no statutory damages could be awarded as to any work whose copyright registration effective date was subsequent to the date of defendant's commencement of use of Kazaa [or the Court could itself have made that determination based on the answers to the verdict form].
I don't recall the exact details off the top of my head, but basically if you want to bring a lawsuit over copyright in the U.S., you need to have registered that copyright. Under Berne, copyright attaches at the moment of creation (fixation), but the U.S. requires registration of works if there's going to be a case about it (at least for domestic works). This is a simple technical detail, but if the works were registered after any copying or distribution happened, it is an important fact.
Also, Ray is not saying IP has no value.... sounds like you have an axe to grind and are just looking for a place to do it.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I purchased the full albums (and a few singles) of the songs that she downloaded and put them on eBay in one single auction. I put the listing at $1.92 million for the starting bid. However, eBay took my listing down, thinking it was a fraudulent listing. I tried explaining to them on the phone that these 19 CDs worth of music were worth $1.92 million, I even linked them THREE DOZEN news articles reporting the value.
Here's a list of the songs she downloaded.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/23534
No, see, you think of Ray as some sort of amazing lawyer, because he's popular around here. But he was wrong about this. Plain and simple. Lawyers from both sides, and judges, and juries, all looked at this case, and the conclusion was that she was in the wrong and had to pay. For him to claim that all those people did it wrong, and his conclusion must be the best... it's the height of arrogance (or maybe just a play for more views for his blog).
Ray's not an amazing lawyer but he's a good guy and has helped inform us on Slashdot more than once. What he did in this article is point out some rudimentary laws and facts that he thinks should have not only influenced the trial but changed the outcome drastically. I think this interesting and shows one of two things: 1) the RIAA is definitely in bed with the judicial system on many levels and/or 2) the emergence of a new technology can often have differing effects on certified lawyers and lawmakers upon its advent. In our case, we have the amazing thing that is the internet and while some people are using one set of archaic laws to deal with it and keep it under control, other peoples might use other archaic laws. Some might even go so far as to posit that no archaic laws have been made that fairly address the internet.
I think if you read Ray's posts, he may not be an amazing lawyer but he is a certified lawyer who is offering you a different professional view of the current state of things. I gotta admit, what he says makes a whole lot more than what I read about in the papers. $80,000 a song as an award in the latest trial? What?
My work here is dung.
http://i646.photobucket.com/albums/uu187/weirdslashjunk/tagracism.png?t=1245608323
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
From Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge:
> The newer (September 2008) editions have a total of $20,580
That wouldn't go far to pay off $1.9M. Perhaps if you had the most valuable set ever:
> The Guinness Book of World Records states that a set worth $2,000,000 and made of
> 23-carat gold, with rubies and sapphires atop the chimneys of the houses and hotels,
> is the most expensive Monopoly set ever produced.
but just barely!
At least from a damages perspective though, we should treat all of those infringements as having a net total worth of that song's fraction of the album's value. Everyone might not be particularly happy with their fraction of a sale but in theory everyone agreed to the contracts that setup the whole divvying scheme (bargaining power is a discussion for another day).
You're not doing a very convincing job of constructing an argument. So far you have
- ad hominem: You only think Ray's good cause he's popular on Slashdot
- argument from authority: lawyers, judges, and juries must be right
- another ad hominem: for Ray to claim those guys are wrong, wow, what arrogance!
Ray's blog, on the other hand, contains actual substantive arguments pertaining to proper procedures (who should be allowed to testify and with what caveats or warnings) and prior case history (what is the relationship between award of damages and monetary harm). He might be wrong, but then so might be the jury.
In fact, if the jury thinks the way you've presented your arguments, they'll just think, "Wow, all these really masterful lawyers on one side, they can't be wrong--I'll just trust whatever they say and not think about it!" The judge, if he or she shares the approach you took in this post, is liable to be similarly swayed.
...Just go into Wal-Mart and steal the damn CDs!
:rolls eyes:)
I mean seriously don't do that, but if you go into Wal-Mart and steal a CD most likely nothing is going to happen to you if you get caught with one CD on you. Maybe they'll call the cops to come scare you, and that's a maybe.
Just getting a copy off the internet though (not even depriving another person or store of the actual CD even) will cost you MILLIONS. I mean really, 1.92 million? I mean if she gave 100% of every paycheck she ever makes, even at a decent wage, she probably won't make that much money in her LIFE. So destroying someones entire existance because they downloaded some songs? Does that seem just?
In Lane County, Oregon (google about our Jail situation, where they have a comuter program to determine who gets released early based on certain criteria) a guy was sentenced to 1 year in jail by a judge for rape. The jails are so over crowded that they (the computer program) let him out after 3 hours!! 2 weeks later he raped and murdered some other lady. (We're all hoping they keep this guy in next time for at least a week
So a rapist gets 3 hours of Jail time, and someone who DL'ed Kazaa to her computer gets their life ruined?
The RIAA are pulling some strings behind the scene I think it's obvious to say.
Sorry NewYorkCountryLawyer, In the "real world", the case would not have been dismissed. It would've ended with a guilty verdict in small claims court.
no statutory damages could be awarded as to any work whose copyright registration effective date was subsequent to the date of defendant's commencement of use of Kazaa
I'm sorry but this logic is laughable. Say I started using Kazaa in 2005. In 2006 I take a newly produced and copywritten album and share it, no problem! The effective date of the copyright (2006) is subsequent to when I started using Kazaa (2005), so I'm in the clear. The earlier you start file sharing, the better!
If you're ever on a jury in the United States, the legal system will wrongly try to convince you that they're either guilty or not guilty, but there is a third way: nullification or veto powers.
This is when you think the law is bad, or you otherwise cannot convict them under it by your conscience. It still exists to this day, but simply remains mostly unknown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
In this case, I would have absolutely nullified a potential $2 million fine. Did she do it? Sure. But it's a bad law resulting in excessive fines.
It only takes one juror who knows his or her rights to stop this kind of crap. For more information as your rights at a juror, see the Fully Informed Jury Association.
http://fija.org/
-SKO
The judicial system deserves more blame the RIAA for this. The judicial system is setup, guided and managed purely to serve the interests of the lawyers.
And they do everything to make it complicated, slow and expensive. They make the laws and they get paid to fight for/against it as well.
Yes, Ray is claiming that all those people did it wrong and I have no idea if he's right. But he is giving a list of arguments to support his point.
So if you want to claim that he is wrong, you should show that those arguments are wrong.
So far, all you are saying is "a lot of judges and lawyers agreed on this, therefore the decision is correct", like there's never been a wrong judgement in the history of mankind.
The blog post ignores the fact that a trial is a dynamic process. Had he made the arguments he lists, then RIAA lawyers would quite likely have countered them with appropriate arguments and evidence. For example:
Liability-Reproduction right
Plaintiffs failed to introduce an iota of evidence that Jammie Thomas-Rasset had made a single copy using Kazaa.
Result: directed verdict on reproduction right.
If he made that argument at trial, the RIAA would almost certainly have introduced evidence that bit-for-bit identical copies of the songs in question are available on Kazaa, that such an identical copy is unlikely to have occurred if she ripped the song herself, and that she didn't own the albums in question. Circumstantial evidence, perhaps, but probably enough to get the issue to the jury instead of a directed verdict.
Some of his statements are questionable as a matter of law:
The jury should have been instructed that a "work" is an album, and that multiple mp3's from one album constitutes a single "work".
There is not particularly strong precedent on this issue. Some courts have held that this is the case, it's true, but as best I can find they were only district courts and not in the same circuit as Minnesota (where the Thomas case was held), further diminishing their already merely persuasive authority. I do not believe there is any mandatory authority on this point for the District of Minnesota, which means that the RIAA lawyers may well have been successful in persuading the judge to adopt a one song, one work basis for calculating statutory damages.
Some of his statements sound impressive but wouldn't have made a difference:
The jury could have been instructed that no statutory damages could be awarded as to any work whose copyright registration effective date was subsequent to the date of defendant's commencement of use of Kazaa
A quick check at the US Copyright Registry of a random selection of the songs that Ms. Thomas infringed shows that they were registered many years ago, in some cases over a decade ago, and easily predated any infringement by Ms. Thomas.
Ultimately, this is about drumming up interest in his law firm and ad revenue from his blog, which Slashdot happily hands him about once a week or so. It also does a lot to poison the potential jury pool for future copyright litigation, which is of great interest to a lawyer who works those kinds of cases on the side of the defense. One should take everything Mr. Beckerman says about these issues with a grain of salt appropriate to the magnitude of his self-interest.
In short, this is nothing but Monday morning quarterbacking, and not particularly good quarterbacking at that. It should also tell one something that most of his legal arguments are not backed up by citations to relevant authorities.
> But he was wrong about this. Plain and simple
How could he be "wrong" about this? He predicted the outcome?
All he claims is that in his opinion the law reads in a certain way; he's much too smart to assume that the court system is going to agree with him.
You, on the other hand, seem to have a knee-jerk between your ears. Get over it, and start to tolerate other people's opinions.
I'm sad to see this judgment turn out the way it did. But I can't help but wish Ray had reported with a little bit less spin. Every time he had a story submission, it was like it was a guaranteed fact that the RIAA was on the ropes and there was no way Thomas would lose. I understand the PR world and how you want to leave the overwhelming impression that there's no way you can lose because sometimes that actually helps you win. But I don't think the slashdot crowd was very well served. I would have liked a more neutral point of view where from time to time they said things like, "yes, this bit DOES suck but it's likely it will apply based on other court judgments."
I know Ray pointed out several things that he thought were just plain wrong, but I start feeling like I'm not sure if I'm reading the neutral factual opinion or the press release version. As it stands, the laws are pretty stacked against the way most of on slashdot wish it was. Until we get those changed, I see little hope for courtroom victories.
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Straw man arguments are lies.
Your fantasy-land in which intellectual property has no value, and clearly guilty people have the cases against them dismissed... that's the imaginary one.
True. But it's not an unachievable one. Give the politics time to catch up.
I read the Wikipedia article. It specifically says that nullifcation is a de facto right in *criminal* trials. Isn't this case a tort?
Yah; it's terrible the way you RIAA ghouls abuse those whose interests you purport to serve.
Requiem for the American Dream
Hey NYCL, maybe you'd be interested in heading up a campaign to collect some funds from those of us in the know to educate the masses. I know from experience that the biggest problem with these court cases is ignorance. The judges sound like they're catching up, but I believe the persons on jury panels are still ignorant of the real dollar values involved and the facts surrounding the RIAA's abuses of the judicial system.
The first thing that comes to mind is that there are scads of advertisements from the MPAA and the RIAA that go to great lengths to equate copyright infringement with criminal theft (a very successful campaign I might point out based upon ignorant comments on this very website). What the world needs right now is not love, but balance. We're lacking *any* kind of counterpoint regarding consumer digital rights. I'd be thrilled to pieces to see one shred of advertisement (a billboard ad, paid ad time on network TV, etc.) that presented the opposition to the RIAA and the MPAA.
In short, if someone were to take the lead and head up a group that took funds from the public that were then used in a campaign of this sort, then I would be the first person in line to donate some cash.
I know, the EFF is *supposed* to be leading the charge on this, but I've seen not one physical manifestation of their efforts. Advertising on the Internet is cheap...but obviously not as effective as a commercial that equates stealing a car with downloading a song.
Anyone?
I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
It is a shame this post got modded down as I am sure mine will be as well. But the truth is that the law on the books is fully against the defended in this case. As for defendants it would be hard to pick a worse one. If the jury believed this defendant destroyed evidence then it makes the defendant look guilty and scheming. This case was never going to get won by this defendant based on the existing law.
I'm not saying I agree with the law. But it is the law and it doesn't appear to be going any where. US consumers don't seem to care either as the politicians haven't gotten the message that this is some thing they could be voted out of power over. "Home of the free"? Humbug.
I wouldn't care about this case at all if it wasn't for the fact that big US media and US politicians are tripping over them selves to try and force Canada to abandon it's Constitution and Charter of Rights.
As a Brit, I'm aware that my own country's legal system has gone rather downhill over the last 30 years. But the thing that strikes a European most about the US legal system is its cruelty. Punitive damages. Unconvicted defendants for white collar crimes going into court with wire ties binding their wrists. Three strikes and you're out for even a trivial third offense. "Humane" systems of execution where executioners spin out the proceedings for hours. Obviously practice varies greatly across the US States, just as some EU countries (ahem, Greece, ahem) have crap legal systems and others like Germany have good ones. But you only have to look at the outcome of the Pirate Bay case in Sweden, and this one, to see the disproportion involved. The effect of the Pirate Bay case on the European elections (and now a German MEP has defected to the Pirate Party) also shows the different levels of popular tolerance involved.
US citizens need to start growing a backbone. You do not have to support criminal activity to demand that corporations not be allowed to take over and distort the legal system.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
When your friend starts eating his toast with the buttered side down, he's just a little quirky.
When he packages his hair and nail clippings and burns them on a toy boat in the backyard pool, he's eccentric.
When he kills the neighbor's cat and wears the skin on his head proclaiming himself the beast master, he's bat-shit insane.
We've reached stage three with the RIAA, and now everyone can see it. It's time for treatment.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Okay, but are you willing to agree that 2 million dollars (AKA financial ruin of a mother assuming Chapter 13 bankruptcy doesn't work, and for 3 years if it does) is fair? Especially for an act that has been performed billions upon billions of times?
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Given the rest of the case, ultimately the best they could do is argue for more limited damages.
I suspect that the 2nd jury award was an amount greater than the revenue recieved on these songs in a year.
The rationale given for these "stautory damage" law is the difficulty
in computing the harm done to a plaintiff by copyright infringement.
I propose that such harm is not hard to compute at all and that such
harm should be easy to relate to actual revenue generated.
IOW, damages for copyright (even commercial infringement) should not
be much greater than what can be computed from actual sales, actual
demonstrated file transfers or actual revenue.
The fairy land damages theory needs to put to bed.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I am sure I am not alone in wondering why NYCL hasn't taken up the cause directly. It is a problem of venue or being licensed somewhere specific? If the case could be won "easily" then I have to wonder why it isn't being done?
I'm sure this has been posted a million times.
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet devised by man,
by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
--Thomas Jefferson
Did this country lawyer's client create the impression that he or she was lying to a jury? I think we shouldn't ignore that element, because it is probably the most significant single factor that lead to the large judgment.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
If we take as a given that this farce got as far as it has because the system is broken, then we must consider how to fix the system.
So, how can this system be fixed, and what can I personally do to help?
Outcomes like this $1.92 million in damages for nothing hurt and weaken our system. Whatever a person's stand on copyright and Thomas' guilt, I'm seeing agreement that the amount is excessive and unfair. It reinforces cynical ideas that the whole system is corrupt, shot full of bribery and payoffs. It's also, as everyone realizes, complete bull. The fine is uncollectable. She'll never have the money. She's stuck now for years more litigation, trying to appeal all this. If this fine is ultimately upheld or she feels that the agonies of further fighting are worse than giving up, she is stuck having her wages garnished for the rest of her life, or going through bankruptcy, or maybe fleeing to another nation and asking for asylum.
Dred Scott was another unjust decision. That one lead to Civil War. Other issues have lead to civil unrest. The courts and lawmakers should think about such things when they do their work.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
That's because you're a shitty lawyer.
I now have several billion dollars worth of cds sitting at home that I can sell at the new going rate and retire off of.
There are several issues that need to be determined.
First - suppose you run a store, and some kid comes in, steals a candy bar, and eats it. You call the law, you call the parents, everyone shows up. Most definitely, someone owes you SOMETHING. The candy bar has a street value of about a dollar. (Oddly, that's pretty close to the street value of a single soundtrack.) What do you demand as recompense? Most store owners don't want the dollar, because they are pissed off. Most store owners don't demand a million dollar payoff, either. Among other reasons, neither the parents, nor the cops, nor a judge, nor any jury is going to go along with such a thing.
So - what is reasonable? Personally, I make the KID pay for his candy bar, by working it off. Tell the parents that he can work in the store for a week, cleaning, mopping, or whatever, OR, you'll take the matter to court.
Compare that to RIAA. They want THOUSANDS of dollars for a ripped off song which has a similar street value to my candy bar. Do you not think that is preposterous? Do you not think that there are issues that need to be resolved here?
In my most honest opinion, Jammie owes the record companies a couple dollars to pay for her downloaded songs. She owes something in the way of punitive damages. 24 songs, at a buck apiece, is 24 bucks. Drawing on ancient tort law, let's treble the damages, so she now owes 72 bucks. If she had been offered this deal from the get-go, her conscience might have convinced her that 72 bucks was a good deal, and paid it.
Even if it goes to court, and a hard fought case goes to RIAA, no sane judge is going to award a million bucks. I invite you to check out your own court system in your own home town. First time offenders convicted of petty theft generally pay restitution, a small fine, court costs, and community service. If there is no lawyer involved, total cost is maybe $1500 bucks. Paying a lawyer in my home town would add 500 bucks to the bill, your mileage may differ.
Personally, as I've said, Jammy probably is guilty of something. But, guilty or not, the penalty has to be something within the realms of reason.
HOWEVER!!! Illegal evidence has never been admissable in a criminal court, nor should it be encouraged in a civil court. RIAA has a lot to answer for, regarding their "investigative" techniques. MediaSentry, among other things, has been shot so full of holes, it resembles the Titanic. Forensic evidence is never properly obtained, documented, or presented. The courts don't even seem to understand what all this evidence is SUPPOSED to mean, let alone examine it to determine if it's legal, and technically correct.
Bottom line, RIAA are a bunch of parasites who manage to get by because they shout "THIEF" more loudly than their victims can.
Let's put RIAA out of everyone's misery, then we might all get together to come up with some sane laws. Note, I don't even say "fair laws". For the sake of this argument, I only require "sane".
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'm not arguing for Ray or against him, it just makes me think: if the rule of law has been overridden in specific cases (such as possibly in the said trial, or in certain interrogations of terrorist suspects that have supposedly taken place, or, more prominently, in the case of the Guantanamo prisoners) -- can it still be called "rule of law" at all? Or, to put it the other way round: how many such exceptions to "due process" must occur before the "rule of law" should stop being called that? It's a lot like those girls who take it in the mouth and in the ass and elsewhere -- but never in the pussy, so that they can go on calling themselves technically "virgins".
Intellectual Property: an immaterial non-entity, most fiercely contended by those with no proper intellect to speak of.
>financial ruin of a mother assuming Chapter 13 bankruptcy doesn't work, and for 3 years if it does
Ask again, once you can show that any amount of money has been collected from her.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Thanks!
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
First, note that a single download is worth 3 and a third dead people. Obviously something is a bit out of kilter here, but let's assume at this point that it is the valuation of dead people.
At $80,000 per song, I estimate the value of my hard drive at $1.8 BILLION dollars. Yes, billion with a B. By that logic, I should be able to copy my collection onto cheap external hard drives (Seagate's outlet store was just selling them for $25) and mail them out to five people. Those people would then pass on the billions of free dollars to five others, and so on, and so on, and so on... Just think about it, no more foreclosed homes, no more poverty, no more hunger!
What you say? It's imaginary money? But the judicial system just ruled it real!
ALL YOUR BASS ARE BELONG TO US.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
"In my most honest opinion, Jammie owes the record companies a couple dollars to pay for her downloaded songs. She owes something in the way of punitive damages. 24 songs, at a buck apiece, is 24 bucks. Drawing on ancient tort law, let's treble the damages, so she now owes 72 bucks. If she had been offered this deal from the get-go, her conscience might have convinced her that 72 bucks was a good deal, and paid it."
It's important to keep in mind that she was nailed for distributing, not downloading. When you use the word "damages" here I think you may be thinking in terms of downloading. For instance, if I found a way to get free songs from the iTunes or Amazon store and managed to download 24 tracks before caught but did not distribute them, then it would fit the framework you've described. But that's not what she did -- she was making them available. In this case it did not matter how the tracks got into her share directory.
The issue here is that the limits for statutory damages are a remnant of the days when large-scale distribution required one person to have a lot of resources, and thus was almost always for profit. Given the new reality of sharing a track with thousands or millions of people with just a few clicks and at very low cost, the limits for statutory damages should be scaled back immensely (less than $1,000 per work), or at the very least, a separate set of limits should apply to commercial vs. non-commercial infringement, so that the courts can still wreak serious financial harm to the folks churning out fake Windows CDs by the pallet.
I should also point out that while she was taken to court for sharing 24 songs, she had something like 1,500 tracks in her share directory. This is fitting with the RIAA's usual tactic of going after the "whales" of file sharing; if you have just a few dozen tracks in your share directory you're less liable to be caught. To use an ugly analogy, Timonthy McVeigh killed 168 people but was charged only for the murder of 11 federal agents (in addition to some other charges not relating to particular victoms). I take it that this is relatively common in the legal system; only charge them for enough to get the punishment you want.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I had the same reaction. I think the size of the fine is monstrous. But it is all too real. A real court reached that verdict and the fine stands. It should not, but it does. But the RIAA has pyrrhic victory. They have delegitimized themselves in the eyes of the general public. As I have said before, the entertainment industry is going about this all wrong.
WTF?
I'm not happy with Obama either, but WTF does this have to do with the RIAA v. Thomas case?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
If you know enough to nullify it, odds are extremely good that you'll be dismissed during the selection process. As much as we here on slashdot love to poke fun at lawyers, they're usually pretty smart, and will pick a jury they feel will get them the verdict they desire.
---- The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. -Thomas Jefferson
That's right! No more soup for you RIAA!! I sure as hell won't pay them if they're just gonna sue consumers instead. What a great marketing plan for lawyers that want backstage passes....and lobby sex.
Speaking of misinformation, you're full of shit.
Please.
Kazaa is a file-sharing program.
Downloads default to your "shared files" folder. Shared files default to "share."
Which to a jury means exactly what you think it does.
There is neat little progress graph which shows which files are on the move and which are waiting in line.
You have a nickname.
You can chat with other users.
There is an option to scan the shared files of other users - and scoop up all you can eat.
There are options to set limits on your upstream and downstream traffic. When you try to close the program, you will warned if files are still in transit.
What Kazaa does and how it works is perfectly transparent.
In civil law, you are responsible for the consequences which can be reasonably be expected to follow from your actions.
That you shut your eyes to the truth is not a defense.
Stupid is not a defense.
But being too clever by half will sink you.
The geek is Wile E. Coyote - Super Genius - in court. He expects the system to roll over and play dead just because he says so.
....bidding voluntarily to the $1.92 Million price tag on Ebay is way too fair, and therefore, should be considered "fraud".
Not to worry. Pretty soon there will be no more record labels and no more music to buy as the piracy puts everyone out of business. And I hope everyone that cheers on piracy remembers this. I also hope that when they complain that there's no good music being put out, that one of the primary reasons is that you're stealing the stuff that you consider good, so they can only support the stuff that makes money. The stuff you don't steal. If someone steals from a store, the police come and put them in jail. If we don't afford IP businesses the same protection from theft, then how can we expect to keep IP? It's true these people should not be sued. But they should go to jail just as if they were to steal anything else. It affects us all because the billions a year lost from music piracy affects the entire economy. Only when someone steal music and puts it on an online file sharing, they aren't simply doing the damage of one unit, they are redistributing it and causing the loss of much greater sales. Maybe suing people isn't the greatest thing to do. But until the law decides to help out by enforcing the law and throwing thieves in jail, there is nothing else the labels can do to protect themselves from being stolen out of business. Luckily a lot of courts seem to understand this. They know that the case of the RIAA is not the same as other issues that would be laughed out of court.
$24 is the price they charge for 24 licenses for consumer use of songs. Licenses to make and distribute an unlimited, untracked, number copies generally go for a few orders of magnitude more than $1 per license.
I don't think saying that an act "has been performed billions upon billions of times" is really an excuse. If that argument holds true is it okay if I murder someone? How many times has that happened since the dawn of time? And it sure seems to be a more natural act than file sharing.
Yes, Ray is claiming that all those people did it wrong and I have no idea if he's right. But he is giving a list of arguments to support his point. So if you want to claim that he is wrong, you should show that those arguments are wrong.
My blog post was written specifically to an audience of experienced lawyers. Any regular litigator knows that the procedural errors I pointed out are correct. And any regular copyright lawyer, litigator or not, knows that the substantive legal errors I pointed out are also correct. By saying that you "have no idea if he's right" you are demonstrating intellectual integrity, something in short supply these days. So thank you.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
On the contrary. It's a very good argument. If we were in the middle of a violent revolution, a nuclear holocaust, the aftermath of an asteroid impact, etc. in the U.S. and people were killing each other just to stay alive, it would be difficult to argue that one particular shooting deserved murder charges unless it involved killing some famous public official or something. It's not a question of how many times it has happened over time, but rather a question of whether the people committing the crime are a small enough minority that punishing them all is practical. If even a quarter of the population does something illegal, prosecuting them all is impractical, and prosecuting a few to "set an example" is unlikely to be effective. Thus, unless the goal is to make revenue (speeding tickets, catching tax cheats, etc.), it just doesn't make sense.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
they should have found her guilty and fined her one dollar
No text.
Lawyers only get a limited number of "rejections" in a court case, they don't get to go through and reject anyone they don't like - that would violate the right to trial by a jury of your peers. They have to be careful about who they pick, and if they have a concern about someone they generally all go into a back room - sometimes with the proposed juror - and discuss the issue before deciding.
So no, the odds are not extremely good, I am very surprised that there was apparently nobody on the jury who had a clue, or who thought such fines were outrageous. The jury actually RAISED the fines - the RIAA was not asking for $80,000 per song.
Frankly, I don't understand it, she must have done something to piss off the entire jury.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Yes, I am an AC, but I do have a very genuine question which I am hoping somebody with both technical and law knowledge can answer.
If a good is degraded while being attempted to re-produce, does the original copyright still apply?
For example, I have seen live amateur musicians playing famous "copyrighted" songs where they tell before performance that they would change the lyrics a word or to two to avoid the "infringement" issue. Because it is not the same thing, the copyright does not apply.
I am sure that if I hear a tune playing in FM radio, and I record it from the radio, then even though it is a copy, I have not infringed anything. Two possible reasons for this infringement waiver could be 1) because the audio quality is much degraded, or 2) this is fair use, I am just capturing what I am hearing, and my hearing was legal.
If the degradation in quality is reason, then suppose if person A uses a DVD ripper that degrades the quality to 50% (say to fit a 8.5GB disk into a 4.7GB) disk, but still good enough for viewing, is it still the same thing? Every damn bits are different, so how is this a "copy"?
If this quality degradation is not an issue, then even someone repeating a movie line would be copyright infringement since he has made a copy of a part of the movie audio (though very poor in quality though) using a reproduction machine that consists of human memory cells and human vocal chords.
The point I am trying to make is that, upto what degradation level it is considered a copy, and beyond which it is not a copy and hence not infringed?
On the other hand, if hearing the song and recording it was "fair use", would it also be fair use if I play a copyrighted song on my computer and then capture the audio stream using a recorder?
If you're ever on a jury in the United States, the legal system will wrongly try to convince you that they're either guilty or not guilty, but there is a third way: nullification or veto powers.
God.
This is dumb.
In a civil trial the jury makes a simple finding of fact for the plaintiff or defendant.
The entire process of a modern jury trial is intended to strip a case of its emotion. It doesn't always work that way, of course.
But Hearts and Flowers it ain't.
The juror will be typically be middle aged, middle class, small-C conservative.
In the federal system, the panel will more or less be a creation of the judge - and a judge almost by definition is a middle aged small-C conservative. He is looking for men and women who have come to do a job and not to play the system.
The size of the federal jury pool and the element of randomness in its selection does not favor the lone nullifier.
He probably won't get a case he gives a damn about. He almost certainly won't give a damn about you.
Nullification - of course - has always cut both ways.
The black American through almost the whole of our history could tell you that much.
But I have always been a little bit puzzled about why the geek thinks a jury will be any way inclined to throw a lifeline out to him.
The geek builds castles in the air. He whines. He wheedles. He lies like a rug. He could have settled this business quickly and cheaply and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
She lied in court and destroyed evidence, plus she was quite simply undeniably guilty of what she was accused of. That tends to piss juries off, as far as I can tell.
I write bullshit
If even a quarter of the population does something illegal, prosecuting them all is impractical, and prosecuting a few to "set an example" is unlikely to be effective. Thus, unless the goal is to make revenue (speeding tickets, catching tax cheats, etc.), it just doesn't make sense.
A recent questionnaire revealed that 1/3 of South African males have committed rape. Think rape should be legalized there?
Note: I'm *not* comparing file sharing/copyright infringement with rape, only that part of your argument seems to fall through in this particular scenario...
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
I covered the "distributing", I believe. Apparently, you skipped over it. Copyright infringement was meant to apply to people using copyrighted material for commercial gain. Copyright never was meant to prevent an individual from making copies for himself, or for friends, for which he is not paid. In today's world, friends might be located all around the globe, and you may not even know their real names - but being a member of the filesharing community makes them your friend.
RIAA makes little if any distinction between people distributing for financial gain, and people who are just sharing. The law needs to address that little oversight. At most, it's an aggravating circumstance to a petty theft when a private individual is involved.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
[...], if I found a way to get free songs from the iTunes or Amazon store and managed to download 24 tracks before caught but did not distribute them, then it would fit the framework you've described. But that's not what she did -- she was making them available.
Did she distribute them? Making narcotics available (intent to distribute) is rightly a lesser offence than actual distribution, the same should be true here. Was there proof that she distributed the tracks, that anyone got the tracks from her _alone_ (not just contributory copyright infringement). Did she intend to distribute them?
From what I can tell she thoroughly intended to download them but not to distribute them. Nor does there appear to be any evidence of actual distribution. In which case the punishment is absurd.
I've not followed this too closely, please correct me if necessary.
YHBT.
My sig can beat up your sig.
So if due to a copyright infringement you cannot make any sales at all you are not entitled to any compensation? Double plus plus uncrazy for mentioning "fairy land" in this post.
No, I don't think rape should be legalized, nor did I say that mass downloading/uploading of music should be legalized. However, that's a great example. It is a broad societal problem, and thus can't be solved by jailing the individual offenders. It can only usefully be solved through education to rid people of the ridiculous notion that raping a virgin will cure AIDS. You have to fix the underlying problem---the lack of education---not the symptom.
In the case of mass music downloading/uploading, education is the only way that it might realistically be reduced, and if that doesn't work, no number of arrests is going to make a dent. The war on drugs is another example of this sort of broad problem. I'm sure we could name at least a dozen other examples. The question of whether it should or should not be a crime is a separate question---a question whose answer does tend to have an impact on whether education campaigns are effective or not....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
My blog post was written specifically to an audience of experienced lawyers.
No wonder my understanding of it went like a call on a cell phone!
Under ....MediaSentry ...testimony barred ...failure ...expert witness ..satisfy...[NO CARRIER]
$2 Million for 24 songs? Well OK if you wanna fight dirty then the time has come for the Bot.NET lords of Cobol to unite!
Step 1. Take existing bot.net code and add $p2pflavor$ modded to start in das hidden mode.
Step 2. Have it set to automatically download mp3s, kiddie porn, $threatoftheweek$ via RSS feed from the $piratebay$.
Step 3. Distribute to the pleebs via normal bot.net methods, all of hem damn methods.
Step 4. Pleebs now automatically download da goods and become evil seed servers.
Step 5. Watch RIAA sue all of the earths pleebs in a massive stoke off.
Step 6. Watch all governments outlaw the internet.
Step 7. Watch all of the earths pleebs get really pissed off.
Step 8. Watch pleebs with guns run a muck in the great pleeb revolt of 2012.
Step 9. Self invented new defense, My system had that damn virus your Honor.
Step 0. No Profit for dem guys!
I now leave you to move into my underground lair so I can work on those sharks with freaking lasers baby!
In my most honest opinion, Jammie owes the record companies a couple dollars to pay for her downloaded songs. She owes something in the way of punitive damages. 24 songs, at a buck apiece, is 24 bucks. Drawing on ancient tort law, let's treble the damages, so she now owes 72 bucks. If she had been offered this deal from the get-go, her conscience might have convinced her that 72 bucks was a good deal, and paid it.
This got me wondering... If everyone in the world distributed every mp3 file in existence to everyone else, would the RIAA still demand thousands per song per person? There's a limit to what the possible damages could be (if everyone has the files to distribute, then they'd never buy them). It seems like the RIAA is not happy with getting $1 per song per person.
We at Slashdot don't poke fun at lawyers for being idiots, we poke fun at them for being unethical, corrupt scumbags who'll do anything so long as they get paid for it (with NYCL being a rare exception). And dismissing juries because they know too much about the law fits *precisely* within that conception.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Amen Brother! The ongoing obscenity of our so called 'entertainment industry', and the way that our government is prostituting itself to these scumbags is worse than corruption and speaks of a government that has lost its way entirely. It is no longer a government of our people, but a cabal of criminals feeding at the public trough and at numerous private troughs as well. Do not buy! Boycott! All of them. What does it take to bring justice to the American people? We in our house really do not like music at all, and despise the recent movie offerings, especially those comic book 'superheeeroes' crap that some try to call science fiction when it clearly is not. Comic book characters are not of any cultural or redeeming social value. Sounds like the legal definition of porn doesn't it?
Maybe that lady and her family will become like an American 'taliban'. Maybe they will never pay a cent of that illegal 'judgement', but rather slyly 'download' all kinds of things from the anonymity of drive by hotspots and upload them where all the legaleeez in 'licence documents' say they should not go...like trade secrets to Cuba....chem formulae to Somalia.... noook science to that nut Kim Chunk Ill. Hey if the people no longer have a stake in their government, then that government no longer has any stake in the people. Hell maybe they will really start to be criminals and go into the dumps and tear all the labels off of old pillows and cushions and mattresses......
"Copyright infringement was meant to apply to people using copyrighted material for commercial gain. Copyright never was meant to prevent an individual from making copies for himself, or for friends, for which he is not paid."
We should be careful of over-generalizing here. Copyright law is there to protect the rights of the creators; it's the real-world dynamics of infringement that had historically made it a for-profit activity. Non-commercial infringement has always been cause for civil action (S501 hasn't addressed intent or gain -- just the actions); non-commercial infringement above a certain threshold was made eligible for criminal prosecution in 1997.
"In today's world, friends might be located all around the globe, and you may not even know their real names - but being a member of the filesharing community makes them your friend."
I think this is recognized by even the most hard-core pirates as being a slippery slope. The argument goes that fair use doctrine generally excepts copies for friends (it does not, but that's outside scope here) so there should be no legal difference between sharing with a few friends at school vs. sharing with a million of your closest friends on BitTorrent. I believe that this defense was even tried in the original Napster case. It wasn't successful.
"RIAA makes little if any distinction between people distributing for financial gain, and people who are just sharing. The law needs to address that little oversight."
Agreed 100%, the law should be changed. More to the point, juries have the option to extract huge damages against non-commerical file-sharers. In this particular case, I believe the RIAA originally approached her to settle for their usual $3500 -- or about two bucks per song they found in her share directory. The RIAA wanted two bucks a song, the jury wanted $80K. In this crazy world, it's not the copyright holders we should be scared of... it's our peers!
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
If NO ONE is willing to pay for your work then clearly it has no real value.
One singular person should not be made to suffer just because you can't
convince anyone to buy your work. If you are are really so lame (like
swedish death metal bands) that you can't give your stuff away then
you shouldn't get to extra 150K per song out of poor working class
schmucks.
Think about it. There were supposed to be 1700 songs on that Kazaa
share but only 24 were really mentioned. Why is that? Is it perhaps
because most were so lame and obscure that they would have offered
no "sympathy value" for a jury of mundanes?
Or put another way: if "society in general" has made the collective
value judgement and given you a collective "fuck you" by only pirating
your work then you shouldn't have any standing to extract egregious
statutory damages from random individuals.
This might be a back door method to reinstate sensible copyright terms.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If NO ONE is willing to pay for your work then clearly it has no real value.
Really? So if no one is willing to pay for public roads they have no real value? If no one is willing to pay for public libraries they too have no real value? Amazing.
As for why only 24 songs were mentioned, let's apply your "logic" to the Oklahoma bombing, out of 168 McVeigh was charged only with 11 deaths. Is it because other stiffs were so lame and obscure that they would have offered no "sympathy value" for a jury of mundanes or could it be because you are just clueless?
Don't you know that thousands of dollars is the cost of a week's child labor.
Or is that the cost of buying the kid?
Ray points out some extremely simple things that were overlooked. Here's one example:
The jury could have been instructed that no statutory damages could be awarded as to any work whose copyright registration effective date was subsequent to the date of defendant's commencement of use of Kazaa [or the Court could itself have made that determination based on the answers to the verdict form].
It was here that I got lost.
As I read it, Ray says that if she started using Kazaa at a certain date, that she is free to distribute any works with copyrights registered after that date. And that of course can't be right. If she offers a song on Kazaa after the copyright of that song is registered, it's potentially infringing. Starting to use Kazaa before that copyright registration should be moot. Indeed if she would use Kazaa and distribute works with then unregistered copyrights (something that I highly doubt: I would assume the RIAA members would register their copyrights before commencing distribution).
Now Ray is the lawyer here and I'm not even an American, so I presume to have misunderstand things.
Also I understand that the RIAA may be overlawyered, it is a bit scary to me that a Court can have the wool pulled over their eyes so easily, and accept cases that according to Ray should have been laughed out of court. Knowing court cases are often highly complex I strongly suspect a huge oversimplification here from Ray's side.
Also I don't agree with his opinion that a single song is not a work, but that only a whole album is a work. I see a single song as a work, and an album as a separate (derivative?) work based on those songs. Or a collection of works, the collection in itself being a work.
But in the end it seems his "dream" boils down to a much-discussed point: is offering for distribution the same as distribution? And aren't the statutory damages on the high side?
For what its worth, I'm boycotting them.
This is pretty easy for me anyways. I own about 5 CD's. I have never had a working CD player hooked up to my stereo. Now I know I will never install one.
I have also decided I do not like the Chrysler and GM bail out. As a Canadian I feel we are looking at decades of abuse by special interest groups with too much power. Accordingly I will _never_ own a GM or Chrysler product again as long as I live.
Now you see - pollies think they can manipulate people.
However if we the people get mad enough then maybe they will start to learn.
Now I can assure people there are MANY alternatives.
1) buy from the musicians. If they sign with a label, shun them. Tell your friends. Refuse to listen to any CD's produced by organized crime (RIAA? Is that organized crime? I know some artists think they are)
2) Don't drive a GM. Drive an Audi or VW (Diesel gets 60+ MPG). Drive a Toyota. Just say NO.
Criticize people who do buy these products. Tell them they must like HUGE tax payer subsidies and high oil prices.
What we need to do is put people back to work. I fail to see how propping up an industry which is as sick as our auto industry is going to keep people gainfully employed. Just consider the SUV mileage figures. While North America focused on the putting tons of steel on the road with pathetic mileage, Japan was bringing out hybrids. Note also that North America consumes about 1/4 of the world's oil. Yup. The world produces about 83 million Barrels of oil per day (BOPD) and North America consumes over 20 million BOPD. Its in the BP statistical review if anyone wants to look it up.
Funny, but strife inn the Auto Industry happened in 1973 as well. Back then, Chrysler needed a bail out. What did they learn?
When the oil embargo of the early 1970's hit, Japan was ready with high mileage cars. Detroit looked stupid.
Deja Vue
My point is that if people, and especially young people, want change - then they are going to have to find ways to make it happen. Young people in the 1960s forced change. It looks like history is going to have to repeat itself.
A good place to start is for people to buy ONLY from the original artists. They deserve the money anyways. Next if commercial downloading services aren't properly compensating the artists, then perhaps we need a grass roots way to compete with them. Its not reasonable for the artists to be expected for instance to set up servers. However I am confident there are MANY in the slashdot crowd who are up to speed in the are of server admin.
As I see it, the RIAA might think they won this battle. In doing so perhaps they lose the war.
I came up with a possibly workable solution to what damages should be paid for distributing.
Figure out how many times the song has been downloaded, divide by how many people are offering it for download on pirate networks, multiply that result by the iTunes cost of 99 cents, multiply THAT by three for the tort as mentioned in the GP, and voilá.
Why this weird math?
It's simple. As it stands, millions of people are sharing the same songs. Why should ONE person pay for the 'damages' caused by millions who they have no contact with or knowledge of whatsoever? If five people commit a bank robbery, but you only ever catch one of them, does he go to jail for all five? No, of course not, and so downloaders and uploaders shouldn't be made to pay for what other downloaders and uploaders do, either.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Having said this, in the UK a judge in a civil trial would be more likely just to rule that as the defendant had lied under oath, the weight of the other evidence for the defendant should be largely discounted.
It's the American concept of punitive damages that is wrong. It's a kind of lynch law. The question should be, why do the US courts and juries have this demented desire to punish in civil trials, rather than award what is just? Did the US judicial system (which is based in English common law) fail to adopt the bit about justice and equity?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Copyright law is there to protect the rights of the creators;[snip]
Incorrect by way of ommision. Copyright is intended "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings ..."-U.S. Constitution
It seems that the judicial, legislative, and executive branches have all completely skipped over the entire first part, and only acknowledge the existence of the second part, as do many individuals.
The "securing...exclusive rights..." part is simply a method devised to, and derives from, the desire to accomplish the "To promote the progress of science and useful arts..." part. It doesn't stand on it's own, and that's one of the biggest problems with modern copyright law interpretation and enforcement as well as the laws written concerning copyright in recent times IMHO.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So then she should be judged for contempt of court. It should not affect the weight of the fine for the distributing charge.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
I followed the story on ARS and I still have questions about this case.
The biggest is the ex-boyfriend's involvement. It may have been Thomas-Rasset's computer, but could the RIAA prove she actually installed KaZaa? Sure, the original HDD was toasted and this may be a mute point. However,...the question lingers in my mind.
One of the defence arguments was that the original CD-files were in wma-format while the "infringed" files were mp3. I've known other software that will "scan" a drive looking for similar/same files so as to make them available when the user runs the program. Does/Did KaZaa scan for wma files? Could it be conceivable that Thomas-Rasset had "ripped" CD's for her personal use (an argument made by some game users wanting to protect their purchase of the CD from loss), yet when KaZaa was installed, these files were then infringed?
I would like to read some discussion on this point.
These weren't personal opinions of mine; they are caselaw. Where an "ongoing course of action", rather than specific acts of infringement, is alleged, the operative date relates back to commencement of the ongoing course of action. And the courts have held that the "work" infringed is the album, not the individual songs.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Last I checked the minimum damages for willfully infringing copyright is US$750 per incident.
The maximum is US$150,000.
She got off with about half-way between the two.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Thank you for spelling it out. I wasn't aware that some people wouldn't get it right off. :(
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
FWIW, I've been empaneled twice (i.e., sat in the jury box, sworn to answer truthfully, asked questions), and neither time has jury nullification been mentioned. I was a peremptory strike both times (i.e., one of the attorneys decided to remove me), but for other reasons. I think I probably influenced the jury in one case, where it was clear I was removed for knowing something about statistics.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
people pay for public roads... They're called called Gas taxes, or Toll booths.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
you are correct, it should have been about $1500 max. Which is what the RIAA originally wanted to settle for.
And she refused
And she refused again
And again
And every time she has done so, she has made things way worse for herself, to the point where now a JURY choose to award the maximum possible fine just to shut this woman up. Even the RIAA admitted they did not expect to get, or want the maximum award.
The reason this court case has got so ridiculous is because she is either stupid, or advised by stupid people who want to use her to whine at the record companies.
Any sane individual would have settled out of court for the initial amount. She has nobody to blame at any point for this saga than herself.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
there's more money in bulking up ad views to his blog.
Sorry. did you think he really gave a fuck about this woman?
I take a newly produced and copywritten album
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copywriting
Copywriting is the use of words to promote a person, business, opinion or idea.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
Copyright gives the author of an original work exclusive right for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation, after which time the work is said to enter the public domain.
I hope this clears up the misunderstanding :)
Why can't musicians create contracts that legally exclude RIAA lawyers and their families from being able to legally own their music? If you're a lawyer for the RIAA or the wife/husband or dependent of such a person you may not legally download, reproduce or purchase this music.. etc. etc. etc.
It seems like contracts can say whatever they want to say. RIAA lawyers and coke snorting whoring animals are NOT a special protected class of people.
Done.
It's important to keep in mind that she was nailed for distributing, not downloading.
You don't know that. The judge told the jury to find copyright infringement if either the distribution right (for "distributing" to other P2P users) or reproduction right (for downloading via P2P) had been infringed. The jury found infringement for all 24 songs. They weren't required to specify whether it was one right or the other, or both. The RIAA had apparently argued that metadata in the files indicated they had been ripped by a 'crew', and their location in the Kazaa shared folder points to the likelihood that she got them without license via Kazaa, so I'd say it's pretty darn likely she got nailed for downloading, if not also distributing, even though neither could really be proven.