Jammie Thomas To Appeal $1.9 Million RIAA Verdict

CNet reports that the lawyers representing Jammie Thomas-Rasset have confirmed she will be fighting the $1.9 million verdict handed down in her case against the RIAA. "The Recording Industry Association of America said on Monday that it had made a phone call to Sibley and law partner Kiwi Camara last week to ask whether Thomas-Rasset wanted to discuss a settlement. An RIAA representative said that its lawyers were told by Sibley that Thomas-Rasset wasn't interested in discussing any deal that required her to admit guilt or pay any money. ... 'She's not interested in settling,' attorney Joe Sibley said in a brief phone interview. 'She wants to take the issue up on appeal on the constitutionality of the damages. That's one of the main arguments — that the damages are disproportionate to any actual harm.'"

Comments

I hope she gets a second opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the track record of her lawyers, she could end up with a life sentence.

Re:Of Course

[Nomen Publicus]

And when did deterrents ever stop murders or kids making copies of songs for their friends?

The big fines were intended to make professional copyright violations where some factory turns out hundreds or thousands of copies of fake product unprofitable. Using the same law to beat up some random person is disproportionate.

Worrisome Potential Precedent

[resistant]

I'm worried that the Supreme Court, should it eventually take this case, might find a way to justify these hugely exorbitant awards on technically narrow and nit-picky grounds that nonetheless are broad enough in reality to make fighting the RIAA essentially a hopeless cause financially for most people. The Kelo decision shows the kind of sloppy reasoning that can lead to appalling results. It surely doesn't help that Jammie appears to be guilty of deliberate file-sharing and tampering with evidence after the fact. One could wish heartily for a much more sympathetic defendant.

Re:Worrisome Potential Precedent

[Overzeetop]

I'm not so sure, actually. If the defendant were not clearly guilty, the ruling might simply be overturned. In this case, with it pretty darned likely that she did do what did, the real case here is what kinds of limits should be set for recovering legal damages. Is non-commercial distribution really worth an amount equal to destroying the rest of your life? I would think that the plaintiff would need to show _actual_ damages, or be limited to a nominal fine. That is true for most litigation I'm involved in (architecture/engineering disputes). Unless you get into personal injury and pain-and-suffering cases, you've got to show actual damages and actual repair costs attributed _directly_ to the act. Consequential and incidental damages are very hard to win. Content industries insist on trying to chase the low hanging fruit (file sharers) because the law stacks the deck in their favor. If they can't provide an actual value, they get to select a prescriptive (that's not the right word...I know) value which is orders of magnitude larger than the original item.

If they can't prove the actual losses, they should get 3x the value (or 5x or 10x, not 100000x). That means finding the people who downloaded the songs and (1) determining that they did not already own that song in another form (vinyl, magnetic, CD, or commercial download) and (2) that they would have purchased the item if it were only available through a commercial site. Simple cause-effect analysis.

Re:Worrisome Potential Precedent

[risk one]

The problem with the $79K award is that, if you work on the assumption that she is expected to be able to pay, then the damages an artist can get from a single count of copyright infringement is greater than the total income that they would otherwise get from selling music.

But, if that happened, then owning the rights to music would become more important to music labels than actually producing good music. The whole business of making music would become a perverse combination of hype and ownership on a multinational level. Then, their legal arm would grow stronger and stronger and it would begin a maffia-like extortion of insignificant music downloaders, ruining people's lives without regard for any kind of proportion.

Imagine such a world.

Re:Of Course

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the whole point. The damages are meant to be a deterrent against future abuses. The RIAA is sticking her head on a pike as a warning to others.

Punitive damages can only be awarded in effort to deter the defendant from committing the same infringement again. It is expressly forbidden to make an example of a defendant by awarding a grossly high settlement for the purpose of making others think twice before doing the same thing. It is also expressly forbidden to award higher damages for acts that were not included in the trial. For example, in this case, there were 24 files in question. It's possible the jury said "I'm sure there were a lot more" and award damages with that in mind. They can't do that.

If either of those things occurred, the verdict is immediately nullified. I'm sure they will be raised on appeal, but they will be hard to prove. If you read the jury instructions on this case, it clearly explicates that they are to award damages ONLY for the files in question. There was even a neat little worksheet to help them with it.

Well DUH!

[icebike]

Seriously, who could not have seen this coming.

This verdict had to have been the RIAA's worst nightmare. They had to know, as they left the courthouse that they had just snatched ultimate defeat from the jaws of temporal victory.

NOW it all comes into play again, out from under easily impressed small town judges and professionally packed juries.

The entire investigative tactic, the improper application of laws, (not to mention that little phrase containing the words "Cruel or Unusual Punishment") comes under high level review.

They can't have wanted this. They would have been happy with 100K verdict. This is their worst nightmare.

Re:It was impossible to cause that much damage

[Archimonde]

And this is what people just can't get a good perspective on. They are basically sentencing her to be a slave for the rest of her life and that is even more cruel than execution. Moreover when you have nothing it is extremely difficult to make large amounts of money. That 2 million would be very very difficult to pay off even if you are left after the sentence with all possessions you got (job, house etc). But probably they will take everything that woman owns and tell her to pay off the rest. But in both cases the woman is just a slave. She is not a prisoner like in some russian work camp, but all the freedom she has is to live and give everything she gets to some faceless corporation and that is slavery.

I just find it despicable that those monsters (yes, those people should be put to jail) are ready and willing to destroy your life and seriously impact the life of your relatives just for a few shared files which are fucking sold for $1!

Re:It was impossible to cause that much damage

[vux984]

That's all beside the point. The damages awarded were statutory damages as set by the law.

Correct.

However, statutory damages are supposed to be a reasonable substitute for actual damages when actual damages are difficult to compute. So its fair to point out that the 'statutory damages' are not only out of line, but are out of line for any case in this 'class' (of noncommercial p2p infringement), and that they are so out of line that that the statute itself is defective, even unconstitutional.

On the first glance it seems that $80K per song is too high but then I don't know the technical argument for it.

There is no technical argument for it. The statute was written to address and punish people who created and sold counterfeit copies of books, movies, records, etc.

P2p internet sharing didn't exist. At the time to do any serious infringement, you needed replication equipment, and blank media, and so on... it would be time consuming and expensive. The people doing it would have to be deliberately engaged in this, and would almost invariably be charging money to cover their costs. It would almost have to a fairly large scale commercial enterprise to be of significant scale.

The idea that a barely computer literate person could commit "massive unauthorized distribution infringement" on the same scale, at no cost whatsoever, as essentially a "side effect" of obtaining a few songs for their own personal noncommercial use, via a simple computer program and a few mouse clicks was simply unimagined by the statute authors.

Doesn't it mean that she is admitting that harm occurred and only challenging the amount? It seems like her main argument is at odds with her unwillingness to accept any guilt or settle for any amount.

Admitting harm occurred is not the same as admitting personal culpability for the harm.

Suppose you came over to my house, twisted your ankle on the front step, and then sued me.

I'm going to deny that I'm responsible. My front step is well maintained, with a solid railing, and a non-slip mat. It is level, clear of toys and other hazards. I refuse to accept guilt or settle. I have done nothing wrong.

But that's not to say I'm going to deny you were harmed. Your ankle was twisted. I accept that.

So you sue me, and the jury sides with you. So be it, that's life. Then the court awards you 20,000,000 dollars.

And I'm in the same position as Jammie. I maintain I did nothing wrong, I agree you twisted your ankle, and am disputing the amount of the award.