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Jammie Thomas Moves To Strike RIAA $1.92M Verdict
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Jammie Thomas-Rasset has made a motion for a new trial, seeking to vacate the $1.92 million judgment entered against her for infringement of 24 MP3 files, in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset. Her attorneys' brief (PDF) argues, among other things, that the 'monstrous' sized verdict violates the Due Process Clause, consistent with 100 years of SCOTUS jurisprudence, since it is grossly disproportionate to any actual damages sustained. It further argues that, since the RIAA elected to offer no evidence of actual damages, either as an alternative to statutory damages, or to buttress the fairness of a statutory damages award, the verdict, if it is to be reduced, must be reduced to zero."
Maybe she should pay the price of one record per shared mp3? That'd be something like $240.
Or ten record, which would come to $2400.
However, I just don't figure how the imaginary damages could rack up $18k, let alone $192M.
Whoever awarded those damages had no sense of proportion, or was bribed.
Regardless - if someone destroyed my life over some songs, I'd probably do the same to them.
What's few hundred k more for battery and assault, if you already owe $190M more than you
can reasonably ever earn. For that matter, no monetary fine would ever feel like anything -
and jail time is expensive to the society. So.. maybe it's just not worth it?
Luckily, it is people like this who are the reason why laws change.
The RIAA have their low-risk win adding to their warchest of successfully run litigation if she settles. Now they -have- to engage the courts as much as they can to win. They -have- to publicly lobby, they -have- to look the bad guy to ${PUBLIC}. They may win - and it'd be a big win - but they may lose, and losing at such a high level is quite a setback.
At the end of the day, she could've settled, but she's chosen to stand and fight. Would you do the same, given the circumstances?
You miss the point--the law is wrong, that is what is being argued. Those statutory damages are designed for corporate infringement--say, by a radio station broadcasting to 100,000 people. Not by 1 person who uploading a song to...oh, the RIAA couldn't demonstrate how many (and yes, in the radio case it would have been easy to demonstrate how many listened, on an approximate level, because the radio station uses that information every day to sell advertising time).
so long as you play in the NFL, you can kill someone in a DUI crash and do 30 days.
this woman stole some songs. by doing so, others may have been able to steal those songs too.
however, nobody died. the songs are undamaged. the artists are still fucking rich.
the fact that lawyers can get away with this allows me to look more softly upon murderers.
when you break justice anywhere, you break it everywhere. this madness must end soon.