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DoJ Defends $1.92 Million RIAA Verdict
Death Metal points out a CNet report saying that the Justice Department has come out in favor of the $1.92 million verdict awarded to the RIAA in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case. Their support came in the form of a legal brief filed on Friday, which notes, "Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where many violators believe that they will go unnoticed." It also says, "The Copyright Act's statutory damages provision serves both to compensate and deter. Congress established a scheme to allow copyright holders to elect to receive statutory damages for copyright infringement instead of actual damages and profits because of the difficulty of calculating and proving actual damages."
Holy shit.....Can this not be more glaringly obviously corrupt? Obama hires lots of ex-RIAA lawyers which then uphold RIAA favored judgments. I'm fucking speechless because this judgment is so mind numbingly dumb. I think this needs to go to the supreme court (not that they will overturn it, but fuck SOMEONE with higher authority needs to say this is insane).
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
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ed duval the very last person
Interestingly, the DOJ brief asks the Court not to decide the constitutional question, requesting the Court to instead decide the issue on "common law" grounds, i.e. whether the award "shocks the conscience".
Also interesting in the DOJ's brief is that it totally ignores the actual wording and reasoning of the Supreme Court's "due process" jurisprudence concerning "punitive awards", which we have pointed out in the past. Presumably Ms. Thomas-Rasset's lawyers will bring this to the Court's attention.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I just learned that the lead signatory on the DOJ's brief has a content industry background and recently recused himself in another case.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
You should really just read the laws on this. There are specific exemptions for libraries and legitimate archival. That sort of makes your comment uniformed at best.
1. If President Obama's rules are being applied, the six or more ex-RIAA attorneys were recused from dealing with this case, and had nothing to do with the brief.
Can those rules actually be followed? I mean the DOJ shouldn't be weighing in on a civil case in the first place but what would you do when you know you bosses have a certain position and they are refrained from acting for some reason outside their own? I mean you still report to them, you still rely on them for performance reviews, raises and so on to some extent. You still have to worry about the boss retaliating in some way, can you really isolate them?
I don't know. I just discovered this
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
No, a copyright is the exclusive right. If Alice took the right from Bob, it would mean that Alice could use the law to prohibit Bob from doing various things with the work. It is obvious, though, that if Alice unlawfully makes a copy of a sound recording Bob has the copyright to, that Bob can still do as he pleases with the sound recording, license it to others, etc.
So the right isn't stolen. Rather, the right is infringed upon, rather like if Alice trespassed onto Bob's land (which violates Bob's right to exclude others, but doesn't impact ownership), or if the government unconstitutionally censored Alice.
It is hard to imagine a way in which a copyright could be stolen. I suppose it might be possible via fraud, but in normal everyday life it just doesn't happen. Copyrights are infringed upon a great deal, but it just isn't the same.
The desire for accuracy when describing these issues is probably why the law itself refers to it as infringement, and not as theft, and why attempts to use anti-larceny statutes against copyright infringers have fallen flat at the highest levels.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
A posting from today on NYCL's site indicates that the lead DOJ lawyer in this opinion has a media industry background. Evidently, he was a partner at a law firm that represented a music publisher's association.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Some stuff is also still in copyright despite the fact that it should be public domain already.
Ironically enough, the 2 million dollar verdict includes such "moldy oldies".
Richard Marx doesn't see 80K in a year for his song. Why should the RIAA get those kinds of damages?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The story seems to suggest that the DOJ said that a $1.92 million was perfectly constitutional. My interpretation of the brief seems that the DOJ did not specifically say that.
While you are correct that it did not specifically say that, it did say that the verdict passes constitutional muster. When it said this:
This discussion is not to suggest an answer of whether an award should be remitted in this particular case, but rather to suggest an answer to such a question should precede any resolution of Ms. Thomas' constitutional arguments.
it was referring to a non-constitutional, "common law", ground for setting aside the verdict. It did specifically say that if the Court does not find a "common law" ground for setting the verdict aside, it should let the verdict stand, which is tantamount to saying that the verdict passes constitutional muster, which any honest lawyer knows it does not.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Does anybody know if this woman is accepting contributions? Maybe the proper way to fight this BS could be to put our money where our mouth is. I would certainly send some money to support her.
I'm sure you could send the contribution to her attorneys.
In my personal opinion, the best place to which to make contributions to fight the RIAA scourge is to make a tax deductible contribution to the Expert Witness Defense Fund managed by the Free Software Foundation. All the proceeds of the contributions will go to helping RIAA defendants retain the help of tech experts and tech consultants. They made a $3000 grant to Ms. Thomas to enable her to hire an expert witness.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
When will you fake lawyers
Oh, I assure you, I'm a real lawyer. I didn't go to law school for years and suffer through the bar exam just to be a fake lawyer, no sir.
"stealing" is NOT A LEGAL TERM OF ART. Infringement is stealing. Larceny is stealing. Theft is stealing. Conversion is stealing. Misappropriation is stealing. Plagiarizing is stealing. Copying is stealing.
So you're saying that when I quoted you here, since that was an act of copying, I stole from you? I find this difficult to believe.
Let me make a suggestion to you instead: When discussing legal issues, we should all avoid ambiguous and inappropriate terminology, so that we can all clearly understand one another precisely. Therefore, if 'stealing' is not a term of art, and if it is unclear what it does mean, exactly (I for one don't agree with your definition, and I know others who don't either), and where the term is pretty clearly an appeal to emotion, an appeal to apply norms which may not be a good fit, and meant to vilify those who it is used against, then I think we should not use it at all.
The term the law uses nearly to the exclusion of all else is 'infringement.' So we ought to use that term too.
The law doesn't describe anything as stealing in an official capacity
Great, then let's all agree to stop using 'stealing' or 'stole' or the like when discussing copyright. I'm already in favor of using the precise legal terminology, but if someone else invokes it (as happened earlier), I'm not above briefly discussing why it's inapt.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
1. If President Obama's rules are being applied, the six or more ex-RIAA attorneys were recused from dealing with this case, and had nothing to do with the brief.
Can those rules actually be followed? I mean the DOJ shouldn't be weighing in on a civil case in the first place but what would you do when you know you bosses have a certain position and they are refrained from acting for some reason outside their own? I mean you still report to them, you still rely on them for performance reviews, raises and so on to some extent. You still have to worry about the boss retaliating in some way, can you really isolate them?
I don't know. I can tell you that guy who signed the brief as the top leading signatory is a content industry lawyer.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
"No, documented fact. Hence why they keep getting hit with fines for anti-trust/price-fixing violations."
When accusing record companies of being dishonest, it is important -- essential -- that we not spread lies as well. What is there to be gained? Seriously, Mr. MaskedSlacker -- with so many bad things that the record labels do, why make shit up? Why?
You're referring to the Universal price-fixing case of about a decade ago. It had absolutely nothing to do with collusion between record companies; it was all about a market technique called "minimum advertised pricing" -- known in the retail industry as MAP. Here's what happened:
At this point I should stop and point out that MAPs are still alive and well today. It's an interesting distinction -- authorized dealers are welcome to sell product at any price (otherwise it would be illegal), but if they advertise prices below a point set by the manufacturer, they don't get co-op money, or the best rebates, or other perks that authorized dealers typically get. A huge number of companies do MAPs, including companies well-loved by Slashdotters. Apple is one of them.
Anyway, back to 1999 or so:
The price-fixing settlement is a good thing if you subscribe to the "What's good for Wal-Mart is good for America" philosophy, or if you don't particularly mourn the death of the indie record store. On that point, however, I think Tower would be out of business today anyway; the price-fixing ruling simply hastened their death.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.