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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."
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
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.
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
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.