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."

Comments

Re:DOJ asks court not to decide constitutional Q

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Confirmation that trolls cannot read. Please quote where NYCL said the proper fine was $.99 per song.

:) Thanks. I have no problem with the concept of statutory damages; I have been working with it for 35 years.

Thing is, as a matter of copyright law, the courts have consistently held that the statutory damages awarded must bear a reasonable relationship to the actual damages, must be "woven from the same bolt of cloth", and cannot be divorced from economic reality. Under that principle the judge should not have allowed the jury to come back with a verdict exceeding the statutory minimum of $750 per infringed "work". [p.s. 3 songs from 1 album = 1 work].

Then, as a matter of constitutional law, the verdict should have been struck down further to a number, consistent with the US Supreme Court's "due process" jurisprudence, which was less than 10 times the amount of the actual damages. Under that jurisprudence, UMG Recordings recently argued -- when it was a defendant in a Tennessee case -- that 10 times actual damage was unconstitional, and the Court agreed, concluding that the verdict could not exceed 2 times the actual damage.