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Judge Lowers Jammie Thomas' Damages to $54,000
An anonymous reader writes "Judge Michael Davis has slashed the amount Jammie Thomas-Rassett is said to owe Big Music from almost $2,000,000 to $54,000. 'The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music. Moreover, although Plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages.' The full decision (PDF) is also available."
Judge Davis also indicated that he found even the reduced amount to be "harsh" and that, were he -- rather than a jury -- deciding the appropriate measure of damages, the award would have been even lower than $54,000. But he felt that since the jury had determined the damages, it was his province to determine only the maximum amount a jury could reasonably award.
$54,000 is still a crazy amount all things considered, but hopefully this judgment can stand as a sort of benchmark for future ones, even if it's not setting a precedent.
I'm hoping that this is the death blow for the RIAA.
The wholesale price of 24 songs is $16.80. $54,000 is over 3,000 times the maximum possible damages.
Justice!
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Everyone get vaccinated, this outbreak of common sense might be contagious!
Penalties that can actually be paid? Preposterous! My God man, next thing you know they'll say gay marriage is acceptable! Harumph!
Definitely fair for 24 songs. Especially considering the fact that the RIAA said she was guilty!
I mean, if they did have to prove actual damages and all that other stuff, it would have cost far more to pay off the people to inflate the numbers under penalty or perjury, so they would have been entitled to even more money she doesn't have, so $54k is a bargain in the long run.
Now she can sell body parts (her own, preferably) to pay them off. Maybe she can get buy with only part of her liver and 1 kidney?
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Doesn't P2Pnet realize that Elmo is copyrighted! And yet, there they are showing a boy with Elmo on his overalls! Doesn't anyone think of the content owners??? When will this madness end???
Similar to the upcoming US election results
A company should never have to prove damages. That's a task that only citizens should have to undertake for daring to waste the court's time. But a company can 'make an example' of someone by suing them for two million without having to prove or even postulate at damages.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
although Plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages
Plaintiffs should, without a doubt, be required to prove actual damages. If they can't, their case gets thrown out. That is how it should be. I don't think it would work this way with anything physical. If someone stole a CD from a music store, that cost $10, they cost $200 in labor, and $150 in court costs, they shouldn't have to pay anything more than $500 (assuming we are inflating the price for deterrence). If I said that I shouldn't have to prove what the CD costs and say that the CD is worth $10,000, the court should throw out the case or very, very, very much reduce the value because I didn't do my homework. The same thing should happen with imaginary property.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
'The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music.
I take issue with the language used. If I download and then upload a song, that's copyright infringement. If I walk into WalMart and shoplift a CD, that's stealing. WalMart has been deprived of their property. In neither case has the record company been deprived of anything. Plus, WalMart owns the CD, Warner does NOT own the music. In the US, this "property" belongs to all of us; the "content creator" has a limited time monopoly on its publication, not ownership.
If I steal a CD and get caught I have a misdemeanor criminal charge and a few hundred dollar fine, but if I infringe copyright and get caught it costs $50k. This is better than before, but still very bad.
Free Martian Whores!
Hear hear. Talk about magnet effect - $2M is harsh but so is $54k. $54 might be fair. Twice the market value of the stolen property and $6 extra punitive.
It's not the downloading, it's the uploading.
The correct analogy would be:
What sort of punishment would you get is you printed off 3000 CDs of copy right protected music, and gave them away for free with out the permission of the copy right holders?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
...I think it is still a bit much, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was. I like that the judge acknowledged that he wasn't doing this because he sympathised with the defendant, but rather was disgusted with the punishment based on the crime. The reasons he gave for changing the amount are the way a judge SHOULD be.
Living With a Nerd
Yes the amount is still absurd, but at least the principle that the statutory damages must bear a reasonable relationship to the actual damages has been invoked and vindicated. My blog post is here: Jammie Thomas verdict reduced from $1.92M to $54,000 and my Slasdhot submission is here.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Well, "he" is a single mother of 4 who works w/ a Tribal Council, meaning she is probably paid a little better than a social worker. Considering the fact that you can buy a decent house in the boonies around Duluth for $60,000, I'd say that this will greatly cut into her kids' college fund.
RTFA
The maximum actual damages is ~35 cents per infringed work, since the wholesale price is ~70 cents and the expenses are around ~35 cents. Under constitutional principles, the statutory damages awarded should not have exceeded $1.40 per infringed work, or a total of $33.60. Even the reduced award is 6428 times the actual damages, a grossly excessive amount.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ok, call me paranoid, but could this be an attempt to defuse the situation? $2M damages for 2 CDs worth of songs is outrageous enough to get the attention of even the most complacent. $54K, although a heavy burden, is significantly less so and (seems to me) much less likely to cause a general backlash.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Can the RIAA appeal this verdict and demand more money? NewYorkCountryLawyer, are you listening? $54,000 is still an unreasonable amount for downloading a few songs (my entire 80GByte MP3 collection only cost about $10,000). If you accept the RIAA's contention that each of these songs could be passed on to other people, who could in turn pass them on to more people, it may sound reasonable. However, it that is the case, then shouldn't the commercial price of a song on iTunes be about $2000?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The problem is that the statutory *minimum* for copyright infringement in this case would have been $18,000. So that was the lowest number the judge could come up with. Because of the strong arguments that the behavior was "willful" and the strong need for deterrence because of the low cost of infringement and high cost of enforcement pushed him into the "treble damages" routine, just tripling the minimum number and saying that is basically as high as you can justify for the purposes of deterrence.
Still, I think $18,000 is a number that already more than took into effect the need for deterrence and costs of enforcement, since it's already massively higher than any actual damages or lost revenues, which are in the several hundreds of dollars.
Sure, her kids should suffer a lower lifestyle to please the RIAA and "deter" file sharing. Your country is fsck'd.
Kids go to college up in the Iron Range? I thought they had to know how to read and write and stuff to go to college.
How the hell is a song worth $2250?
I think you missed the part where distributing was never proved.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I corrected his flawed analogy, how is that trolling? Anyone who is still under the misunderstanding that this is about DOWNLOADING songs needs to be corrected. This is about UPLOADING songs.
I strongly disagree with the heft of the fine, but not to the point that I am willing to pander incorrect information to people. Yes, the fine for UPLOADING songs in this case is very likely excessive. I fail to see how clarifying that mistake is a trolling act.
In response to the AC about where I came up with the number 3,000, the GGP posted this:
The wholesale price of 24 songs is $16.80. $54,000 is over 3,000 times the maximum possible damages.
So IF a person were to distribute 3000 CDs of protected content, the maximum possible damages would be $54,000. So IF the defendant UPLOADED 3,000 albums worth of music, the maximum possible damages would also be $54,000.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Depending on his salary and how much he wants to spend on living expenses, he can pay that off in a few years.
And if he didn't have to pay it off, he could, you know, spend the money on something that enriches society, like, say, purchasing a piece of real estate and thus maybe helping someone retire, purchasing a LOT of music legally and thus, compensating the artists justly, purchasing some new gizmos and gadgets that help sales rates and thus, help companies like Apple and Motorola and Google and so on continue to produce new, good products. In other words, he could spend that $54,000 on living and that money would get distributed throughout society. Now, instead, it will filter into the check books of record execs and lawyers and be spent in the brothels of hell, thus bringing nearer the inevitable hell on Earth apocalypse....or on hookers and coke.
1) It sets an example. Don't get caught
To which I respond:
Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all
-Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
WTF, why don't people just buy their music?? Come on, you mean to tell me you can't pay 99 cents or less for a song?
You don't think that a strict distinction between theft and infringement is just a tad pedantic?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Still, I think $18,000 is a number that already more than took into effect the need for deterrence and costs of enforcement, since it's already massively higher than any actual damages or lost revenues, which are in the several hundreds of dollars.
I think the problem with the law is that there are two different things it is addressing. This case is about an individual who shared a handful of songs with a few people with no expectation of monetary gain. For that case, a few thousand dollars is a significant deterrent.
But there is also the case where someone decides to make a business out of selling illegally copied music. The statutory damages in the law are really meant to be a serious deterrent to this kind of business. Without being able to attach a really big number to each infringing activity, someone might decide that the risk of paying a few thousand dollars is offset by the big money you can make by selling music without having to pay any artists.
I think the law itself is reasonable, it just gets really ugly when it is applied to individuals. They probably need to expand the law to distinguish personal file sharing from commercial intent. That could result in reasonable penalties for infringement. It sounds like the judge was doing the best he could to provide justice while still following the law.
This is just silly .... reflecting damages. You steal it, do not distribute it. Therefore you have 'stolen' two cd's worth and should be
fined a maximum of 25 dollars per 'CD'. His fine should not exceed $50.
These guys are fishing with dynamite.
At this point, I'd like to introduce the concept of "infinite reproducibility"(tm).
Infinite reproducibility exists on freely distributable information networks. I claim that the value of all information drops to zero, since it is easily reproduced and distributed beyond the means that modern markets are framed around. Supply and demand become non-physical variables in the monetary equations of distribution, yet remain intact for supply and demand side holding. Only the distribution market has changed.
Since the computers, and the Internet allow information to be reproduced rapidly, in quantity, and over vast distances, the expectation of any piece of information, Copyrighted, Trademarked, Secret, or other, to hold up to past scrutinies of reproducibility, becomes null. The threshold for control on a freely distributable information network, will not move away from that which its contributors allow. Those who have a vested monetary interest in information, need to understand that it is in their interest to not punish the very people they wish to sell that information too. No amount of legislation, except destruction of the very network itself, will change this fact.
When the penalty for actual, physical, potential-to-cause-real-violence theft is three orders of magnitude smaller than point-and-click infringement, then no, it's a very important distinction.
The words "tart" and "molarity" can both be used to indicate degrees of acidity, but even though they can both mean essentially the same thing, there's an important difference.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The fine for running a red light is $351. The fine for sharing songs is, apparently, $2,250 per song.
Running a red light can kill someone.
Sharing an MP3 might cost the record company $1.
Since when did a record become 641% MORE valuable than a human life?
I'm hoping that this is the death blow for the RIAA.
I'd really like it if it was, but I don't see how this could have that result.
It's not like they could have gotten the two million from this poor person anyways. About 50k is probably the limit they would have gotten from her anyways. She'll be in debt to the RIAA until she dies from old age, most likely. My college loan was less than that (about half actually) and I'm *still* paying on the bastard.
And a precedent in that court was set. Payoff is: $750 * 3 * [number of songs]. Wait until they catch some poor schmuck sharing his whole boot drive. It'll be back up in the millions pretty quick. 50k is what you get for sharing only 24 songs.
Nope, this doesn't go down in the win column for us I'm thinking.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
As has been pointed out, that's roughly the value of a house in the area of the country she lives in. She's married now so I'm guessing she'll quit her job (if she hasn't already), and never work for a wage again. Since she can't get rid of the judgment by declaring bankruptcy, she has no incentive to ever earn money that will only be taken away from her.
So the RIAA has only succeeded in removing one person from the labor pool. Congratulations.
Here's a spot of irony for you...
We used to say, "Dude, it's just infringement. It's not really theft."
Now we say, "Christ, it's just petty theft."
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
> Any simple solution to a complex problem is wrong.
Either false or a tautology. For example, if one runs a prison and has no money for more guards or walls or floodlights, so people keep cutting through the fence and coming in to break people out or smuggle drugs, a simple solution may prove very effective for the short-term: buy a couple of chickens and put them around the prison. They'll go crazy whenever anyone noses around, and you suddenly have a cheap alarm system. (True story.)
In the alternative, a complex problem may by definition be one that has no simple solution.
In this case, the simple solution to a complex problem is to have an option to pay for music using alternative methods--dollars (or pennies) to buy a song, dollars for a subscription service, time in the form of advertisements or saleable tasks. And songs released into the public domain once they're a certain number of years old or have earned a certain number of dollars.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The judge isn't usually worried about defusing the situation, so much as he's worried about (1) what the law is, (2) to the extent that the law is unclear, what law is most consistent with the rationales for existing law, (3) taking into account the countervailing social policy considerations (i.e. recognizing damage to the record companies was greater than costs and approved by the legislature, but that $2M is insane, and that 54K is still a big punishment), and (4) not getting overruled by the court above him.
Of course judges have their own beliefs that influence their understanding of what the law ought to be and how they interpret it, but for the most part they're just trying to understand the problem and do the right thing under the law.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Crazy indeed, but perhaps the big news is the reseting of expectations this may cause to the RIAA's legal staff and management. This 'pitance' of an award will severely tarnish and punish the RIAA's legal team. They'll realize that their high-profile fight barely recovers enough money to get the keys to a mid-range BMW or Volvo, assuming this 'judgment' is ever paid in full, and they'll be laughed at by all the other lawyers for failing to take home their big judgment. Plus the RIAA managers will be feeling doubly fragged in having to forego their yachting plans. They can't show up in Bermuda or Jamaica with the other moguls and still hold their heads high after this. If it is far less worthwhile it to legally pursue such things, if they're cannot expect to walk off with Ferrarri class judgments.
This case is about an individual who shared a handful of songs with a few people with no expectation of monetary gain. For that case, a few thousand dollars is a significant deterrent.
Not when you factor in the very low risk of being caught. For each Jammie Thomas, there are probably tens of thousands of others sharing music who aren't caught. I'm not saying that I agree that the amount is fair, but if you are talking deterrence then I think the judgment would have to be insanely high to have any real effect, given the extremely low probability of being caught. This is why I think analogies with shoplifting are unsound: if you shoplift, there is a much greater chance you will be caught, so the penalties don't need to be as high to have the same deterrence effect.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The judgement is against Jammie Thomas, not the husband. They should probably take the precaution of making deposits to an account where he is the primary account owner, assuming she doesn't file for bankruptcy. Even if she doesn't file, the law will limit how much she has to pay per month on this judgement. The court does examine her income and living expenses and comes up with something "reasonable".
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
The album versus single song and CD versus digital pricing doesn't fit that model.
But at least I know where you got it from, now.
Thanks.
What kind of punishment would I get for shoplifting a $16 CD? Isn't petty theft like a $500 fine and community service?
Perhaps that's the lesson to be learned here. Don't pirate music, just go down to the local music store and steal it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Those kids were never going to college.
She's a single mother of 4, that means not only did she not have the sense to not get knocked up without proper support, she did it 4 times. There isn't a lot of common sense in that family so its highly unlikely any of her rugrats are going to do anything more than Janitorial service. Its possible, but its just not a realistic expectation.
Or, you know, it's possible that she was married and that her husband ran off with another man, or mysteriously disappeared from a bar one day, or was killed in an auto accident, or a million other things. But don't let facts like having no idea what her situation is get in the way of your right to sneer at her.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
the bittorent let them get into the upload stream, that's why the damages multiplied so fast
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
if you are talking deterrence then I think the judgment would have to be insanely high to have any real effect, given the extremely low probability of being caught
If the risk of getting caught is really low, then there is no penalty that can act as a deterrent. After all, what is the difference to me in being fined $1 million or $1 trillion?
I think you are pointing out the major reason that the music industry has abandoned suing its customers. They have the downside of negative publicity for being jerks, but they get no upside. They cannot possibly pursue these infringers in large enough quantities at a reasonable cost. This means they get negative PR while providing no deterrent and increasing their legal expenses with little hope of recovering those costs when they win in court.
if you shoplift, there is a much greater chance you will be caught, so the penalties don't need to be as high to have the same deterrence effect.
Having worked in retail for many, many years, I can tell you that the odds of getting away with shoplifting is extremely high. It happens all the time, but it is quite rare to actually catch someone. On top of that, most states have a civil restitution provision which allows the payment of a fine (~$200) directly to the store in lieu of criminal prostitution. This means that even if you get caught you can walk away by paying a small amount and not even getting a criminal record.
You're assuming a link between rationality or responsibility and access to higher education which no longer exists.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Parent deserves +5 Insightful just for this:
It still seems quite high. I wonder if another case could appeal to get it lowered even further to something like, say, $5.00 per song. I mean, when you think about it, $54,000 could buy someone a 4 year education, a really nice car, could be used for a downpayment on a decent home, or, for the philanthropic, would be a very sizeable charity donation. That money that Jamie Thomas has to pay, now, could be used for some very important things that could help progress society (as in, employing a home builder or auto manufacturer, helping Jamie grow educationally to become a more productive member of society, etc.) Instead, it is going to line the pockets of some already very rich folk who are probably going to spend it on blow and hookers, or maybe, at best, a very overpriced car that contributes to little more than an ego.
One of the very basic problems in our society right now is that vast amounts of money go to small amounts of people of whom very, very few have done anything to actually earn it.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I'm a student-IT assistant at my university (it's like $40 a week, but I don't have to do anything). Part of this job is handing out infringement notices.
I've only done a few, but I have to say - they're doing these right. First of all, they are sending out DMCA C&Ds (which is an order to remove the infringing material i.e. delete it, and not get caught again), not lawsuits. Second, they have the list of the exact files, infringing products, dates and times, and checksums - all linked to the IP address which has been duly looked up by our IT department (we are, after all, an ISP and bound by the same rules). They actually send the whole thing along as an XML file, with a custom schema
Maybe they're just laying off a bit because it's college students. But they're really being quite reasonable IMHO - and this is coming from someone who did, and does, hate the MPAA/RIAA with the burning passion of a thousand firey suns. No lawsuits, and it effectively boils down to a warning. If it comes to it, they leave discipline to the university (who will cut of 'net access, or worse).
Big media is still a leech, contributing little of value to the creative process - but when they make an accusation, they at least aren't being dicks about it.
YMMV.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
If they can't actually prove that the damages were that high, then they shouldn't receive that amount in damages. They should receive whatever damage amount they can prove.
If the damage amounts are "potentially unprovable" then the whole case should be dismissed. How the fsck can you sue someone for damages when you can't even prove what the damages were, or that there even were any damages at all? That goes beyond ridiculous.
Some day whole classes of law history students will be laughing hysterically at our current tort system. I don't expect that reform will come from our legislative or judicial systems, however. I expect it to come from the vast majority of people who are sick to death of living with the bogus laws and restrictions and the fear of being sued by some ignorant, greedy, lazy fool who looks up a greedy lawyer in the yellow pages.
I won't speak for anyone else, but as a citizen of the US I feel ashamed to be even indirectly involved in a system this badly corrupted.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Additionally, because the Court has held that the Copyright Act does not provide a making available right, it will not enjoin Thomas-Rasset from making the copyrighted sound recordings available to the public.
You mean all she has to do is buy some legal CDs, and make them available in a folder? Like her Kazaa directory? I'm confused....
Their agents found out, that this is the maximum amount they can squeeze out of her, without her declaring bankruptcy, and them getting nothing.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
If a law is meant to address one thing and is then applied to another, then I would have to disagree about it being reasonable. The law, as written, is too broad, a direct result of the fact that it is also antiquated and wholly inappropriate for the age we now live in. None of these factors lend it to being reasonable, they merely provide reasoning for why the law is, as it now stands, unjust.
There needs to be a clear demarcation between sharing and counterfeiting. Only the latter may prove real damages, hence only the latter is an actual crime. Unfortunately, things like ACTA, which attempt to completely blur the distinction by calling one thing the other, aren't going to help with meshing the spirit and the letter of the law.
It's true that this judge has shown an unusual quality of sanity in his decision and I applaud that. The question that still bothers me about the courts, however, is whether damage awards of this sort would even have been possible if the plaintiff had been an individual, and the defendant an industry conglomerate. It seems to me that judges are much more "careful" about the extent of their powers when facing down corporations. They seem to be less concerned about improper conduct or unconstitutional rulings when only average people are involved. In that sense I have to wonder if this judge is really different or merely realizes the importance of the case.
Yes, because if lawyers and record execs spend the money on hookers and coke, it will never reach society...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1521258&cid=30865256
No damages of any amount are appropriate when the "crime" in question is virtuous act of making recorded music available to all, thereby enriching the people as a whole.
Random question, if I were to be sued for say $1million and the courts held it up. What could be done to me if I were to then share more songs (i.e. jail time?) cause they could fine me a quadrillion dollars, but they're getting any more money from me than the $1million, in fact with a $1million fine I'd semi-retire into an easy stress less job even if it's minimum wage, it's not like it'd be worth making more money. They'd basically create a lame duck until I die (having a net negative effect on the economy)
Consider something else that is handled with civil fines: speeding. The rationale behind copyright infringement being illegal is that it hurts the profits of the producers and distributors of the copyrighted content. The rationale behind speeding being illegal is that it's unsafe and can kill people. In file sharing, every instance of sharing a song potentially costs the record company something like a dollar in lost sales. In speeding, every instance of going over the speed limit potentially causes thousands in property damage and crushes, tears and/or burns one or more people to horrible, painful death or permanent disfigurement and disability. Far, far more unauthorized file sharing goes on than is ever detected and taken to court. Far, far more speeding goes on than is ever detected and ticketed.
So, when are we going to start seeing $54,000 minimum speeding fines? Aside from Swiss judges making a point to multi-millionaires with overdeveloped speeding habits like in the recent speeding case mentioned on slashdot, that is.
I know I shouldn't respond to trolls, but holy crap, you are an ignorant cunt.
Its still outrageously high! The fine should be $24.00
Why are You so fucking stupid?
How are you so fucking stupid?
That's an understatement. Any intelligent individual can't say 54,000 is anything less than ludicrous.
If they had actually charged $54, this whole thing would have disappeared under the mat long ago minus the ridiculously overblown international drama. But $54 isn't enough to make an example out of anybody, to cut off their head and stick it on a pike for all the plebs to see, so to speak
If the fine was an actual reasonable number, that the majority of people would have at their disposal, then they would have much less of an excuse to fight it. International piracy would evaporate overnight, because no single person could fight against a legitimate fine scaled fairly to affect them at their level of income.
However at the moment, the people leading the fight are still stuck simple mindedly on their own imagined scale of self worth, where they picture any of the individuals who actually pay for their work would actually value it at 54,000.(let alone anything in the millions). Wow, you did a art! here let me reward you with a luxury yacht which took 1000 times the man hours and effort to construct!
These parasites have been living so securely in the luxury and security provided by the invisible, unmetered support of the masses that we have created a whole new subspecies that is unable to imagine the scale of life in a day to day mundane existence, and half of them are talentless pigs not even worthy of the attention people give them. This is what we get for crossing fame with the dream of being rich...
$54,000 is still a crazy amount all things considered, but hopefully this judgment can stand as a sort of benchmark for future ones, even if it's not setting a precedent.
It sounds as if that was the best the judge could reasonably do without forcing a retrial - which I'm guessing would have cost Thomas another 5-figure sum in legal fees, win or lose, plus whatever damages the new trial decided. So maybe its for the best.
Look on the bright side: $54k isn't going to pay RIAA's fees, either.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
They're making one of two assumptions here:
1. Piracy is actually the same thing as stealing. I doubt that anyone is actually stupid enough to believe that.
2. Had he not pirated these songs, he would have bought them. Again, I doubt that anyone is actually stupid enough to believe that.
In case you were unaware, even if you upload 0 copies of a file, 3000 people are still able to download the file
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
That's why there's a difference between drug possession and drug trafficking, even though they're both illegal.
Bravo! There are many forms of prejudice and I suspect that Ms Thomas has felt more than her share. Thank you for so skillfully pointing out that people are making assumptions.
Also for what it is worth, Brainerd is not really in the iron range.
You can get a pretty decent place near Brainerd for $54 grand (as long as it doesn't have shoreline footage).
The Mille Lacs Band is not known for paying high wages...
Look on the bright side: $54k isn't going to pay RIAA's fees, either.
The RIAA has probably spent a million dollars on this case.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
But there is also the case where someone decides to make a business out of selling illegally copied music. The statutory damages in the law are really meant to be a serious deterrent to this kind of business.
Fine -- let's keep the insane damages, but we should also be applying them to corporate business practices. Instead, we get a class action suit over seriously bad products and what's the outcome? Lawyers suck up the bulk of the settlement in costs and fees -- the victims end up with one tenth of the original price of the product (if they kept their receipts). And half the time, that tenth comes in the form of a "voucher" redeemable only for more buttfucking by the company who already fucked them over.
All you ever hear is that, in the case of a corporation, damages should never be large enough to drive them out of business. I guess the file-sharer was expected to "continue in business" under the weight of the $2M fine. And even under the reduced $54K fine.
Fucking goddamned American business has the entire court system by the balls.
yup, or maybe she will raise a PhD physicist, bio chemist and a lawyer. by the way, what social class do you hail from? I would like to know so we can openly compare our achievements and I can endlessly demonstrate my superiority while mocking such a waste of privileged flesh. I'll even give you a few years for your acne to clear before we face one another.......
Make the record companies prove up their damages just like any other litigant would have to. And by "prove up their damages," I mean offer evidence to show exactly how many downloads of a song equals a lost sale. Hint: It's not 1:1. Let's say it's 100:1, so ($0.50/100) * 24 = $0.12 in damages. In this situation, an award of $1.20 would be ten times actual damages, the outer end of what the Supreme Court has said is acceptable for punitive damages. Even if the ratio is 10:1, damages 10x actuals only nets Big Content a $12 award.
More appropriately, the judicial system needs to realize that lawsuits between corporations and individuals are not disputes between equals and should not be treated as such. Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen any time soon with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that corporations have the same rights to political speech that natural persons do.
(sigh)
I would think that they would look at what is commonly settled for out of court as part of determining "reasonable" or "actual" damages.
If a company commonly settles for several thousand dollars (say 2400$-6500$) out of court for approximately the same offense then how is it reasonable to expect 2$ Million or even 54,000$ dollars award is fair? Obviously if the company settles for this amount over and over to ovoid court, it must be what they feel is the right amount.
I am not sure if courts are about to take this into account, but they really should.
Some awards are just stupid. If I got sued for 2$ million they might as well make it for 2$ Billion, or 2$ Quadrillion, as either way A) I can't pay it, and B) I will declare myself bankrupt and never pay it. Which is likely the real reason for the change. Hell 7 years of bad credit due to being bankrupt is hardly a big deal now that everyone is doing it, banks ain't lending much anyway, etc... If ever there was a good time to do it, it is now really.
My father who is a lawyer did tell me some sage advice (common sense really). Basically the gist of it was that you can't sue someone for money they don't have. If they do not have have money, have no assets for the court to go after, have no credit anyway, etc... you are just wasting your own time and even more money. You are better off to swallow the loss and move on with your life as you will only compound the problem, and ultimately be disappointed in the end.
In many cases groups will compromise or negotiate a lesser settlement to at least get something, knowing they will never get the full amount, particular if the debtor threatens to file chapter 7 (or whatever it is). I hear the IRS do this all the time for large amounts of back taxes. Someone might owe 500,000 bucks, but a lawyer will come in and say, well my client, can't pay that, nor will he ever be able to pay that, however, if we promise to pay 100k, and 10k a year for ten years can we call the debt paid? Many times if the options are 0$ or 200,000$ rather than 500,000$, they will take the 200k rather than nothing.
$2,000,000 to $54,000, it's still an 8th amendment violation:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Even if they were to go so far as to call it theft, she "stole" what amounted to a market value of $24. United States v. Bajakajian established some precedence for the ratio at which a fine is considered "excessive". That is, $357,000 fine for $10,000 in damage was considered "excessive." So over 35.7 times the value is "excessive". By that ratio, anything more than $856 would be a violation of 8th amendment rights.
Honestly, $856 is enough to be a deterrent if you ask me, but not enough to totally and irrevocably destroy a person's life (as a $54,000 fine would do to her).
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
-H.L. Mencken
Gee, I learned the word "molarity" in middle school, but OK, we'll play in your ballpark and confine ourselves to a grade school vocabulary.
You're arguing that we should call "copyright infringement" "theft" because the word "infringement" is too difficult for people to understand. Well, OK, maybe the people you hang out with, but tell you what, I'll give it to you. Honestly, I think you want to use the word "theft" not because it's simpler, but because it has stronger connotations of violence and violation --
Dammit, I did it again, didn't I? I'm sorry, grade school, I know, grade school...
Let's try it this way. We'll use the words "copying without someone said OK" instead of "copyright infringement."
How's that? Does it still make your head hurt? I know the words are still big. Let's try to sound them out together....
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Now you've got it:
"taking something that isn't yours"
There's no "taking" involved here, and that's the crux of our problem. Data has been copied, nothing has been removed. You're literally arguing that if I light a candle from yours, then I have stolen your candle. Actually, even that isn't a good analogy, because there would be a tiny but measurable amount of wax that would be used up to heat my wick to ignition. Under copyright infringement, bits have been copied, but absolutely nothing has been lost.
Here's your problem. Items in the real world -- plants and minerals and the things that come from them -- can be claimed and owned. Ideas, concepts and arrangements -- "here's a better way to start a campfire," "Bears like to live in caves," "Do re mi fa so la ti do" -- can't be. You can lock up your dog. You can't lock up "Ave Maria" or "Light is both a particle and a wave." Once that idea is out, it's out.
There is no natural right to what is oxymoronically called "Intellectual property." Shakespeare, Mozart and Bill Hicks belong to the whole world.
The problem is that the way things occur naturally, people who discover new things want to keep it a secret. So, to encourage these people to share and share alike -- because nobody discovers anything out of whole cloth, everybody is working off the shoulders of the giants who came before -- we artificially create and offer copyright and patents. "Tell us what you found, and we'll make sure you get sole profit from it for a while." The original Statute of Anne set this at 14 years.
The means anything from 1996 back would be public domain. Sounds generous to me.
The problem is that the greedy suits -- not the artists, not the scientists -- the suits reneged on this deal. They took the money we offered them and bribed the living Hell out of our government to grant them copyright in perpetuity, a perversion of the original idea. It's widely accepted that Mickey Mouse will never come into the public domain, which is ironic considering Walt Disney didn't create those fairy tales he animated. Under the ideas of "Intellectual Property," Disney should be paying royalties to the Grimm Brothers forever, and the Grimm Brothers owe a bunch of wizened old people in Bavaria a ton of money as well.
So here we the people are, screwed beyond belief. CBS is going to childishly, petulantly destroy forever Jack Benny's work rather than let it pass into the public domain.
You know what the statutory, black-letter penalty is for abusing copyright? You lose it. I can't think of a more perfect example of reneging on the copyright deal than to burn something rather than let it pass into public domain.
And so, if CBS, Disney and Sony want to revoke the deal we extended copyright under, then so be it. There is no copyright. Let a thousand hackers bloom, and may the children of Napster and Bittorrent march forever.
And when the suits finally cry "Uncle," then let's talk about setting copyright to a more reasonable seven year term.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Yeah, at this point, I'm really starting to think you're a shill. Few people are this deliberately obtuse, but on the slim chance that you are...
Four basic ways to come into possession of a thing:
For the benefit of the slow, data and ideas are not physical "things." There's no natural right to ownership. You're arguing for perpetual copyright, which means you'll need to cough up money for anything you do beyond merely existing. By the logic you're proposing, Disney owes Grimm, who owes Bavaria, who owes Sumeria because "Gilgamesh" set up that whole kind of narrative, who owes...
Eventually we come to one ancient scrawney guy in Africa whose estate now owns everything because he stumbled over "begin at the Beginning, tell the Middle, finish at the End."
Copyright is an artificial game we play, every bit as pretend as "Calvinball." (Someone needs to cut Bill Watterson a check now...) We made it up. If the corporations of the world don't want to play by the rules any more, then we can just quit playing the game.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Most American businesses get screwed by the court system more often than they benefit wildly from it. The number of groundless wrongful-termination and product liability lawsuits that companies face drive costs way up for companies that are barely squeaking by with modest profits in the face of global competition from companies in countries that *don't* have such fucked up legal systems and thus aren't dragged down by these costs.
This is part of the reason that in many, many consumer product categories nobody manufactures in the US anymore (labor costs are part of the reason, obviously, and health insurance costs are the other part - the latter of which is also somewhat linked to medical malpractice and frictional costs of the legal system, as well as a bunch of other factors that have been conspiring to drive these costs up in the last few years).