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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."
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.
How the hell is a song worth $2250?
Stealing is a poor choice of words, but yours is a poor choice of analogy.
It'd be more accurate to compare it to stealing the CD from WalMart, setting up a rig of several CD writers and making many copies then standing outside WalMart giving those copies away. Suddenly the lost revenue isn't (cost of CD), it's (cost of CD multiplied by number of CDs you gave away). Of course nobody really knows how many you made or gave away so they work out how many it's physically possible for you to have made and given away and work on the back of that.
(There is the bijou issuette that a free CD will attract many more takers than a CD on the shelf at $12-15 ever will....)
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.
You are (wrongly) assuming that every CD given away is a lost sale
Imagine that some company sells a CD with just one track, which is a bell ringing for 3 seconds, and they sell it at 3,000,000 $.. If I gave one away, would it be a 3,000,000 $ sale lost? No, because it wasn't going to be sold anyway...
Marketing 101: A product is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
Therefore the damages amount to $0.00
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Are you saying I'd have to go and find each and every person that didn't come to my restaurant because of your lies?
Yes you should.
Evidence is a bitch, huh?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Bullshit. $54,000 is one THIRD of the median home price. Where do you get your information, and why did you bother posting that?
Here's where you can get the MEDIAN home price of Brainerd, Minnesota:
http://realestate.yahoo.com/Minnesota/Brainerd
Bad information & lies makes people doubt the truth - and your side of the argument.
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.
The real irony there is that there's at least a fair amount of evidence that giving music away is the best sort of advertisement there is...
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The damage is still $0.
Refuting that argument, is as absurd as refuting gravity.
That fact will never change. No matter it what parallel-reality bullshit everyone (even here) got dragged.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
No. -54000 still is a negative number, relative to the damages of $0.
Ideas are no goods and have no money value. (Services that provide them, have.)
They can not be owned. Physics don’t care if you disagree.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
If someone owns something and someone else wants to buy it, they have to come to an agreement on the price.
They did, she provided the copies for free.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"