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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.
The wholesale price of 24 songs is $16.80. $54,000 is over 3,000 times the maximum possible damages.
'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!
...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
I have a restaurant. You run around town telling people we spit in each and every plate that goes out. I've lost business because of it. 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? Even if I could find them all, what possible way would I have to convince them to testify for me?
Any simple solution to a complex problem is wrong.
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
I think you missed the part where distributing was never proved.
-Clio
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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.
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I assume you're proposing your idea of slander and damages, not trying to recite your current understanding of the law in this area.
IANAL, but a quick google turned up this interesting page about defamation and harm. Quoting (emphasis mine):
So, in your precise scenario, spreading lies (verbally or published) that damage my business reputation are automatically presumed to cause damage. According to this Wikipedia page, all states of the United States except Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee consider "allegations or imputations injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession" to be defamatory per se.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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.
Minimum is $750, and that is tripled in case of willful infringement, which is what jury decided was the case.
As he said in his ruling, you can't only look at the actual damages, since this fine needs to serve as a deterrent, too. If you are only going to pay the value of the songs you downloaded when you get caught, then there would be no deterrent to downloading songs for free.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
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.
In case you were unaware, you don't have to upload 3000 copies of a file for 3000 people to be able to download the file.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Where did you get 3,000 CDs?
It was right in the parent post.
See that little 'parent' button right next to 'reply' ? Try clicking it some time. It might give you an insight into what everyone else is talking about.
You'll see how this works in a few hours when this post is modded flamebait due to others doing exactly what you did, not reading the parent post and thus replying to this comment 100% out of context :P
The cost of enforcement is pretty high, so actual damages might have to include those.
This is totally absurd. If I steal a bread and the bakery develops their own hitech satellite surveillance system to catch me, they couldn't possible claim that they lost a billion dollars because I stole a bread.
If the cost of enforcement is more that the actual damages, it's a stupid business decision and clearly their problem that they chose to do it.
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.
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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.
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.
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