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."

Comments

My favorite part

[Anonymous Coward]

Per NewYorkCountryLawyer:

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.

Re:My favorite part

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it (I'm not a lawyer):

His decision was that the amount awarded was in violation of the principles of remittitur. As a result, it was his duty to find the absolute maximum in damages which could be awarded based on the violations. In this case, he determined that sharing 24 songs could be worth, at most, $54,000 in damages ($2,250 per song).

He ALSO felt that, while that was the maximum in damages, he believed this case was not deserving of the maximum in damages. HOWEVER, he felt that while altering the damages awarded to be in line with remittitur were within his powers, he did not feel that lowering it further were, and thus let the judgement of the jury stand as much as possible.

Re:My favorite part

[PunditGuy]

$750 minimum x treble damages for willful infringement x 24 violations = $54000.

Re:My favorite part

[Applekid]

Treble damages? Were the shared songs THAT bad?

Re:My favorite part

[EvanED]

Well, he might have chosen to triple it, but treble damages are not part of the statute.

This is correct; the decision addresses this issue:

Of course, the Copyright Act contains no treble damages provision. The Courts remittitur is not an attempt to create such a provision. Rather, the Court has labored to fashion a reasonable limit on statutory damages awards against noncommercial individuals who illegally download and upload music such that the award of statutory damages does not veer into the realm of gross injustice. Finding a precise dollar amount that delineates the border between the jurys wide discretion to calculate its own number to address ThomasRassets willful violations, Plaintiffs farreaching, but nebulous damages, and the need to deter online piracy in general and the outrageousness of a $2 million verdict is a considerable task. The Court concludes that setting the limit at three times the minimum statutory damages amount in this case is the most reasoned solution.

Re:My favorite part

[Anonymous Coward]

They were MP3s - of course the treble was damaged

Re:My favorite part

[nacturation]

Bullshit. $54,000 is one THIRD of the median home price. Where do you get your information, and why did you bother posting that?

Quit trolling. The original statement was:

To put it in perspective, $54,000 would buy a house in her neighborhood.

So here you go. A house for $54,000 in Brainerd, Minnesota: http://kurilla.com/listing.cfm?MLS=188019

Stealing?

[mcgrew]

'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.

It's a positive

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

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.

Actual damages are 35 cents per work

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

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.

Re:Actual damages are 35 cents per work

[EvanED]

The judge seemed to indicate he thought $54,000 was still high, how did he settle on that number?

Hmmm, if only he wrote some sort of opinion that explained his reasoning...

learn to read?

[ClioCJS]

I think you missed the part where distributing was never proved.

Re:3 - 5 years?

[Zordak]

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.