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RIAA Confusion In Tenenbaum & Thomas Cases?
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "There seems to be a bit of confusion in RIAA-land these days, caused by the only 2 cases that ever went to trial, Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset in Minnesota, and SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, in Boston. In both cases, the RIAA has recently asked for extensions of time. In Thomas-Rasset, they've asked for more time to make up their mind as to whether to accept the reduced verdict of $54,000 the judge has offered them, and in Tenenbaum they've twice asked for more time to prepare their papers opposing Tenenbaum's motion for remittitur. What is more, it has been reported that after the reduction of the verdict, the RIAA offered to settle with Ms. Thomas-Rasset for $25,000, but she turned them down."
Requests for extension of time are very common, and there's nothing unusual about the reasons given by the RIAA lawyers in the motions or for the length of extension requested. This seems like little more than an attempt to drive more pageviews to Mr. Beckerman's ad-laden site.
She did the right thing, though. If she had given up in court at 50k, the next person might have to start over in the millions.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
This isn't about what her lawyer asserted, it's about what the judge ruled.
She's actually very clever to not take the settlement. Aside from the fact that there may well be someone behind her bankrolling that 25 grand difference anyway, she's more likely than not to end up paying nothing other than court costs.
The RIAA really doesn't want that 54k verdict to become official. It would set a legal precedent, one which would more likely than not be referred to, even in other jurisdictions. It's probably relatively close to a fair number(I can't recall the details of the case at the moment), but that's really not the point. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the RIAA ends up dropping the Thomas case. It'll cost them to do so, but it will severly limit their ability to extort and intimidate future defendents.
Anyway, $25k is not an enormous life ruining debt. Yes, it is not trivial, but it is surmountable.
Considering the damages caused by the crime, $500 would be the high-ball figure for a sane punishment. Considering the act of downloading and uploading files is at least as common as speeding and done by millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans, that should be taken into account -- it's a bad law.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Estimated actual damages
24 songs with a $.99 retail value. Assume the $.99 is the damage per song that a sale was lost on. (That's not the case actually as the wholesale price is the damage amount.) Assume every song downloaded is an actual lost sale. (Again not true, but simple for this calculation.) Assume a seed ration of 5, so for every song 5 copies were made. (Again not true, 5 is an insanely high ratio on P2P networks as 1:1 is common.) 24*.99.*5 = $118.80 actual losses incurred. 10 times that is the constitutionally recognized limit.
$1188.0
That's why RIAA doesn't want the constitutionality of the damages award adjudicated.
I support her cause because they cannot prove any damages at all. Them downloading a song does not actually cause them any damage.
I also support her cause because, even if they could prove that her sharing resulted in X copies of the song being distributed illegally in a way which caused a loss of sale, then the actual damages to them would be something between X/10 and X dollars. Suppose X=25. Asking for $250 and the attorney fees would be just. Asking for $2500 would be an overkill, but they think they should get at least $25000 = 1000 times the damages, and that without ever proving the loss of a single sale.
aha, so because speeding is criminal, and occasionally deadly, it should have lower costs than a civil offense with no chance of causing physical harm to anyone?
$54k is CERTAINLY excessive. As is $25k. This is not a criminal case. The payment is not a fine to discourage crime, it's a payment to cover the damages. She shared 24 songs. At $54k, that's more than $2k per song. And when you can buy those songs for $1 each, that's saying that she was personally and directly responsible for 2,000 people not buying each one of those songs. How is that in any way even possible? A single person sharing a single song will NEVER be directly responsible for _thousands_ of lost sales. It just doesn't work that way. And the RIAA has certainly not proven such a loss. And again, this is a civil case. The fine is not a punishment or deterrent, it is pure and simple restitution.
For a reference:
http://www.rbs2.com/cc.htm#anchor111111
"In general, a losing defendant in civil litigation only reimburses the plaintiff for losses caused by the defendant's behavior."
Sooner or later everyone in the world will have heard music that they weren't entitled to hear, or seem movies that they weren't entitled to see, or read books that they weren't entitled to read.
At that point, it's going to be hard to convince a jury people that a multimillion dollar corporation should be able to bankrupt a single mother with children because they liked music.
Anyway, $25k is not an enormous life ruining debt. Yes, it is not trivial, but it is surmountable.
What it is, is unconstitutional.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
"His name was James Damore."