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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."
"Lawyering is hard!"
Push the button on his back down to make him raise his hand to object! Push the same button up and he slides an affidavit full of unmarked bills across the judge's desk! Just like in real life!
Judge'sDeskAndNewYorkCountryLawyerVillainSoldSeparately. RIAADollVoidOutsideOfDesignatedUseAreasAndMayCausePermanentInjuryOr BankruptcyUponMissedPaymentInstallments.
My work here is dung.
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.
I suspect Thomas will rue the day she turned down the $25k settlement. While whatever millions the jury awarded was obviously excessive, her lawyer's assertion that $1/song is appropriate is also excessive, but in the opposite direction. If the law's bite was no more than the cost of purchase for what you get caught illegally "sharing", there would be no incentive for people to be honest and pay for their music.
Anyway, $25k is not an enormous life ruining debt. Yes, it is not trivial, but it is surmountable.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Not settling will set the precedent for future RIAA damage?
54k seems excessive, but probably way less than what the RIAA lawyers would like to charge for their time.
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I would like to see a definitive, ultimate outcome along the lines of the trend I'm seeing here -- reduction of Jammie's fine from the absurdly egregious down to a level she can afford without crippling her family financially for the rest of her life, over a few unlicensed uploads.
Yes she broke the law, there should be a penalty for the infraction, but all the settlements so far have been unjustly high. And yes, I'd like to see it played out to the point where a precedent will be set and honoured.
The RIAA are the worst of the world's ambulance chasers. They shouldn't be allowed to win these huge entitlements, simply because they can afford to make more noise.
Justice should be the outcome of rule by law, decent and upstanding law, not simply "rule by the loud".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
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.
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.
The last line seems to me (as a non-lawyer, mind you) more fascinating than the headline. Offering a settlement looks like betting on a stock price: The RIAA was willing to sell its $54,000 judgement for less than HALF that amount. They must expect to ultimately get less than that.
And Ms. Thomas-Rasset (or rather her lawyer, since nobody would make a decision like that against their lawyer's advice) seems to share that view, since she refused the settlement. They must be confident that they'll pay less than $25,000, or even nothing.
RIAA is trying to set precedent for high awards. Their problem is that they may not reach that goal in either of these cases.
That is correct. And probably Judge Gertner in Tenenbaum will award significantly less than even the reduced award in Thomas. Judge Gertner appears to be very knowledgeable about constitutional law, and the US Supreme Court has set a rough guideline that punitive awards should rarely exceed 4 times actual damages (i.e. $1.40 per infringed recording) and almost never exceed 9 times actual damages (i.e. $3.05 per infringed recording).
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I've seen the idea floating around /. that the actual damages are not the purchase price of the song, but instead the price of a distribution license. Is the RIAA pushing that argument? I imagine the fact that "making available" was never proven would be a problem there.
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