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Special Master Appointed In Jammie Thomas Case
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "There has been another odd development in the Jammie Thomas-Rassett case. You may recall that after the judge reduced the RIAA's verdict from $1.92 million to $54,000 on the grounds that $54,000 was the maximum amount a jury could reasonably award, the RIAA opted for a third trial instead of allowing judgment to be entered. Its reasoning in making that call has never been clear, since there seemed little point in spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a trial which could produce no more than a judgment for $54,000 or less. Apparently the court thinks taxpayers' money could be better spent, and has appointed a 'Special Master' to bring about 'meaningful settlement discussions,' with the Master's $400-per-hour fee to be paid by the RIAA. One commentator suggests the RIAA should at this juncture just say, 'Thanks Jammie, we've had all we can get out of you and caused you enough grief — pay us $1 and we'll forget about it.' Actually doing that would be a lot less costly and more reasonable that what they appear to have in mind."
'Thanks Jammie, we've had all we can get out of you and caused you enough grief — pay us $1 and we'll forget about it.' Actually doing that would be a lot less costly and more reasonable that what they appear to have in mind."
Reason, and reasonableness, has never been a part of their campaign from the beginning.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
'Thanks Jammie, we've had all we can get out of you and caused you enough grief — pay us $1 and we'll forget about it.'
I'm not a lawyer but I would bet they would prefer to spend $2 million to get a $1 million settlement on the grounds that all future cases could be directed at the Jammie Thomas trial for precedent on how much should be awarded without all the hassle of a Special Master. Or am I missing something in that strategy?
A $1 settlement?! Hell, I'd start file sharing right now and keep that war chest of $1 in change on my desk close at hand.
My work here is dung.
They would rather have a ridiculous sum in judgement than to seek the reasonable. A reasonable verdict is what they want to avoid because if we start seeing reasonable verdicts, the headlines go away, and the lawyers' gravy train ends.
They should have a meeting with the President... perhaps he could "shake down" the RIAA like he did BP?
Achievement Unlocked: Black President.
For a case to set precedent, it has to be decided by a court that has jurisdiction over the matter. Settlements don't count. Now while they can be used informally, a thing of "This person settled with us, you should too," they have no weight in trial.
The reason is because you can sue anyone over anything and that can settle out of court, no matter how stupid. For example suppose you sue me for being ugly. You really could file a lawsuit for that, stupid though it may be. If it went to trial, it'd get thrown out in preliminaries. However, suppose I choose to settle with you for whatever reason. That's my right. I give you $5 to drop the suit. Done and done.
If that was precedent, you could then try to use it to file successful suits against other people, despite the fact it is clearly a stupid, frivolous, lawsuit.
As such the court would give it no weight at all. You file another ugly suit and say "But this guy settled with me over it!" They'll say "Don't care, case dismissed, plaintiff ordered to pay court costs."
At lease IMHO. (IANAL and am not sure what ins-and-outs of possibly setting a bad precedent might be involved.)
But assume they're after using the legal system to cause as much pain as possible for those they're after, as an example to others who might consider using file sharing services to download music, and it makes a lot of sense.
That would be using the horrendous costs of the civil system to create the same incentive structure as the criminal justice system, but without the latter's higher standard of proof or the necessity of passing laws to actually criminalize the behavior or convincing the prosecutors to spend time going after music fans (who might just be voters) rather than rapists and murderers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You seem to be missing one thing. (Actually, this is NYCL, so I doubt it. Anyways...) The RIAA doesn't want to set a precedence for future court cases. Yeah, they might be wasting money on this case, but as long as Thomas pays them an exorbitant fee, they're happy. The next case will move much faster, they won't have to invest as much, and they will still get their $1.92 mill. If this settles for *only* $54,000, then the next case will also settle for around that range. Then they're fucked: future cases will also follow this one, and they can't threaten people with million dollar lawsuits. They don't care how much they spend on this one, they just want future cases to have the million dollar rewards so they can recover their costs. Doesn't this sound like a fucked up business model?
That is such an awesome development but I have an even better upgrade to it. How about they also allow a random pissed off person to fire a paintball gun at them every 5 minutes during the meeting, film it, and make it a reality show on FOX.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Is anyone else getting a "jumble" when looking at NYCL site?
But ultimately they are after money. Its foolish to assume otherwise.
I want to be a Special Master.
Seriously, can you think of a better job title? "Tame Racing Driver" is the only one that even comes close.
I'm guessing the RIAA are keeping this going just to avoid setting any 'dangerous' legal precidents that would undermine their future cases (like $54k being the most they can ever sue for from now on).
I'm totally amazed that none of the judges have found the RIAA guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to Jammie Thomas. I think she should countersue the RIAA for their ridiculous miscarriage of justice.
This is just a wild thought, but could the court have done this to protect the RIAA from their own lawyers?
N.B. this user is far too lazy to write a witty and intelligent sig.
They don't want the money, they want an example.
They want to be able to say "Don't pirate music or you'll have to pay 90 thousand dollars a song!"
$2500 a song (I think that's about what it came out to, I don't remember exactly how many songs it was) doesn't have nearly the same punch. They want the high judgment; they don't care if Jammie Thomas pays a dime of it.
If they wanted the money, they'd stick with the low judgment, because that's something they are actually likely to get.
This will go really badly if the Special Master decides to bring it down even lower. If ends up being something like $500 a pop, that's a very weak deterrent. And remember that she had hundreds of songs on her machine, and only got hit for about 20 I think, so it really works poorly as a deterrent when people stop to consider the potential consequences.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
It's possible that they want to make money from litigious activities but not from this specific case. If they make an example in this case, they can avoid trials in future cases by scaring people into settling. If filesharers are given a choice between paying roughly $10k or facing a trial and what essentially boils down to indentured servitude for the rest of their lives should they lose, the vast majority will pay the $10k and move on. The scheme breaks down when the alternative to the $10k offer is a trial with max damages of $54k...a lot more people will roll the dice on that one.
Once they've set the precedent, they can start suing everyone they suspect of filesharing. When the vast majority settle, they'll make a ton of money. At $10k per settlement, they make $1 million for every 100, so with the huge number of people out there pirating music, it'll add up fast.
An example? Certainly won't be the example they meant to make.
The RIAA took a very foolish gamble. They have such faith in the concept and moral rightness of copyright and the law that they were sure the courts could not fail to uphold it. They've deluded themselves, ignoring and denying the painful fact that technology has enabled the undetectable transfer of entire libraries in moments. Only takes one finger sized flash drive to hold what used to fill an entire shelf of vinyl records, and the flash drive can be copied in a few seconds. But just to be extra sure, they picked on someone they thought was weak, who would cave or fatally screw up immediately. Apparently didn't think of the possibility this would push their victim to put up the ferocious defense of a cornered animal. Or of the fact that even in winning, they lose. They made her into a martyr when it seemed they had won. I can't think of any other reason why they'd gamble like that. Thought they could not lose.
But the RIAA can't win this no matter what they do. And now, with the direction this case has taken, seems the RIAA can't even score a draw or pull out with a token loss. So they're going for broke. I wonder if this case could bring the law up to date with reality by weakening copyright law to the point of irrelevancy. Copyright itself is dying, and all this is doing is calling attention to how sick copyright law is.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
They didn't take a gamble on the moral rightness of copyright. They won that bit, the court decided that this woman did in fact infringe on copyright(and let's be honest, she did).
The gamble they took was that the patently ludicrous multi-million dollar penalties they lobbied for would stand up in court when used against some dumb schmuck who wasn't sharing for profit. They lost that gamble, and they lost big time.
One of the consequences of this is that they've basically lost nearly all of their ability to actually frighten pirates. Given your the abysmally small chance you have of getting caught and how difficult it is to prove that you were sharing any substantial number of songs, 54 grand is, to most people, an acceptable risk. Most people could arrange a payment schedule for that and wouldn't even need to declare bankruptcy. It would suck, but it wouldn't be the end of the world, and you've got a slightly higher chance of getting struck by lightning than sued for copyright infringement, even if you're the biggest pirate in the world, and the lightning strike would probably cost you more.
The other consequence of this is that they're pretty much guaranteed to lose money on any future cases affected by this precedent. By the time you pay the investigators, file the paperwork, pay the lawyers, and all the other costs associated with something like this, you'd be lucky to break even at that kind of judgement. That's not even counting bad publicity.
So if you can't scare people, and the process loses you money, what do you do? They've gone too far down this path to turn back and try to fight this another way, and they can't really ignore the threat to their business model.
Law enforcement is always difficult for instances where the chance of getting caught is incredibly low. If you pile on the penalties you start looking like jack booted thugs, and if you give a fair penalty, there is no deterrent.
Personal use should be limited to retail value of the product at sentencing. No paying lawyer fees or any of that. That way there's a fair balance. If im pirating $50,000 retail worth of stuff... then maybe ya i should be paying out. Gross commercial infringement on the otherhand should be the multiple millions per work. The judge knocking the amount down to $54,000 is attempting to make it reasonable to avoid copyright infringement all together being thrown out.
Remember, the expenses incurred by the RIAA in these and other similarly insane actions are by and large tax-deductible business expenses. In other words, the American taxpayer is footing the bill through reduced tax revenue and corresponding loss of services and/or increased taxes elsewhere.
I always wondered why tracks recorded recently seem to be mixed so much louder than in the past. Thanks, NYCL, you've explained it all!
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
From this link:
In January of this year, the labels offered to settle the case for $25,000, to be donated to a music charity, but Thomas-Rasset declined the offer; her attorney said, "Jammie will not accept anything offer that requires her to pay money to or on behalf of the Plaintiffs."
What kind of meaningful settlement discussion can there be then? Said "Special Master" should just say "no can do" and return it to the court.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'd think that would inspire a few people to figure "Hell, I've got nothing left to loose. Might as well kill a few of the bastards."
I could be wrong, but I believe that recent research has shown that some fraction of people figure that if they've been done wrong, they don't care WHAT it costs them to get even. (Mind you, there'd been plenty of historical examples even before the recent academic research, so I found it convincing without checking into the details.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
One thing is sure, they've lost all the moral capital they had left after it was proven that they were systematically underpaying and overcharging the musicians. (No surprise there. Every time they've been audited there's been the same result, and never any serious penalty.)
For the last two decades in conflicts between the pirates and the RIAA, I've considered the pirates to be the more moral party. Stupid and immoral, but less immoral than the RIAA or MPAA, or any of their member companies. It's to the point where I wasn't really surprised when SONY was proven to be selling hidden root-kits. A bit shocked, but not really surprised. (I was shocked that a company that was once such a bastion of technical elegance had fallen so far so quickly. Now I won't buy anything that has their name on it.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
All well true, but I wonder why you think (pre-conviction) rapists and murderers aren't voters too? :-)
I believe this is one of the rare moments where NYCL has missed the point. In fact, the only one I've ever seen now that I think about it..
This isn't about money. Here, read this bit again:
One commentator suggests the RIAA should at this juncture just say, 'Thanks Jammie, we've had all we can get out of you and caused you enough grief -- pay us $1 and we'll forget about it.' Actually doing that would be a lot less costly and more reasonable that what they appear to have in mind.
It's right there if you read it a second time. "...more reasonable that what they appear to have in mind."
They are not out to be reasonable. What they wish to do is to rob this poor woman not of her money but of her time, her life. One minute at a time, whatever the cost. They don't want to bankrupt her. They don't want $54,000. They want to make an example out of her. Doesn't matter if they have to spend hundreds of thousands to drag this thing out. The money isn't the point. The entire music industry is balanced on the head of a pin and these people are just that terrified that the gravy train is coming to an end. It is fear and wild reaction on a level that is hard to understand. That's why the response seems unreasonable. Because it is. On purpose. The modern day legal equivalent of these guys.
It has taken me 40 years on this planet to eventually figure out the fact that some people simply do not think in a reasonable fashion. It's hard when you base your life on rationality to think in an irrational manner. You see someone doing something you cannot understand and you apply your own yardsticks to it. And fail, because nothing you can come up with fits.
These people have different motives than I could ever have - it is alien thinking. But once you know that people differ wildly from each other, you know that some people will simply be unfathomable. This is one of those times.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Hang on there folks. When you suggest piracy is immoral, I have to disagree. Less immoral than what the industry does, yes. But that's because it's not at all immoral. "Piracy" is a loaded term. We should be calling it "sharing". Copying is no more immoral than borrowing a book from the library. It's certainly less costly.
There is nothing holy about copyright. Copyright is only a system that attempts to funnel the fairest amount of compensation possible to the originators of art and science, in order to encourage same. It fails dismally on all points. And it's not even good capitalism, as it is based on handing out completely artificial monopolies. Definitely anti-competitive. Other systems could hardly do worse.
Not only should we try other systems, we must. Their business model is toast. Copying immense quantities of data quickly is stunningly easy and cheap today. And it can be as private and anonymous as the participants wish, though mostly people don't bother. Don't need to. It will only get easier and cheaper. These media control freaks are not going to get their way and actually force all humanity to switch to crippled devices that all obey DRM.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
All well true, but I wonder why you think (pre-conviction) rapists and murderers aren't voters too? :-)
Some are. (Even post-conviction some are, given the lax enforcement of voting laws.)
But "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." works both ways: The typical rapist or murderer has a long rap sheet of previous violent crimes by the time they get around to murder or even their first prosecuted rape. So one can expect a much lower likelihood of current registration and active voting among those accused of rape or murder than those accused of "pirating music".
Also: Rapists and murderers make up a rather small percentage of the population and going after them is likely to gain a prosecutor enough votes from the rest to make up for any move by the felons to vote him out of office. B-) Spending prosecutorial resources going after unauthorized music downloaders, on the other hand, is likely to lose quite a few votes - if only from people concerned about letting some violent criminals go due to the distraction.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"One commentator suggests the RIAA should at this juncture just say, 'Thanks Jammie, we've had all we can get out of you and caused you enough grief -- pay us $1 and we'll forget about it.'" Sure, that would be reasonable if this were only about Jammie. Let us not forget these beasts are also in the business of wrecking their victims' lives so as to make an example for others.
Mod Me Up. You'll make a grown man cry.
No one said DRM was the answer, but if you think that taking the fruits of someone else's hard work is righteous then you're fooling yourself. Copyright is based on the fundamental human truth that everyone has to eat. It's not perfect, but its purpose is to allow people to create ideas and still eat. If they can't eat they won't create, either because they're too busy to create or because they've starved to death. It doesn't really matter if the artists get paid directly from the proceeds of their creation, or if they create on behalf of someone else in exchange for less risky cash.
Lord knows the current copyright terms are ridiculous, and that the business model of the RIAA is fundamentally flawed(I said they'd be stupid not to fight to defend it, not that it was the right model), but if you think the world would be a better place if music was only created for people who have enough money to hire artists to create it, or where artists and inventors never created anything at all, you're batshit insane.
The price of copying data has dropped to almost nothing. So what? The price of creating the data in the first place hasn't.
How long before an insurance company brings out 'Copyright Infringment Insurance'? ...
"For a monthly fee of $X, we will pay any settlement costs that are forced upon you."
This is being run by lawyers who get paid by the hour, ergo. nobody's dropping anything, ever.
It goes on *forever*.
No sig today...
The price of copying data has dropped to almost nothing. So what? The price of creating the data in the first place hasn't.
As a lifelong musician, I can tell you that "creating the data", in the case of recording and publishing music, has most certainly gone down by orders of magnitude. My blues band has two CDs out on iTunes, AmazonMP3, and about 5 or 6 others and total cost (not counting the equipment we already had, but including the costs of publishing) was around $800, with physical CDs with liner & disc/cover artwork at about $2 each in 100-lots ready for sale as needed, complete with UPC coding/registration.
That's a small fraction of the cost to do the same thing in the '70s...or even the '80s or '90s, for that matter. That's one of the major reasons behind their aggressive attempts to maintain and increase their control of distribution channels, as well as using fear tactics rather indiscriminately against anyone using this, to them, "new intertubes thing" to violate copyright.
The internet is a threat because it's a distribution channel they don't control, so they hope to both scare potential infringers while using them as an excuse to lobby for legislation to increase control of the internet and it's users while removing privacy, anonymity, and individual freedom.
But, hey...as long as they don't have to do anything like adapt to a changing world, what does the hampering of technological progress and the loss of a few rights & freedoms matter, eh? Those lawyers they use to avoid audits of their books and cheat artists aren't cheap, never mind the hookers & blow.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The costs to distribute and record/design/print have certainly gone down, and again I am by no means advocating the behavior of the music industry(they'd have done far better using more carrot and less stick), but you still need someone to write the music, play the music, write the book, design the product, you still need someone creative, and that someone still needs to eat, even if their costs have gone down, they still need to eat.
Law enforcement is always difficult for instances where the chance of getting caught is incredibly low. If you pile on the penalties you start looking like jack booted thugs, and if you give a fair penalty, there is no deterrent.
This is why they're so desperately trying to make music sharing a crime under criminal law - so they don't have to spend money to catch us, just let the taxpayer funded police and justice system do it FOR them.
This is about intimidation, not remediation: "Look, we destroyed her life for years and years. We can do it to you, too."
Copyright is also based on the fundamental truth that no art is created from void and that you OWE us for your education, safety etc. IM not saying that people dont deserve to get paid, but the social contract that is copyright has been extremely distorted to favor content creators, and thats not right either. There needs to be a balance brought back so that works can continue to enter public domain in a reasonable fashion. NO one should be making money from a copyright 50 years after its creation. Thats a drain on our culture and needs to be addressed before we can even begin to talk about 'piracy'.
Good-bye
As Dilbert's PHB once stated, they're using the law to keep justice away!
They may need to eat, but that doesnt mean they are owed payments for said work for 70+ years.
Good-bye
Woosh woosh! :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I'd think that would inspire a few people to figure "Hell, I've got nothing left to loose.
They could loose their lawyers, or they could loose some bullets.
Or did you mean "lose"? If you mean "lose" than say "lose". They're both verbs and mean completely different things, and saying "loose" when you mean "lose" changes the meaning of the sentence completely.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm sure this isn't the most popular way to look at it, but let me see if I've got this straight...
She was found guilty, and judging by the publically available information I have to believe she is... the only disputed issue seems to be the award... and unless my math's off the RIAA was offering to settle for less than the reduced judgement the court was still holding as valid.
And she siad no? What, on principle? "I shouldn't have to pay any amount, even if it's less than the court-reduced amount, even though I did violate the law"?
I don't see what the RIAA hopes to accomplish by pushing this, but just as much I don't see what she thinks she stands to gain. Am I losing it, or am I correct in thinking that at this point if they don't reach a settlement she has to pay what the court ordered?
...to write the music, play the music, write the book, design the product, you still need someone creative, and that someone still needs to eat, even if their costs have gone down, they still need to eat.
All of the things you mention, like writing & playing the music, we do already as a band in addition to product design (cover & label artwork, etc) as well as the recording & publishing. Where we may differ from big-label artists is that we don't view a recording and it's sales as our product, our purpose & goal. It's a promotional tool. We give away tons (many more than we sell) of physical CDs, and MP3s are freely available on the band's website. We make our money mainly from performances & merchandise like T-shirts, caps, etc.
The artists that you see publicly railing against "piracy" and in favor of copyright expansions have become part of the music "industry" themselves and have become dependent upon it. They've "sold out", as the cliche goes, and so their stances on issues surrounding copyright are to be expected, as they themselves have become nothing more than tools of the recording industry.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
But it doesn't favor the artists and musicians. If it did, I might almost see it as reasonable. Instead it favors the middlemen.
Actually, I lie. Even if it actually favored the creative people, I still wouldn't see an agreement THAT distorted as just. But it doesn't favor the creative people at all. It favors those who hire lawyers. Specialized lawyers, who charge rates much higher than those of an ordinary lawyer.
To put a more accurate point on it, the current laws favor a subset of people who engage in power games to the disadvantage of those who would rather do something else.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Didn't say they were, copyright periods are out of touch with reality, especially in this day and age where there isn't a 20 year lead time to getting something published for the first time. I merely said that, broken as it may be, copyright is achieving its purpose. There may be a lot of unpleasant side effects, but that doesn't mean we do away with it. I've yet to hear of a viable alternative to copyright which wouldn't essentially eliminate the production of the vast majority of creative works.
That's all true, however if there were no copyright, how would you eat without taking a second job?
Hang on there folks. When you suggest piracy is immoral, I have to disagree. Less immoral than what the industry does, yes. But that's because it's not at all immoral. "Piracy" is a loaded term. We should be calling it "sharing". Copying is no more immoral than borrowing a book from the library. It's certainly less costly. .
WRONG.
Libraries pay lending rights, so the authors get some recompense. So your excuse falls to pieces.
Feel free not to call it pirating. Call it freeloading if you want. It is still immoral to get the benefit of something someone worked on without the slightest recompense to the person who created it, unless they have chosen to distribute it freely.
I think DRM is a bad solution, but I also think that it was only invented because there are so many freeloaders like yourself. In other words, your behaviour brought this mess upon us all.
The RIAA doesn't really WANT that money (they never would have gotten $1.92M anyway), they want a precedent to intimidate other people so they settle (whether the claims are valid or not).
Never forget the RIAAs first announcement after the $1.92M sentence:
"THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON'T SETTLE"
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Not exactly on topic, but there's a few questions about Ms. Thomas that have been bugging me and I'm hoping someone will know the answers.
1) How do you pronounce Jammie? Is it like Jammy, or Jamie, or some third option?
2) Is that a traditional name for some ethnic group (and if so, who) or just bad spelling?
That's all true, however if there were no copyright, how would you eat without taking a second job?
We eat just fine because we don't need to depend on copyright but on a simple contract to get paid for playing a gig, and use recordings for promotion and even give them away as loss-leaders.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.