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Supreme Court May Tune In To Music Download Case
droopus writes "The US Supreme Court is weighing into the first RIAA file-sharing case to reach its docket, requesting that the music labels' litigation arm respond to a case testing the so-called 'innocent infringer' defense to copyright infringement. The case pending before the justices concerns a federal appeals court's February decision ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 — $750 a track — for file-sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader. The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400 — or $200 per song. That's an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright act. Harper is among the estimated 20,000 individuals the RIAA has sued for file-sharing music. The RIAA has decried Harper as 'vexatious,' because of her relentless legal jockeying."
We all know the girl was a bit stupid ("I didn't know it was illegal"? Seriously? That's your defense?) What should be focused on is the judgement...$750 per track? What's bad is that's on the low-end compared to some of their other lawsuits :/
Living With a Nerd
"for file-sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader"
If she were a DEMOCRAT it wouldn't have been mentioned. Since she is a cheerleader you go out of your way to make it known. How typical.
Really RIAA? Really? You are accusing someone else of "relentless legal jockeying". /head asplodes
There is a war going on for your mind.
... is complaining about someone else's relentless legal jockeying? How much blacker can the pot get while impugning the kettle's color? Until this girl (or any other individual) has the means to write and buy their own federal legislation, the MPAA should STFU.
And here I thought it was the RIAA who was vexatious.
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If I'm going to face a life time punishment (how long it takes to pay off a million dollar fine), it might as well be for something worthy.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Since the advent of these cases it has been clear that the intent was to bury people financially and for the **AA to use the courts as a bludgeon to scare the rest of the populace--not the pursuit of justice. Now they're upset because someone with nothing to lose (ruinous legal judgments that cannot reasonably be paid back by an individual tends to create that mentality) has decided to use their own strategy against them? Tough $#@! **AA. Bed. Made. Lie.
How do you like this taste of your own medicine? Hopefully this kind of thing will catch on and more people will choose to drag their cases out for as long as possible and this will cost the **AA so much more than they anticipated.
--bornagainpenguin
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How much blacker can the pot get while impugning the kettle's color?
The answer is none. None more black.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Messing with a pretty white cheerleader with Republican parents, in Texas? They got *way* too cocky there. Even Satan's powers have their limits.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How is the RIAA supposed to win if those pesky file sharers won't stop defending themselves?!?
What we should be considering is whether the $750-to-200,000-per-file fine is constitutional, more than whether someone knew it was copyright. Seriously, find me another crime (especially civil) that has a heavier penalty, even a punitive one.
How does her having been a cheerleader have any impact on this case? Why even mention it?
The RIAA has decried Harper as 'vexatious,' because of her relentless legal jockeying
The RIAA has decried [anyone who doesn't immediately pay up] as 'vexatious', because of [their unwillingness to fold like a wet blanket in the face of marginally legal extortionist bullying tactics].
FTFY.
-AC
It's more silly than that. From what I've read, the defendant wants the case to go to trial instead of being forced into a settlement. That's "vexatious" in the eyes of the RIAA.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If the 'innocent infringer' defense doesn't fly, how about awarding full damages? $0.99 cents per song seems reasonable. If she left bittorent running till the share ratio hit 2.0, maybe she should even pay &1.98 per song. Thats like 70 bucks, or three albums. The price is steep, but she did "steal" the songs. The RIAA deserves to be fairly compensated for their losses.
The "conservative" SCOTUS will probably rule in favor of the record industry, tightening the strangle hold corporations have on the US. They have been systematically stripping individuals of rights while handing more power to the government (in the form of police and secret police powers) and corporations for at least 20 years now.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Well, yes and no. The RIAA's position is that her petition has been already asked and answered by the courts, twice.
What gets me is that if the RIAA is correct, then her settlement offer of $1200 should have been acceptable, but they refused it. So their own vexatious accusation makes them in the wrong for rejecting a fair settlement, which is in and of itself vexatious if not frivolous.
...and they're accusing the DEFENDANT of being vexatious? That's not usually the way it works.
I rather suspect, though, that the US Supreme Court will smack down the Fifth Circuit for ignoring the law's requirement of a minimum of $750/infringement, thereby protecting the RIAA from activist judges and hordes of underaged cheerleaders. Copyright uber alles, after all.
I am intrigued to hear on which doctrine they will bass their decision
I really had to read this for myself:
US Copyright Law: Chapter 5. Statutory damages
(1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just. For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.
(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a fair use under section 107, if the infringer was: (i) an employee or agent of a nonprofit educational institution, library, or archives acting within the scope of his or her employment who, or such institution, library, or archives itself, which infringed by reproducing the work in copies or phonorecords; or (ii) a public broadcasting entity which or a person who, as a regular part of the nonprofit activities of a public broadcasting entity (as defined in subsection (g) of section 118) infringed by performing a published nondramatic literary work or by reproducing a transmission program embodying a performance of such a work.
(Watch me get sued for copying legal text verbatim)
Some thoughts:
- This is all at the discretion of the judge.
- The $200 seems to apply per copyright infringement charge. But what is that unit really? Naturally, the RIAA would say "per song" but even $200 per album seems extreme. Per song? What if a 30-second clip is enough to be a copyright infringement. Can the RIAA claim that a 2 minute song is 4 30-second infringements so that is $200 * 4 = $800? Or... is a 35 second song really 5 overlapping infringements of 30-second clips so that's $200 * 5 = $1000. I don't think this is what the authors of the law intended. Could you even buy individual tracks when this law was written?
The big deal here is that the RIAA's standard modus operandi of retracting all charges before they have to present evidence and support their case and then return to slam the defendant with more financial ruin threats outside of court will not work. The supreme court will not take any of that bullshit, and if they try to pull out, they will just lose, plain and simple. And not just the case, they will lose face and credibility (what little they have).
By forcing the issue, Harper is scaring them into the one scenario they were never willing to face - playing the game through to the end.
The judge found her an innocent infringer, which means the judge believes she didn't understand that what she was doing was illegal. That kicks in USC 17 504.C.2 which states:
The judge gave her the miminum fine for what he determined to be the truth of the case. The $750 is the minimum award for a finding of willful infringement and so his award is not well below anything.
I think this is a case where new legislation is obviously needed. The are significant and novel differences between torrent file sharing and pre-existing methods of copyright infringement and bootleg distribution. I don't think you can draw a logical conclusion of what the RIAA should be entitled to or how much statuatory damages should be assessed from more traditional pirating cases. In any case, anything beyond $20 a track is ridiculous.
Isn't this more about uploading? I don't think anyone has ever been sued for downloading.
Well, yes and no. The RIAA's position is that her petition has been already asked and answered by the courts, twice.
In the first place, that would be irrelevant; that's what appeals are for, to correct mistakes by the lower court.
In the second place, the lower court ruled in Ms. Harper's favor on this issue. The District Judge ruled that she was NOT disqualified from asserting an innocent infringement defense by reason of copyright notices being affixed to some copies in some record store somewhere, which she had never seen.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
By forcing the issue, Harper is scaring them into the one scenario they were never willing to face - playing the game through to the end.
Well said.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
That the treble with these kind of cases - it's hard to find a sound precedent.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The music industry has forgotten how music is purchased. You go to a friend's house. "Hey," he says, "Check out this new band!" You listen to it. It's good. You buy their next album. You check out similar bands. Instead of suing everybody for doing what's natural, they would do well to use what comes naturally to sell their product.
Not good enough Ray.
You mean "anyone who doesn't write them a check every hour of every day" is vexatious. Sleeping is no excuse!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
(FROM TFA)
The appeals court, however, said she was not eligible for such a defense, even though she was between 14 and 16 years old when the infringing activity occurred on LimeWire. The reason, the appeals court concluded, is that the Copyright Act precludes such a defense if the legitimate CDs of the music in question carry copyright notices.
So, she cannot legally say "I didn't know I couldn't copy this", because "You can't copy this" is written on the CD, which she doesn't own. Had she legally obtained it, she would know how not to obtain it...
Makes perfect sense.
...is my friend.
So Ms. Harper, you managed to prove yourself 'vexatious' to the RIAA? Sweet! Welcome to the dark side. For that achievement alone I'll buy you a beer next time you're out in Cali. Keep up the good work and thank you.
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you're *presumed* to know the law. This how the law holds people responsible for violations of law despite the impossibility of actually knowing the law, which as noted by earlier posters, is simply no longer possible.
This is why the supreme court is so vital. It does not take ANY bullshit of ANY kind. When faced with technical issues judges do not understand, they become quite pissed at people who want to wave a lot of jargon and cloud issues; the Supreme Court Justice position is one of the highest in the country, and making a mistake has such wide-reaching impacts that you WILL be embarrassed, publicly, for being shammed. These people do not want to be fucked with while the entire Western world watches them made fools, and they WILL bitchslap you for trying.
They're afraid of facing someone that isn't a mindless court drone going "you broke the law, sorry." The Supreme Court has to look at the law and decide if it's constitutional. The constitution isn't a law; it's a document that tries-- TRIES-- to frame what our founding fathers envisioned. It's not a "living document," it doesn't "change interpretation to match the times." The technical details of the laws are often unclear and have to change to match the times; but the supreme court is tasked with understanding what the actual goal was and making decisions in that context.
That means the supreme court's job is to decide, for example, that Copyright Law was framed in order to prevent a China syndrome where people (legal businesses or not) make use of other peoples' work in a significantly harmful manner (i.e. mass-copying of DVDs and selling online for a dollar each); and that the point of copyright law was to PROTECT business and not to DESTROY individuals. This would be backed up by interpretation of copyright law's own Fair Use clause, as evidence that we didn't want to completely chain individuals; as well as by considerations of cruel and unusual punishment (destruction of livelihood) and excessive fines as discussed in the US Constitution.
The RIAA doesn't want to face a court that has to think and reason instead of blindly going "Well some law somewhere says this is bad and this is what happens when you're bad."
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It would be interesting to revisit this thread and all of its comments in 10 years' time to compare notes on what really happened.
By then it may feel so anachronistic and quaintly out of place that the reader might well wonder why no lawmaking body could foresee the consequences of infinite copying, the end of artificial scarcity coming, and all of the consequences thereof.
No matter what SCOTUS ends up with as an opinion, the realities on the ground will be so different by then that one can wonder how much this really matters at all. (sorry for the cheerleader)
Maybe the real deal will be something along the lines of what Charles Stross wrote in his most excellent book Accelerando ?
The carcasses of the record business purchased by Russian organized crime and turned into a for-profit extortion racket, exacting demands for payment on things that were created by people who died fifty years ago...
> Why is it, then, that if you shoplift from the RIAA, you're hit with a massive punitive fine that goes straight to the RIAA?
Because they made sure they got the best laws money could buy?
The Constitution says that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Now the part here to note is the "excessive fines" part. Normally this wouldn't come in to play in a civil case. If you are asking for actual damages, that isn't a fine. So if someone does $50,000,000 in damage to you it isn't excessive to ask for that amount. Also an increase in that (tripling is common) for punitive damages is well supported as legal.
However the amounts they get are STATUTORY damages. The law says "Doesn't matter if any actual damage was caused, you can be awarded from $750-$250,000 per incident." Ok well that DOES makes it a fine. The government is laying down a statute that declares what you can be charged for it.
When you look at it, it seems pretty excessive. The maximum actual harm you can argue is $1. Each song sells for $1 so presuming that the person chose not to buy them because they downloaded them that is the maximum actual harm you could face. Add in triple damages and $3 per song is what you get. So download 100 songs, be on the hook for $300. Sounds fairly reasonable and in line with traffic tickets: Enough to make you think about doing it again but not so much that you are ruined.
That being the case, there is a real case for the SC to strike down the law. They may well say "These statutory damages are unconstitutionally high. We are getting rid of this law, the case is to go back to civil court." They then couldn't argue for the high damages because there'd be no law allowing it. They'd be back to regular civil law, which would net them only a few hundred bucks.
I'm not saying this is how it WILL go, I'm not a SC justice and there are complicated things here, but there is language in the Constitution that stands in the way of this law and that IS what the SC does.
They don't do that on Interstates they may lower the speed from 65-70 to 60-55 but they can't hide signs. Also you can get away with 65 in 55 zones on Interstates any ways.
Not everywhere, you can't. I'd encourage you to be awfully careful between Atlanta and Birmingham. I saw at least 7 different radar zones in a 20 mile stretch (where the speed limit was 55, not 70 as usual in AL). There was no construction, just a low speed limit for no reason other than to fleece motorists, who for some silly reason kept obliging them. I mean, you might miss the first one. Possibly the second. But after that, don't you have to figure that you're just going to have to do 55 or less until you get to the other end of the low-speed zone?
Never been to Kansas I take it...
Take for instance, Kansas interstate highway K15. Between Winfield and Mulvane? 70mph, for the most part. But then you go through 2 podunk towns that literally straddle the highway... BAM-- 20mph.
Ever tried to decelelrate from 70 to 20 in 50 ft or less? -- Yeah.
Then, you GET to winfield; The highway magically becomes mainstreet, after an obscuring turn around a municiple water project.. BAM-15mph, and a detour through a traffic light just a few blocks down.
This is quite common around here in "Flyover Country", and is the rule, NOT the exception.
Gosh, I wonder how this will play out?
imho it seems to me that if the big bad music company is going to sue its customers, and the justice system that supposed to protect them doesnt, and the artists whose music it is dont care about their record companies using their music as a weapon the solution is simple: go back to the recording songs off the radio onto tapes for your entertainment pleasure. Buy a walkman instead of an ipod dont buy or steal music in any form just as a start that will take care of the record companies then stop paying tickets stop paying taxes take your criminals to town meetings and let your town manage itself time was it happened much like this and when the ambitious $#%^ in the next town tried to call himself king they beheaded him...... me im not into violence....... anyway they depend on us not the other way around they have no more power than we give them they have no more money than we give them this isnt global warming this is stopping someone from bending you over something sturdy and (though my faith in humanity has dwindled severely) i still think people will get together to stop such a thing in their own interest
If I had Mod points then You'd be getting a +1 Insightful.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
If I shot myself to get out of their way they'd probably sue the NRA.
They're already being paid to prosecute. Look at the corporate revolving door and party contributions. Against P2P, ONLY proven damages should be enforced.
Absent that, the "owner" of the pirated goods has no license for the music and therefore the "stolen" goods can be confiscated. But that is all.
They'd also sue the Graveyard and the coffin maker for Making Available the burial plot and the coffin.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Suppose I like a song that I heard on the radio. Later at a convenient time, I go to the internet and I download it. I download it, but did not play it, or listen to the copy I downloaded. Did I actually still someones music? One could argue that I go into a store and steal a CD, and even though I did not listen to the music, I stole something physical. But in the former case, is there something physical that I stole. (Remember, there may be an intent to listen to the music, but have not as yet done so). Is the act of copying a crime? If so, what is the act of pushing data to a target PC? This is confusing to me for my 70 year old brain.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
They'd also sue the Graveyard and the coffin maker for Making Available the burial plot and the coffin.
Your comment, and several of the others, reminded me of the actual Michigan case, where the RIAA was suing a man in his 50's who died during the litigation. After the poor man passed away, the RIAA asked the judge to stay the proceedings for 60 days to allow the defendant's family enough time to grieve and then to allow them to start taking depositions of the deceased man's children.
You can't make this stuff up.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful