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Jammie Thomas Hit With $1.5 Million Verdict
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman who has been fighting the recording industry over 24 songs she illegally downloaded and shared online four years ago, has lost another round in court as a jury in Minneapolis decided today that she was liable for $1.5 million in copyright infringement damages to Capitol Records, for songs she illegally shared in April 2006. ... The trial is the third for Thomas-Rasset, after one jury found her liable for copyright infringement in 2007 and ordered her to pay $222,000, the judge in the case later ruled that he erred in instructing the jury and called for a retrial. In the second trial, which took place in 2009, a jury found Thomas-Rasset liable for $1.92 million. Thomas-Rasset subsequently asked the federal court for a new trial or a reduction in the amount of damages in July 2009. But earlier this year, the judge found that amount to be 'monstrous and shocking' and reduced the amount to $54,000."
No, that was the amount after the amount of damages was reduced after the second trial. This is the result of the third trial.
So, 24 songs are worth $222,000... no, actually it's $1,920,000... wait, I mean $54,000... did I say that? I meant $1,500,000...
Who the hell decides these amounts? The guy who wrote the Windows file copy dialog?
Look at those dollar amounts. First trial: $220,000 Second: $1.92 million Third: $54,000 Fourth: $1.5 million
Something about the shear inconsistency of the outcomes tells me how broken this system of courts truly is. It's not based on anything real. It's based on appearances, fuzzy opinions, manipulated interpretations, etc. This woman shared some music over the internet, and they want to financially crucify her. $54,000 thousand would take a lot of people a long time to pay off, let alone $1.5 million. That amount would effectively end her financial life.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Arstechnica just posted a nice companion piece to this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/42-german-p2p-fine-stark-contrast-to-seven-figure-us-judgments.ars
Word game?
Why is it that in jury trials she gets slapped with over a million in damages, yet judges appear to favour a milder approach? Are the "Jury of your peers" seriously that gullible that they feel they have to institute massive punitive damages on an individual?
Copyrights were never really meant to target individual citizens; copyright is a regulation on businesses, and should only be applied to businesses. The way the RIAA is suing individuals is a disgrace, and their lawyers should be reprimanded for abusing the court system.
Not that anyone really cares about what is best for the people of the United States.
Palm trees and 8
...the Minneapolis jury is pretty misinformed and outright unreasonable.
Are we now going to get all the people who illegally made mix-tapes for their friends in the 1980s and fine them too?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If you don't have the money to pay 5k let alone 50k+ what does it matter if they tell you to pay millions? Why not billions? or trillions? It's a pipe dream to expect that amount. If I were her, I'd try to get that number as high as possible. The higher it is, the more the system looks like nonsense and the more chance there is for positive change.
I don't think you understand what she and her lawyers are after. The last thing they want is for the Jury to find her innocent or award a reasonable amount of damages. The more absurd the amount the better. They need the award to be absurdly high in order for an federal appeals judge to rule the law is in unconstatutional. Thats the end game here.
When you are in a hole, stop digging. This applies more to her "lawyers" than to herself though.
If the hole deeper than you can climb out of no matter what, why not keep digging and bring the asshole who tossed you in there down with you?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
This amounts to nothing more than legalized extortion and racketeering. How can a so-called "jury of her peers" possibly allow such a thing to happen? I can see a stodgy old judge doing something ridiculous like this, but a jury? They are supposed to possess the collected wisdom of several lifetimes, yet they allow this to continue. It boggles the mind.
earlier this year, the judge found that amount to be 'monstrous and shocking' and reduced the amount to $54,000.
[the jury] decided today that she was liable for $1.5 million in copyright infringement damages
The jury is instructed to apply the law without considering whether the law is constitutional. The judge is applying his perspective on constitutionality. Given a 30x difference in outcomes, it seems that there is a pretty severe disconnect between the law and what is right according this official boundaries of this nation's legislative charter.
What do we do to find the law to be 'monstrous and shocking'? What is the process for finding the legislature and DoJ to be 'monstrous and shocking'? For finding that they do not derive their just powers from the will of the governed and have violated their sworn duty to The Constitution in favor of their sponsors' will-to-power?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It actually goes on.
But earlier this year, the judge found that amount to be "monstrous and shocking" and reduced the amount to $54,000. Following that, the RIAA informed Thomas-Rasset that it would accept $25,000--less than half of the court-reduced award--if she agreed to ask the judge to "vacate" his decision, which means removing his decision from the record. Thomas-Rasset rejected that offer almost immediately.
The judge's decision stood as a great precedent.
Therefore, the scumwad MafiAA lawyers tried to extort Thomas to have the judge's decision vacated - essentially, make it invalid so that nobody else the MafiAA extortion racket targets can hold up the judge's decision as precedent against them.
Also:
Updated at 8:20 p.m. PT with comment from Thomas-Rasset attorney, and at 9:10 p.m. to emphasize the illegal sharing aspect of the copyright complaint.
Why is it Cnet doesn't say who told them to do that? Some subhuman MafiAA goon lawyer wants to remain anonymous. How typical of them.
$54,000 is still a lot of money, but it's doable, over a good number of years.
For a native-American woman mother of four, with a job as a natural resource coordinator in Indian reservation? I might be wrong, but don't think $54,000 is doable either.
The most interesting part, for those of us who read the article, is:
But earlier this year, the judge found that amount to be "monstrous and shocking" and reduced the amount to $54,000. Following that, the RIAA informed Thomas-Rasset that it would accept $25,000--less than half of the court-reduced award--if she agreed to ask the judge to "vacate" his decision, which means removing his decision from the record. Thomas-Rasset rejected that offer almost immediately.
RIAA is scared their tactics will no longer work. When faced with more reasonable verdicts, their defendants are probably more likely to fight it out in court, making RIAA's whole business litigation plan useless.
Every last one of these acts will have a twitter / facebook / forum etc... at least a couple of them are going to be people who interact with their fans on there in person.
Do they know that this is being done in their name? We know that songs are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_v._Thomas#The_24_songs so let's start asking them the question...
No, they were smart enough to see a chance at free advertising and took it.
If this is indeed the endgame, it's not just coming up with absurd decisions. It's also getting the much smaller amounts in the middle. The situation looks even more ridiculous when the jury and the judges come up with polar opposite amounts for damages. A yo-yo of decisions on the same case does not make sense in the record books.
that if any of the jurors were 'investigated', you would find quite a bit of infringing material in their homes. I have yet to meet anyone that doesn't have a old cassette of songs dubbed from someone else, a CD of tunes made for a party or wedding, a photocopy of some book or newspaper, lyrics on their website or profile, etc. Even if they don't have these items currently, they've made infringing copies in the past.
Everyone in the US is guilty of copyright infringement at one time or another. Most people don't ever think about copyright, or if they do, it's to make up the rules as they go.
I wonder how the jury would react if they were sent invoices for damages for their past and current infringements, based on the ridiculous damages they approved for this woman.
I can't imagine sitting on a jury and handing out an award like this, even if she is guilty of the charges. It's like people lose all sense of reality in the jury room. I wouldn't know for sure because when I give my occupation as "satellite communications engineer" I'm generally excused by the defense in the next breath.
However, you listen to the juror interviews after some recent high profile cases with questionable verdicts, and you can see how a lot of them get wrapped up in the pseudo-religious fervor of CIVIC DUTY[TM] and lose themselves in the minutiae of what are in many cases pretty clear situations if you just hold on to your common sense.
I love the "our hands were tied" excuse. So screw the jury instructions or whatever you imagine is tying your hands. It's *your* baby in that jury room. Give the correct verdict. Maybe it'll get overturned by another court, but at least you did the right thing.
They keep buying the RIAA's line that she's somehow responsible for the tens of thousands of other people who partially or indirectly downloaded the songs from her. There are two ways to look at this:
100,000 people download a song. Each person is criminally liable for their own download. Fines should thus reflect people trying to be cheap and get a $1 product for free. Something on the order of $2-$20 per song would probably be the right amount.
100,000 people download a song. One person is determined to be the criminal mastermind and fined for the infringement of all of those people. So a fine on the order of $200k-$2 mil is probably the right amount here. But because you've made one person pay for everyone's infringement, that one fine indemnifies the 100,000 from any charges for the crime.
What the RIAA is trying to do is get a fine on this woman as if she were the criminal mastermind behind it all, and then apply the same fine to the other 100,000 people. It just doesn't work that way logically. Either each person is responsible for their own actions, or one person is responsible for everyone's actions. It's totally illogical to argue that each person is responsible for everyone's actions.
As has been pointed out, the real problem here is that the RIAA is taking copyright laws written to be used against commercial copyright infringement, and using them against individuals. Commercial copyright infringement (e.g. mass-producing bootleg CDs) fits the "criminal mastermind" model, and the fines were set up to reflect that. If a bootleg shop got caught, they'd be sued, fined, and the people who bought those bootleg CDs weren't liable for anything. Totally different situation, totally different penalties, which the RIAA is misusing (or abusing if you prefer) against individual infringers.
You can't legally COPY someones work
Sorry, but we live in an age where copying is something that happens automatically whenever people use their computers. If you sent me an electronic copy of a book you wrote, my computer would automatically copy the book multiple times as part of its normal operation; I would also very likely make further copies when I back up my files, migrate to a new computer, and so forth.
The problem here is that people keep trying to define a difference between the sort of copying that is part of a computer's normal and routine operation, and sharing files with other people. It is an extreme blurry line -- multiple people may use one computer system, or a multiple computers with multiple users may be connected to the same LAN, or a computer might be connected to more than one LAN, or to the Internet, etc. Exactly where do you intend to define copying as a violation of the right you claim to have over dictating copying? If I have a digital copy of your book, can my roommate who shares a computer with me read it? Can my roommate copy it from my home directory to his home directory? Can we both read it at the same time, using two separate digital copies? What if we have two computers, connected to some sort of computer network; can the book be copied from one computer to the other? What if we have one computer with two processors and two hard drives? What if we have many computers in some sort of cluster? What if we are using a distributed OS?
Palm trees and 8
... you would have to get 3 DUIs per week for a YEAR to reach 1.5 million dollars. Clearly one person sharing music online is as big a danger to society as 150 drunks on the road.
Seriously, this is so out of whack. There is a reason punitive damages exist but this is like executing people for speeding. If Jamie earns--excuse me, NETS--$50k per year, this would take 30 years to pay off.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
But the message is crystal clear. You can't legally COPY someones work and especially you can't share it.
I'm a writer and I want to get paid for copies of what I write. NO ONE has a right to take my work and
share it with others or copy it without paying. I have every right to expect that what I write IS MINE
TO SELL or give away - but it's MINE.
If you never show it to anybody, it is absolutely yours. If you show it, or distribute it, it is no longer yours in an ownership sense. Copyright is an artificial and temporary right which is granted only as incentive for you to share your creations.
Technically, you don't want to get paid for copies of what you write. You just want to get paid for doing what you like. It just so happens that getting paid for copies of your product is the primary economic mechanism for this compensation in your case. And it is (arguably) worth preserving this mechanism, but not necessarily at the cost of arming abusive corporations so that they can chug along sucking up the lion's share of money derived from OTHER PEOPLE'S creations, while they stifle personal liberty, social and educational commentary, and technological innovation.
I am not a big fan of illegal file sharing, but the *AA have taken advantage of the situation to push a reprehensible agenda.
oh, I saw that, even with minimum effort, they can dig their heels in and fight a clearly unwinnable case out to 3 trials over 4 years (and counting), all of which will have cost UMG $millions, none of which they'll see.
FGD 135
Miss Bachmann, like her favorite founding father Thomas Jefferson, considers copyright a bad idea. He said: "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
He also wrote to James Madison, author of the Constitution:
"I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions would have pleased me... Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose." Jefferson's preference for the term of copyright was submitted to Madison a few days afterward. The proposed term was that of 19 years, based on the average author's lifespan after publication. Today that length would be 35 years, and nowhere near the current 150 granted to Disney and others non-humans.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Downloading and distributing music is illegal
So is parking your car in the wrong place.
We all know why the amount is so high
Yes, we do: modern copyright law was written for the benefit of businesses like the RIAA's members, rather than for the benefit of society.
If examples are made of them, they will eventually slow down.
Thus explaining why so many people use illegal drugs, despite nearly a century of prohibition and "making examples of" people who break those laws.
Palm trees and 8
This new verdict is as "monstrous and shocking" as the $1,940,000 verdict was. After reading through many articles on the history of this case, I have to proclaim it a farce. Since when don't you need actual, admissible evidence to prosecute someone? The only evidence they had was from MediaSentry, which, at least according to an appeal that was filed, may violate wiretap laws and state private investigator laws. In fact, there was a court ruling in 2007 which proclaimed that this company was operating without a private investigator's license, rendering their evidence in that case inadmissible. If the RIAA is going to try to prosecute for this type of thing, they should at least use legal means to gather their evidence. The jury is in essence awarding the RIAA for ignoring due process and illegally obtaining information which should not have been admitted in the court case. Since they would no longer have admissible proof of her sharing the files, given that MediaSentry's evidence was illegally obtained, then the RIAA should receive no reward. I'm not saying that what she (Jammie Thomas-Rasset) did was right or wrong, that's not my call, but my observation is that the RIAA has performed its share of misconduct all throughout this trial, yet that's being ignored and they're being rewarded statutory damages for copyright violations that they can't legally prove with legally obtained evidence.
It's much more important for her to force an unpayable multi million dollar judgment. It might actually open people's eyes that corporations have convinced the government to treat copyright infringement harsher than murder and rape.
A reasonable fine would be on the order of $50 to $100 per song.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Maybe the right question is, even if the RIAA thought "we can win a higher award again if we get a new trial", and even if Thompson thought "maybe this time I'll win or at least get a lower award"... why didn't the court just say "screw you both, this was the ruling, we're moving on down the docket"?
Because the court had no power to do so. The mechanism by which the court reduced damage is called "remittitur." The plaintiff who has his award reduced in this manner has a choice: accept the reduced award or have a new trial.
Come back in 18 years or so when you have a firm grounding in the real world and how the legal system works.
The U.S. legal system can be described as many things, but certainly not as having a firm grounding in reality.
The entire point is to make it so painful, the party will not want to do so again.
I know its not popular here, but reality is far, far different than the pro-pirate crowd constantly attempts to censor and portray here.
If that's the point then it should be a criminal trial with all of the safeguards that implies (including, in particular, the higher standard of proof).
Ok Consider the following:
While I wasn't home some drunk guy wanders on my property and smashes my bird bath, crushes my garden gnomes, empties my swimming pool, slices my vinyl siding, tears up my petunias, and smashes a window. Now I have this all on video and later he is arrested, so there is no question of his guilt. Then I drag him into court to recover my damages which are only $700. However I file the suit for asking for $1000,000.
Now this is REAL property with REAL damage..
Don't you think I would be laughed out of court?
See my point?
Whats wrong with this picture?
For a native-American woman mother of four, with a job as a natural resource coordinator in Indian reservation? I might be wrong, but don't think $54,000 is doable either.
Time to find a good bankruptcy lawyer. Hope she picks a better one than she did for her first RIAA trial....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
In most states, they can place liens against her property - assuming she has any.
Move to Florida. Unlimited homestead exemption. Why do you think OJ moved there?
Bankruptcy may be an option but she may not be able to even escape it there because of he state laws and the legal details surrounding this particular case.
Bankruptcy is Federal. State laws only come into play with regards to determining which of your assets are exempt from the bankruptcy estate. It's Federal law that determines which debts can be discharged.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
She just needs to author 24 songs and perform them. Record the performances and give the RIAA or individual studio the rights to the songs she wrote. Since the jury said 24 songs are worth 1.5 million her debt is paid. I see an opportunity to retire early here. Where is that sheet music pad I got at the swap meet last year...
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Note that the original poster there should be relieved that their trial won't last very long, at least. After all, they just admitted guilt publicly... But regardless:
Doesn't matter. Public discourse not included, they're not on trial for stealing a song. They're on trial for distributing a song - at which point, the number of times it was distributed becomes much more significant than the number of discrete items that were distributed. Its also why, to my knowledge, they haven't gone after anyone who downloads a song - just those who share them.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Convinced the government??
A jury of your peers came up with these amounts. It's the public that has been convinced these cases are harsher than rape. You have to take some citizen responsibility. The government has nothing to do with this. The public's consensus is the driving force behind the RIAA's motor
First, let me say that I do NOT think that she is deliberately trying to get absurd rewards. I just don't buy that argument. But playing devil's advocate and agreeing with it...
That's the point. The Supreme Court takes cases based largely on two criteria: First, that there is an important constitutional issue to settle. And second, that lower courts have arrived at different decisions. If every court that has ever heard a case agrees on how it should be handled, there's little reason to step in -- unless they want to reverse it. I don't see any reason that lower appeals courts wouldn't also consider cases along such lines.
This is one case with one set of facts, and yet four different outcomes. On the one hand you have a couple of jury decisions obviously attempting to apply the law, but arriving at pretty wildly different decisions. $1.92MM is over 30% higher than $1.5MM just in percentage terms, and almost half a million dollars higher in absolute terms. And then of course the first jury with a $222K verdict that is nearly an order of magnitude different. That alone is an indication that the law may be too vague and require clarification, either by the Congress or the judiciary.
At the same time we have judges raising constitutional concerns. An award that is "monstrous and shocking" is essentially code for "in violation of the Eighth Amendment," and his reduction took the damages from the highest the case has ever seen to four times less than the lowest jury award. That's significant. So startling, in fact, that the RIAA offered to let her settle for half that ($25,000) if she asked the judge to vacate his verdict -- it is so vastly different, in short, that it has the RIAA worried it might be used as precedent.
These are all extremely intriguing things for appeal, and for a higher court to step in and go "alright, wait a minute here; something obviously is not right." If they do so, and if they agree that following the law leads to unconstitutional awards, or even that the law is so ambiguous that justice is not being served leaving it so wildly in the jury's hands, it may end up with the law being struck down.
A reasonable fine would be on the order of $50 to $100 per song.
I see where you're getting at but in what world is $50-$100 a reasonable amount to pay for creating more of an infinite resource? Let's say you sell joke books. Now let's say I pick up one of your books in the store and read a joke. Later I repeat the joke to some of my friends and we all laugh. Have I stolen something? Am I a thief? Of course not.
The real issue is that computers and the internet have created a truly unlimited resource. When you think about it, copying an MP3 is similar to matter replication in Star Trek: At your command you can create an exact duplicate of something at no cost! Now many companies stand to lose their entire business if people realize the infinity in computer information replication. The only way they know how to survive is to perpetuate a fake sense of scarcity for their product. This is a comedy article that illustrates what I mean by fake scarcity.
The RIAA proved to the satisfaction of the jury that Ms. Thomas-Rasset had downloaded 24 mp3 song files.
There was NO evidence of her being a "distributor" which would have required
-proof of dissemination of copies
-proof that the dissemination was to the public at large, AND
-proof of a sale, another transfer of ownership, a rental, a lease, or a lending.
There was no proof of any of the above.
So all there was was 24 downloads.
Wholesale price [70 cents] minus saved expenses [~ 35 cents] = 35 cents lost profit from a lost sale.
35 cents x 15% [the ratio of lost sales to unauthorized downloads according to music industry statistical companies] = 5 cents.
5 cents x 24 files = $1.20.
The statutory damages should not have exceeded $100 in all.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
No, that was the amount after the amount of damages was reduced after the second trial. This is the result of the third trial.
What I want to know is: is the RIAA stuffing the jury boxes or what? What kind of moron (much less twelve of them) could possibly turn out such a verdict? Don't they have computers? Don't they have Internet connections? Don't they have children? Do they not understand that they are targets just as much as Jammie Thomas? I sincerely hope that one of those fine, upstanding humanoid asses finds themselves on the receiving end of an RIAA "settlement offer." Poetic justice at its finest.
I just cannot understand how a jury of anyone's peers could think this rational, much less reasonable. I'm more than a little concerned for our future, if this is what our legal system has been reduced to delivering instead of justice. I don't know: maybe her lawyers were just less than competent, but even so this just seems way over the top.
Furthermore, how can a woman that downloaded a mere 26 music tracks be so demonized in court that such a travesty could result? Are the RIAA's attorneys gifted with Satanic powers? This just boggles the mind. Makes me want to run down to the local Best Buy and pocket a couple of CDs, just to demonstrate what stealing music actually means. "Yes, Your Honor, I stole that music. I didn't infringe anyone's copyright, however." Hell, a shoplifting charge wouldn't hold a candle to this "verdict".
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.