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Court Reinstates $675k File Sharing Verdict
FunPika writes with this excerpt from Wired:
"A federal appeals court on Friday reinstated a whopping $675,000 file sharing verdict that a jury levied against a Boston college student for making 30 tracks of music available on a peer-to-peer network. The decision by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a federal judge who slashed the award as 'unconstitutionally excessive.' U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner of Boston reduced the verdict to $67,500, or $2,250 for each of the 30 tracks defendant Joel Tenenbaum unlawfully downloaded and shared on Kazaa, a popular file sharing peer-to-peer service. The Recording Industry Association of America and Tenenbaum both appealed in what has been the nation's second RIAA file sharing case to ever reach a jury. The Obama administration argued in support of the original award, and said the judge went too far when addressing the constitutionality of the Copyright Act's damages provisions. The act allows damages of up to $150,000 a track."
Update: 09/17 21:32 GMT by S : As it turns out, the article's explanation of the decision is a bit lacking; read on for NewYorkCountryLawyer's more accurate explanation.
NYCL writes, "The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to reach the Due Process issue in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. In a 65-page decision (PDF), which rejected all of Tenebaum's counsel's other arguments, and which otherwise praised Judge Gertner's handling of the trial, the First Circuit felt that under the doctrines of judicial restraint and constitutional avoidance, it was premature to decide the constitutional issue without first disposing of the defendant's motion on common law, remittitur grounds. The Court gave several examples of scenarios which might have occurred, had the lower court decided the remittitur question, which would have avoided embarking down the constitutional path."
seems hard to make the connection?
how can a song be worth $150,000? if i leave $1 apples in my yard for someone to take, will 150,000 show up?
I wonder WHICH JUDGE was paid off by the RIAA. NOT OBVIOUS AT ALL.
on your computer, on your college's network??? might as well roll out the red carpet to your dorm room with signs saying "Welcome feds!" He neds to be fined for excessive stupidity. The college should also be fined for not having intellect-standards
http://gizmodo.com/5833654/this-5-million-piece-of-art-is-a-1-terabyte-hard-drive-filled-with-pirated-software-songs-and-more
I guess that hard drive is now worth more than the US economy.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
What goes into these people's heads.
"Hmm yeah he put some songs up for download, that's 22,500 dollars each."
Maybe he hit a pair of extra zeros when he was typing out the verdict.
Surely he didn't prevent 22,500 people from paying a dollar for the song.
Would I be on the hook for $168 million?
In corporate america the corporations owns you...
One day history data will look back on things like this with great disdain and disappointment. As we feel about many of the ignorant backward beliefs of previous generations. Probably not until our society fixes it's economy, and gets producers of IP payed for producing the IP and not monopolizing distribution of it. --Which, granted won't be for quite some time, but still...
So he shares 30 songs on the internet, admittedly wrong, but now he's financially ruined for the rest of his life?
So you take a merely onerous award that the defendant might possibly pay off and raise it back up to something that there's no way in heck he'll ever pay. What's the point, again?
What happened to him? Long time no submissions or other news with him mentioned. This is his field.
Get Real RIAA. Everything he downloaded is no where near 2250 a track, let alone 150,000 a track. This is just more money for those greedy companies.
I just don't see how people can't be satisfied with being multi-millionaires. "WE want to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars even though we will never spend all that money"
Sure people can play math games to show how they can spend that money, but GET REAL.
Just like the amount of speeding ticket is not necessarily tied to "actual damages" caused by the speeder, the penalty for copyright infringement is not necessarily tied to "actual damages." It is a PENALTY folks. It is designed to discourage people from violating the law as much as to compensate for the value of the property.
Get the message? (HINT: Don't download or distribute music and violate copyright.)
Yes, I agree it seems like a large award. However, there is no requirement that judges or juries be lenient with someone who has broken the law. They are free to impose stiff penalties, up to an including the maximum allowed by law.
Don't do the crimes if you can't pay the dimes.
F*** You America
And the music industry can't figure out why sales are down? Music sucks, no one wants to pay 10-20 dollars for an album that might have 1 half way good song.
But Obama is a f***kwad....
All you bleeding heart liberals are too stupid to realize there is nothing to differentiate this man from George W. Bush. And as for copyrights & patents....he is showing himself to be a pimp for corporation.
Against the people at every turn. We're not talking about legality. We're talking about the Constitution that says a fine cannot outweigh the crime. Right now, in our courts. Copyright violation is a greater crime than rape. Think about that before you reply...
CEO's rip of the community and shareholders of billions of dollars - they get a multi-million bonus. Some kid shares 2 cd's worth of songs and gets hit for 675k. When does the class war begin?
The Obama administration argued in support of the original award,
The executive branch, which receives funds from corporations in the form of campaign contributions, should keep its nose out of the judicial branch, which is tasked with enforcing the letter of the law without the influence of corporations (or any other third party).
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So children, what has this taught us today? That's right, music is DANGEROUS.
What was once part of the human condition, bringing people together, binding their society, and begging at an instinctual level to be shared for the propagation of all human kind, is now owned by a few companies who will sue you to an early grave.
Destroy all of your radios, CD, and MP3 players. This stuff is more dangerous than radioactive waste.
The usage is 100% correct. The Justice Department is part of the Executive branch and under the control of the President.The President and his cabinet are responsible for selecting the Attorney General who runs the Justice Department. Whether or not Obama had a hand in this decision, the term is used properly.
The HD without the contents is now worth more then the US economy.
--off topic--
Most amazing article recently, Geithner called on the EU for unity to deal with the crisis especially regarding to Greece.
Geez, how about solving your own problems first since they caused the whole mess to begin with?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There may be lots of good things about america but they tend to get eclipsed by the crazy legal goings on, the rampant gun problems and the lack of any real common sense in dealing with these kinds of things.. I mean really.. the kind of person who uses file sharing is the same kind of person who in the 90's used tapes to copy music. If we had to pay in advance for what tends to turn out to be poor quality goods from the record/movie industry then we just wouldn't pay.
I have a huge collection of music and movies that I have paid for .. I have been to countless concerts in a dozen countries.. but I would not pay for any of it without seeing/hearing it first.. As a barman in a previous life (read as Student) I can't help but think of file sharing/recording off radio as breakages.. the amount of stock you expect to have stolen, lost, broken .. etc .. You build it into your projections and you price your goods accordingly. Oddly enough, the biggest pirate I know has terabytes of music.. but he also has over 2500 legitimately purchased CD's and around 500 DVDs and 200 odd Bluerays.
File sharing and copying tapes doesn't affect sales. Poor quality products affect sales. I always buy music and movies that I would want to watch/hear again. If what your selling is good enough to buy, then everyone who is inclined to buy it will buy it.. those who were never inclined to buy it, oddly enough, won't buy it. It is the music/film industries policies of no refunds (how many times have you been in the cinema, 20 minutes into a movie and you just feel like crying that it cost you 50 euros to see this pile of ...) and buy before you see that are broken.
I just checked CNN. There are no riots in the US after this. I think we can safely conclude, Americans are nuts. You don;t give a fuck about freedom. Now, go bring some freedom and democracy to your own country. BTW... i have heared you invented and still have WMD's.... Man, the USA is the reason the rest of the world has to suffer stupidity. Go fix it !
Well if he was the only one to post the tracks online then that is actually not a unreasonable figure for the losses the company might suffer.
Of course he would not be, basically all music is available online from a variety of sources, but it seems less unreasonable if you take the stance "he is being punished for all lost revenue from the pirating of those tracks", because he is the only one caught.
But then I am sure nothing is stopping them from suing person after person for the same songs.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
if you violate copyright law you have to declare bankruptcy and forever be unable to get a loan, meaning you can never own a house, a car, etc.
In some ways it is better to be a murderer, a sex offender, or any plethora of other "lesser" crimes.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Copyright law allows up to $150,000 per violation to discourage commercial copyright infringement. That's when someone makes a bootleg CD and sells a tens of thousands of copies for few bucks each. What happens in this case is that the bootlegger is liable for (say) 15 tracks x $150,000 each. But in the process, this indemnifies all his customers. The CDs they bought aren't real, they're contraband. But because the ringleader behind the whole thing was caught and punished, and restitution made to the IP owners, they get to keep their CDs and are not liable to be sued for owning contraband.
What happens in filesharing is quite different. Say you share a song with 10,000 people. For a judgement approaching the $150,000 per song max to make sense, punishing you with that fine has to indemnify all those people you shared with. Otherwise you can fine Tenenbaum $22,500 for making 10,000 copies of a song, but you can also fine each of the 10,000 people he shared with $22,500 each for making the same song available to each other. Thus netting the record company a potential $225 million for 10,000 copies whereas in the bootleg CD case they could only net $150,000 for the 10,000 copies.
This country really needs to pass a copyright law which distinguishes between these two cases. The current copyright statutes make sense for commercial copyright infringement when there's a single perpetrator behind it all. A new copyright statute needs to be made to cover cases of peer-to-peer filesharing, which recognizes that 10,000 people sharing a sing with each other means each person on average only made 1 copy. Punishment needs to reflect that average, meaning something on the order of $100 should be adequate. Either that or limit copyright holders to suing one and only one filesharer per song, ever. Right now, we're allowing record companies to sue 10,000 people on the basis of making 100 million copies, even though only 10,000 copies were ever made.
a jury is composed of 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What the US needs is a big national third political party that can challenge the Regents. Copyright reform (notabolishment) would be just one of the pillars. It should now be obvious that both republican and democratic party are nothing more than the political branches of corporate america.
For example, right now on my computer I have absolutely no media, but can listen to anything I want on Spotify or YouTube. What I find interesting is that the recording industry is allowing Spotify's business model after over a decade of shunning online delivery of content. Perhaps this is the beginning of ad driven, affordable, and legal/legitimate access to media. Thoughts?
Unless this dude's family is composed of millionaires, this is pretty much game over. At this point you may as well spend your time trying to assign blame so you can exact some form of revenge, what are they going to do to you, pay for your room, board, food, and medical care forever?
"This music is *mine* and and when people *steal* it I lose money! Therefore, we must make an example of people who do this to scare the rest into submission."
The high price of the verdict doesn't have anything to do with actual damages. It is all about destroying a person to create fear.
With the democrats in control now, it is a very bad time to take this sort of thing to trial. They have strong loyalties to the Mafi*AA.
Well that's one way to make everyone hate you and not want to give you any more money. Talk about a crazy business practice. Maybe if the RIAA and their cronies stopped living in 1960 and got with the times..
Refuse to buy music and movies that end up filling their coffers! Support independents!
Can the defendant discharge the judgement in a bankruptcy? Why couldn't the argument be made that the judgement violates the constitution for excessive punishment if he can't? (i.e. if he makes the average salary for a white male at 45K, that would be like confiscating his wages for 22 years as he uses after tax money to pay the judgement).
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
And you have to wonder why America is toast.
This alone is enough for me to vote against him.
A track is 99 cents.
Simple as that, Federal Judge was 100 percent right.
No, sorry. It's the democrats that are butt buddies with the RIAA and MPAA. Obama went out of his way to gather former RIAA people into his administration.
"Can you provide us with the exact conversion ratio between dollars and jail time?"
Actually, I can. This man was falsely imprisoned for 21 years for rape and was awarded 18.5 Million USD in compensation.
http://newscastmedia.com/blog/2010/10/20/man-wins-18-5-million-in-compensation-after-false-imprisonment/
That works out to $880,952.38 per imprisoned year. At that rate, $675,000 would be equivalent to exactly 279 days, 16 hours, 3 minutes, 14.6 seconds in prison. Note that the value would change in a leap year.
He should file for bankruptcy protection. Finnish his degree. And ideally move to another country if the bankruptcy protection doesn't whip out the debt completely.
The music industry needs to make people afraid to download songs, and afraid to NOT SETTLE when they send them nastygrams asking for several thounsand. The point here is to make an example.
"This guy downloaded 30 songs. See what happened to him? It could have been you."
it's the only way to end this. you're just going to laugh at this like you've been programmed to whatever. the major parties have an authoritarian mentality and you will keep seeing things like this.
This is yet another example from President George W Bush the second, AKA Obama, that the Republicrats and Democans view the constitution as nothing more than a "god-damned piece of paper." So anyone who voted Republicrat or Democan shut up and sit on the sidelines until the next election. Voting the Republicrats and Democans back into office shows you want an intrusive, activist government backed by the corporations and special interest groups like the MAFIAA. You have no room to complain now and will continue to have no room to complain until you vote these creeps out of office and those that care about the constitution into office.
--
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself
So much for the Corporate Lawn Jockey in the White House.
Not that all the OTHER politicians aren't welded at the lips to the collective corporate sphincter, but it's well worth reminding anyone who thinks ANY candidate from either Party will be different how they roll after they get you vote.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
He could use it as a slogan... perhaps he may even win with that one, after all Perry said it would be OK to let a person die and he got cheered. CRAP! What a country. The decadence of the empire, no question about it.
I used to be on your side. Then things like this started happening. Now I do whatever I can to depreive you of money, so that your ability to lobby Congress and prosecute such cases in the future might be diminished. Do you think you'll ever get a clue?
I have 1322 mp3 files. At $22,500 each i'm now worth $29,745,000
Fuck yeah! Can i use this as collaterall for a 10 million dollar loan?
What? I can't? Why the hell not?
Oh... i see... that would be stupid? ok... But the courts say it's worth that much.
Now take my signature and give me some damm money! Or i'll sue you!
Step 4. Profit!
if you look at stats.. since music downloads have been out to public. regardless if its pirated or baught music sales have never been higher. it benefits the artists to allow people to download for free..
Get Real RIAA. Everything he downloaded is no where near 2250 a track, let alone 150,000 a track. This is just more money for those greedy companies.
No, it's not. There's very little chance they'll ever see that money. This's all about setting an example to deter others from trying the same thing.
I just don't see how people can't be satisfied with being multi-millionaires.
Ever heard about The Dog in a Manger?
Everybody has hobbies. Some people enjoy screwing others over whether there's any sense in doing so or not. Life.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
It's change that any billionaire can believe in. Seriously, who comes up with such ludicrous damage awards? The purpose of punitive damages is to punish. Punishing a college student is making them owe $675, not $675,000. Making them owe $675,000 is effectively sentencing them to a lifetime of indentured servitude even if they had 100% of their wages garnished.
If memory serves, our country overthrew its previous British government for exactly the same sort of oppressive behavior—debtors' prisons and the like. The rich aristocracy in power would be wise to take that lesson to heart. For them, $675,000 is a slap on the wrist. For an average person, it's a lifetime of slavery, which last I checked was forbidden by at least a couple of constitutional amendments, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and every law of basic human decency.
The people who made this decision, along with everyone in the Obama administration who supported it, should be arrested and jailed for crimes against humanity, then prohibited from taking part in any aspect of sentencing for the rest of their lives.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
No, sorry. It's the democrats that are butt buddies with the RIAA and MPAA. Obama went out of his way to gather former RIAA people into his administration.
Politics are funny, it doesn't seem to matter who started what.... but people always seem to form into groups protecting their favourite party.
They're all the same though. The kind of person that is interested in a career in politics is generally not someone who is a respectable and fair person.
Now *that's* what I call piracy!
back to the shoplifting example, you're saying that fining somebody 67 dollars for stealing a candy bar is excessive, when in reality that isn't a deterrent at all.
Problem is, there's only so much a parent can do before the 'culture' of our society takes over and enslaves the fresh meat
It's called bankruptcy, they get shit all
This post is quite misleading. It gives the impression that the Court reinstated the verdict. The Court merely remanded the case for further proceedings, holding that the Due Process issue had been decided prematurely. Otherwise praising Judge Gertner's handling of the case, the Court concluded that the District Judge's reasoning for bypassing the common law remittitur motion was incorrect, and that she must first decide the remittitur motion. I've submitted my own post on this decision, which accurately describes the import of the decision.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
That's easy. Just look on iTunes. Oh, it costs $1!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
>Obama administration argued in support of the original award, and said the judge went too far when addressing the constitutionality of the Copyright Act's damages provisions
This is the same Obama administration fixin' to ask the people to re-elect Obama.
Is this how they're going to cure the deficit?
Though the idea of a plane "auguring" into Congress is interesting: "I have examined the Congressional entrails and have determined this is a propitious time to dispense with civil rights."
if i were joel, i would not pay one red cent. automatic garnishment of wages? i'd make myself unemployable and live off welfare. put me in jail if i don't pay? that's premium welfare.
The phrase (US Government) should heretofore be referred to as the (Washington criminal cabal), for the sake of accuracy!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The DMCA was introduced by Howard Coble (R-NC), passed in 1998 by a majority Republican Congress, and signed by a Democratic president. If anything, hatred of freedom of information is bipartisan.
Hey, Obama's shilling for corporations is enough to condemn him. You don't need to bring your racism into this. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lawn_jockey
Obama didn't just gorge on corporate cock, he also sold out the civil rights movement. Grover Norquist was correct years ago when he said that Obama couldn't govern as a Democrat, but no one expected it would be because of his indifference to his "old" base.
Even Black intellectuals like Cornel West get it. Obama sold out the civil rights movement thoroughly and well.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_obama_deception_why_cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
These numbers are just completely meaningless - any fine over a few tens of thousands of dollars is never going to be paid by a regular human. Might as well fine him infinity Quatloos and be done with it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The big corporation that major fucks the environment gets remittitur. The college kid who small-scale copyright cheats does not.
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL.
I hate filesharing thieves, but I hate laws that blatantly favor the rich more.
Where's the trillion-dollar verdict against the fucktard bankers and wall street yahoos that tanked the US economy, lost everybody their jobs and tossed 'em out of their houses?
Famously said the Editor of Private Eye (a satirical British magazine) from the courtroom steps after being sued successfully by some odious media bully whose dubious acitivities the magazine had unearthed.
If the law of the land encourages powerful corporate bullies to extort unimaginable sums of money from ordinary folk whose trivial, if technically illegal activities are simply a sign that a new, realistic business model needs to be produced to cope with our dramatically changing social and technological landscape, then, as Mr Bumble said in Oliver Twist: ".. the law is a ass, a idiot"
I believe I am right in saying that the original purpose of copyright was to force the rich IP owners (the artists' patrons) to release the rights to the public after a few years monopoly. Hard to disagree with Mr Bumble's assessment of the situation now.
This Dilbert came to mind...... http://dilbert.com/fast/2011-09-16/
Just one of many more reasons to hate the Obama Administration.
Ron Paul 2012! Fuck this current government.
Don't Vote for Norm Dicks! http://www.nodicks2008.com Another nutless dirtbag that voted for the FISA bill!
RIAA stooges. nuff said.
This is important information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
We, the people, have the ability, and the duty, to make a change in courtrooms as well as with our legislators. Unfortunately, most of the people are unaware of their power as jurors.
Most people in the states on a cable internet connection do. I can pretty easily do 1 megabyte (that's byte, not bit) per second. I could upload a song in 5 seconds, maybe 6 with connection overhead. That's about 14,000 songs/day if I ran 24/7, and if the people I'm uploading to have similar connections they can do the same. Now, my ISP would probably have something to say if they saw me doing that, but I'm pretty sure I could get by on a few thousand downloads pre day.
Not saying I agree with the damages, just that it's technically possible to upload a song thousands of times per day on a consumer grade Internet connection.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Welcome back NYCL. It's about time some sense is added to the discourse here.
Having Leeched on
This post is quite misleading. It gives the impression that the Court reinstated the verdict. The Court merely remanded the case for further proceedings, holding that the Due Process issue had been decided prematurely.
Otherwise praising Judge Gertner's handling of the case, the Court concluded that the District Judge's reasoning for bypassing the common law remittitur motion was incorrect, and that she must first decide the remittitur motion.
I've submitted my own post on this decision, which accurately describes the import of the decision.
The court also shredded every one of Tenenbaum's constitutional arguments. You could argue that they're merely dicta, but when the appeals court you're going to appeal to goes out of their way to repeatedly call you incorrect as a matter of law, any future appeal on the same issues is not going to have much traction.
Welcome back NYCL. It's about time some sense is added to the discourse here.
Thank you. I don't know if I have any "sense", but I do know something about the law. If I truly had "sense" I think I would have studied programming.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful