Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
No, apples are a scarce resource. Digital files can be copied indefinitely with no quality loss, thus the scarcity must be created artificially. Apparently the way to do that is by suing fans.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Which majority made the DMCA possible?
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.
Bullshit. I used to believe that crap, then a few years ago I got an opportunity to serve on a jury for the first time. I'd say 2/3 of the jury were pretty smart in one way or another.
When picking a jury, you can't just disqualify as many people as you want. Each side has only a limited number of jurors they can dismiss without reason. They can dismiss an unlimited number of jurors for good reason, if the judge agree's it's a good reason, but I don't think "because he's too smart" is going to be a good reason to do so in the judges eyes. So sure, they could use their limited number of no-reason dismissals to try and get rid of smart people, but the problem is, you quickly run out those, and then you are stuck with whatever jurors get called as a replacement.
Furthermore, it's fairly difficult to figure out who's smart just based on the questions that get asked. The judge just asks for simple stuff like your occupation and a few questions to try to determine any bias...whether you know anyone involved with the case, whether someone you know or are related to has been involved in a similar case, whether you or someone you know has been a victim of the sort of crime about to be tried, etc.
I don't know. Is that figure so hard to believe?
Yes.
Suppose I offer a copyrighted recording for download and people in fact do download it. The way this file sharing software works, the people that download it by default are then also offering for download.
Unless you are claiming that nobody else can also be held accountable for illegally distributing the same songs in question, then you must conclude that if the key number in question is valid then at least 22,500 other people can also be held responsible for the very same songs distribution on file sharing networks by the very same courts.
Under this scenario where 22,500 people can all be held accountable, each for 22,500 downloads.. we are now talking about 506 million downloads being claimed..
Are you suggesting that 506 million downloads isn't hard to believe?
It is obvious that either the 22,500 figure is bullshit, or the system is set up to punish one individual for the crimes of up to 22,500 other people....
"His name was James Damore."
constitutional guidance as far as monetary fines go
See 8th Amendment, specifically nor excessive fines imposed.
Any reasonable person, which was and should be the test for the above, should consider $675,000 to be an excessive fine for the alleged crime.
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