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New Judge Assigned To Tenenbaum Case Upholds $675k Verdict
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY v Tenenbaum, the new District Judge assigned to the case has disagreed with the previous judge, and instead of reducing the $22,500 per file award to $2250 per file, has instead upheld the jury's verdict. The jury initially found defendant Joel Tenenbaum to have 'willfully' infringed the RIAA copyrights by downloading 30 mp3 files which would normally retail for 99 cents each, and awarded the plaintiff record companies $675,000 in 'statutory damages.' Tenenbaum moved to set the verdict aside on both common law remittitur grounds and constitutional due process grounds. Judge Gertner — the District Judge at the time — felt that remittitur would be a futility, and on constitutional grounds reduced the verdict to $2250 per file. The RIAA appealed. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals remanded on the ground that Judge Gertner ought to have decided the question on remittitur grounds and reached the constitutional question prematurely. By the time the case arrived back in District Court, Judge Gertner had retired, and a new judge — Judge Rya Zobel — had been assigned. Judge Zobel denied the remittitur motion. And then Judge Zobel denied the constitutional motion, leaving the larger verdict in place. I think it is reasonable to expect Tenenbaum to appeal this time around."
In order to steal music that I would rather stab myself in the balls with an ice pick than listen, the idiot ruined his life. Why didn't he just pay $30?
Kill a man and you get off easy.
Download 30 music files and you have your life ruined.
Yep it makes total sense. Fuck the US justice system, and fuck the corporations that have bought the US government lock, stock and barrel.
The Faith I had in the justice system has been lost. All the judges do now is allow a private organization to dictate morality AND damages. How is that justice? Damages should be between 3-10 times to be punitive. How is the original level of damages fair at all?
Can't this kid just file for bankruptcy? Corporations do it all the time and skip out on their obligations. Liquidate all his assets (none) pay off what he can (nothing) and tell the creditors to shove it. Barring that, what else can he possibly do? Pay in $100 for the rest of his life? This is pure lunacy.
Nobody is truly arguing that breaking copyright is ok. What people have a problem with at this point are two things.
1) The level of damages should not exceed 10 times the value of the product/song
2) The charges should not be able to be brought until it can be proved that the person being sued actually commited the crime
Being guilt is very different than be forced to pay $670k for 31 files. Even the Goldman-Sacks source code are cheaper!
Basically because Sony employs thousands and thousands of lawyers, and when they win (because they have thousands and thousands of lawyers) the single defendant is required to foot the bill for all those lawyers.
The crazy part: Sony is asking for 4.5 million dollars. Also, the initial fee that Tennenbaum was asked to pay (via extortion letter in the mail, before any lawyers were involved) was $3,500.
Sony is really trying to set a precedent here, to give their extortion letters some clout. "Just pay the $3,500 ... or you'll end up like Scott Tennenbaum!"
This signature is false.
where copyright terms are constantly extended. Disney built their empire off the works of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Mark Twain, etc. But, congress forbid that an old black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon should ever likewise fall into the public domain.
The real theft is being done by the copyright holders, they're stealing our culture from us.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Nobody "stole" anything here. Copyright infringement is not "stealing".
Yes, there is a difference. Yes, the difference matters.
No, pointing this out does not mean I condone or commit copyright infringement myself, and yes, that IS what you were going to say.
And meanwhile if a corporation breaks the law the fine is like 50% of the profits they made from breaking the law.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The RIAA ruined his life. This fellow's only mistake is stealing MP3s instead of selling fraudulent loan securities.
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Strawman example =[
The situation you describe would certainly be criminal infringement as it is performed on a commercial scale. No civil lawsuit would be necessary or sensible in such a case.
The major problems that most people have (admittedly excluding those who advocate abolishment of copyright) are with the ridiculously overboard civil issues that must be endured. To quote Judge Gertner regarding this case:
"(The damages are)...far greater than necessary to serve the government's legitimate interests in compensating copyright owners and deterring infringement. In fact, it bears no meaningful relationship to these objectives. To borrow Chief Judge Michael J. Davis' characterization of a smaller statutory damages award in an analogous file-sharing case, the award here is simply 'unprecedented and oppressive.'"
Because the *AA's managed to pass laws that made for ridiculous statutory damages.
That's no excuse for the judge to ignore the Eighth Amendment.
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Judges are supposed to uphold the law.
And the Eighth Amendment is part of the highest law of the land.
We should not pass crappy laws and then blame the judges for upholding them.
We're blaming the judge for not upholding the law. Specifically, that part of the law which states that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed".
You don't have to be on the SCOTUS to knock down a law that is blatantly unconstitutional. A law that conflicts with the constitution is null and void at any level.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Hello Superman.
Many studies have shown that downloaders are often loyal fans. Yes they download but they also buy a lot of stuff. As author Charles Stross (meaning he has more gravita on this matter then you) observed it makes no sense to punish people who are your customers. He says he's gained many fans from people who downloaded book one, and then bought books two thru six in the series. He made five sales where otherwise he would have had none.
And besides the punishment is ridiculous. When I steal a baker's loaf of pumperknickel bread, I've deprived him of his property. I've caused real harm. But if I *copy* the loaf then he's lost nothing. He still has his loaf of bread which he can eat himself or sell to himself.
Now you may argue that the baker "lost a sale" but I argue that's nonsense. I never would have paid for that bread anyway, especially since I don't like pumperknickel. So the potential for a sale never existed.
ANYWAY this punishment is nuts. It's a life sentence (how long it takes to payoff the fine). The punishment exceeds the damage caused. It is equivalent to if I touched your nose, you prosecute me for assault, and I get a 50 year sentence. Nuts.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Agreed, the jury in this case should be ASHAMED of themselves. There are people who are at fault accidentally killing other human beings who receive less punishment than they are handing out for someone "stealing" 30 songs.
The verdict handed down in this case is a life destroying verdict for a young man. That the RIAA keeps appealing for its huge award is DISGUSTING.
Giant corporate entities are working at utterly destroying one person's life. The RIAA deserves every ounce of contempt and disdain it gets from the people.
For companies that like to believe that they create things that move human emotions and make people think, the RIAA collectively is a horribly dark, twisted, and evil group of people (and the MPAA is even. worse.)
>>>I, as a big corporation can take your song and distribute it from my big high traffic website for free and sell a million dollars worth of advertising.
Funny you mention that. The record corporations were sued by Canadian artists because the megacorps were using the songs on compilation/greatest hits CDs and not paying the royalties due.
They owed billions but settled out of court for millions (mere pennies per song). Why is it that corporations can steal *directly* from their employees and only be punished a few pennies per act, but a citizen with essentially no money gets punished 675K/30 == $22 000 per act.
Our system is bass-backwards and your defense of it makes little sense. This young man is the one who should be punished for mere pennies/song while the billionaire corporations get whacked with the 675,000 fine (per employee-artist ripped off).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Those lost sales are a total fantasy.They aren't actual damages. They are something that was made up to address professional pirates. They are entirely inappropriate when applied to an individual.
Such a verdict also violates the tort reform concepts that so many people like you would apply to corporations.
What this really boils down to is "tort reform for the rich, and crime and punishment for the poor".
The idea of "imaginary damages" needs to go.
They are clearly unjust regardless of what kind of excuses you would like to make for them.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Without a paying customer you have no real damages.
THAT is what separates a commercial criminal enterprise from some guys on a torrent swarm. The transfer of money directly to the perpetrator in exchange for the product is the only thing that demonstrates that there are any lost sales here.
Anything else is a self-serving fantasy.
There are no damages if there are no willing customers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Nobody is truly arguing that breaking copyright is ok.
I am. I'm a researcher, and copyrights have been nothing but a tool for publishers to beat me and my colleagues over the head and collect profits. So I hate them. Copyrights got absolutely NOTHING good for the common person (that includes us, scientists).
Let me be clear: I support licenses (especially CC-style licenses), because giving credit where it is due, is important. But copyrights? Fuck those.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Damn... have they found those stolen MP3s files again, or are they lost forever?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Except they wouldn't. There are thousands of years of art, all created before copyright existed, and much of it better than the drivel we have now.
People create art because we are human. Thats what we do. We're not going to stop doing that because people stop being willing to sacrifice all their rights to my imaginary property.
Further, you ignore the fact that artists can make money without relying on imaginary property. Go to a concert, see them live, go see an exhibit, etc...
People who claim that content will die if revenue dies are morons.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
...fuck the corporations that have bought the US government lock, stock and barrel.
Yeah! And you know else they did? They put a gun to every voters' heads and forced them to vote republican or democrat. The horror!
They're getting a good deal. We handed the government over to them on a silver platter with very little persuasion.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Doesn't matter, just go with the bare minimum. Any intelligent human should know instinctively that murder is a far, far, far worse crime than any amount of file sharing. So if any murderer, ever, for any level or murder or manslaughter or anything like that, gets a lesser sentence than the biggest file-sharer, there's something horribly wrong with the legal system.