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."

Comments

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Black people are great and they're fine by me. Just people with a permanent tan.

But I just don't like niggers. If you think being a street thug is the highest aspiration in life, then you're a nigger.

If you ever beat up a black kid in school because he was studying hard, trying to learn and achieve, and "acting white" you're a nigger.

If you don't know anything about Obama's politics and you're voting for him just because he's black and you're black, you're a nigger.

If you think Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are wise leaders, you're a nigger.

If you celebrate violence and think being a gang member would be just grand, you're a nigger.

The black race is its own worst enemy. The good black people are constantly being betrayed by the niggers. This is much worse than anything whites have done in a very long time. Black on black crime is much worse than white on black crime has ever been. You don't HAVE to consistently top the charts for violent crime, poverty, and bastard children you know. Blaming genetics is a pathetic coward of a cop-out. Too many niggers subscribe to this culture of violence and underachievement. They are pimples on the ass of society.

Re:Who cares

[clarkkent09]

1) The level of damages should not exceed 10 times the value of the product/song
 
And where did you get that number from? So, if you are a music artist and you sell your song for $1 from your small, low traffic website, 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. And the most you can sue me for is $10?

Re:Who cares

[clarkkent09]

The damages are there not because he downloaded the song, but because he distributed the song. His motivation is his business. The damages to the copyright owner in terms of lost sales are the same whether he did it for profit or not.