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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."
We all agree the courts are disgusting. And yet we are doing nothing to fix them. We need an internal affairs department for prosecutors, legislators and judges, who do nothing but watch over their shoulder for this kind of thing.
Should have stolen 30k songs like me. Nothing happens when you steal thirty thousand songs.
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.
I'm not sure how they can say you owe $675,000 for stealing roughly $30 worth of products. If I stole 3 CDs from Wallmart, would I also be charged $675,000? What if I stole $30 from someone? I am not familiar with the case, but I don't see on here that he stole with the intent to undermine future sales of that company, causing significant losses.
I got caught stealing when I was younger. What happened to me was they recovered their items and I was banned from the store until I became an adult. Maybe they should just ban him from having access to these types of things, like making it illegal for him to have internet in his home, instead of an outrageous fine that most people can't afford.
May as well just start hanging people for stealing music/movies.
In Assbagistan, verdict holds YOU up!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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
Hear, hear! I say, the judges should quit fucking around. Just cut his hands off and be done with it.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Being guilt is very different than be forced to pay $670k for 31 files. Even the Goldman-Sacks source code are cheaper!
Ok, I respect old people, but I don't trust them - not one bit. This lady is 80 - how is she qualified to be a judge on a case that involves technology? The RIAA must have convinced her that "downloading" somehow stole their copy and they had to get them back... Anyways, I'd be curious to see the list of songs - just to see where those songs are in the charts / profit margins.
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.
Breaking copyright is absolutely ok and I advocate it. Guess what? the entire world does it daily. That's why things like fair use exists, because copyright is improperly asserted in it's current form. Copyright as is, simply does not apply properly to digital products.
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.
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?
Actually, this is close to the scenario for which the statutory damage amounts were created for. We should distinguish between someone who pirated a single copy of a song for personal use vs a person (or organization) who is willfully redistributing for profit.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
The RIAA ruined his life. This fellow's only mistake is stealing MP3s instead of selling fraudulent loan securities.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Stealing the song is one offense. Using it to make a profit from in a commercial empire when you don't own it is a different offense entirely. Nice Straw-Man though.
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.'"
If the judgement is upheld, and he has to pay the $675k, he's most likely not going to be able to pay that sum.
What would happen then?
I guess they would probably seize and sell his properties, but that's probably not enough.
So would he go to jail and have his debt written off, or is he going to kept them for his whole life?
Something else maybe?
Basically, why fine someone a sum the judge knows that the defendant won't be able to pay? To make an example I guess, but is there something else?
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"
You're right; if he has nothing left to live for, he should do his best to make sure these bastards never harm anyone else again.
He should walk into their offices with an AK-47 and just start spraying bullets. He should preferably, take out all the execs and their lawyers if he can.
And you know what? The penalty he'll get for murdering 50+ people is probably less than what he's being charged with now. Chances are he'll be out in 10 years, whereas, if he accepts the fine, he'll be an economic prisoner for 90 years.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The average musician only earns $16,000 a year (as of 2009). Let's say this average musician is like my friend who performs 10 songs per Saturday night for a year. $16k/520songs == $32 per song. Divided by 10-20 listeners at the club is $1.60 to $3.20 per person.
So by downloading my friends' music instead of going to the club and paying for it, I should have to pay $3.20 times the thirty songs == $100 to my friend. THAT is a reasonable fine, and it is based upon the average musician salary. You could even add $900 "punative damage" on top of it. That's still a more-realistic value than 675,000.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
>>>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"
Really, that's what they're going for. Sony has near-infinite resources compared to one guy with a Pro Bono lawyer... so they're running circles around him. They've got a dozen lawyers in court, objecting to anything he does, while another dozen lawyers fight with his ISP to subpoena his net usage history and still some more lawyers and lobbyists work to get new laws passed that make copyright infringement a felony punishable by death ... etc etc etc. Sony probably hired a crew to canvas this guy's neighborhood and interrogate the neighbors: "Have you heard any of these 30 songs emanating from that house?"
What it all boils down to is Sony setting a precedent. It's a modern day Witch Hunt. They want to have a big public showing that downloading music is evil and bad and will cost you MILLIONS (Sony is trying to get up to $4.5 million in damages) to hopefully scare the public into (A) not downloading music and (B) paying the Sony extortion letters. If this $600,000+ fine holds up, what would your reaction be to a letter from Sony that said, "We have evidence to show you've downloaded our songs illegally. You are hereby fined $5,000. Pay up or we're headed to court." How many people would think about this guy, and just pay up?
Even if only 1% of people respond and pay, that's still a damn good ROI for the cost of a stamp.
Bonus points for Sony if they can drive people away from LEGAL music downloads. "You claim to have purchased these songs from Amazon or iTunes ... but I don't see a receipt. $5,000 or we're going to court." The longer Sony can keep people beholden to the ancient CD system, the better it is for them.
This signature is false.
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.
It's part of your Constitutional law: that damages awarded cannot exceed ten times the damages endured by the plaintiff. However, this Constitutional protection is cheefully disregarded by your copyright law, which renders your copyright law unconstitutional. It also seems that judges aren't very good at math, since $150,000 damages on about $0.50 per song is 300,000x damages, which is greater than 10x damages. (The copyright holder doesn't collect the full $0.99 retail price of a song.)
"The mean prison sentence for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter was nearly 20 years and 8 months; the median was 24 years and 3 months."
Not to defend the judgement, but I'm going to go ahead and say that 20 years in prison is a lot higher on the 'life-ruining' scale than $675,000.
He actually offered to pay significantly more than $30.00.
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.
Depends who you ask.
3 meals a day and a bed vs 'guess I'm running from the law and living off the land, because that's more money than my gross income for the next hundred years'
Which just goes to show you that if you're caught downloading 30 songs, your best bet is to murder the policeman that comes to arrest you. At least then you'll have it easier.
And all this case proves is that the studios are greedy fucks that care about how much blood they'll squeeze out of this turnip, and not how much blood they themselves have lost from the defendant's actions.
It's because corporations are of a higher social class and thus permitted to get away with more.
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.
So you wouldn't have bought that bread, but I'm pretty sure you'd buy something to eat. I'm sure everybody can find a bread at the baker they wouldn't have paid for, so that they can get it for free. Everybody gets free bread and the baker makes no sales. Sounds sustainable. I'm sure you can fill your days with movies you wouldn't have watched, songs you wouldn't have heard, games you wouldn't have played and applications you'd never use if you had to pay full retail price for them. And if you would have used Linux instead of paying for Windows you should just go ahead and pirate Windows, it's not like Microsoft lost a sale right? And clearly you'd never pay $999 for Adobe Photoshop CS6 to edit your home photos, wow this is easy. Sure wish the real world was like that, I'd drive a Ferrari since I wouldn't want to pay for one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The damages to the copyright owner in terms of lost sales are the same whether he did it for profit or not.
And can you tell me what the damages were? Just what were they? How much potential profit did they actually lose? Even they don't know that!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Damn... have they found those stolen MP3s files again, or are they lost forever?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
This story made me think of the excellent TED talk by Rob Reid, on copyright math. It's hilarious! http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html
In case you're interested in reading the arguments I made in 2009 in this case, as to why the verdict was in violation of due process, here they are (PDF)
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I used to have thousands of my CDs ripped to .MP3s, but after I started seeing court cases like this I deleted them all and donated the CDs to my local library. I even used to purchase DRM free music too, deleted that shit. Look, I can't really PROVE that I got these music files legally. The risk of a single song costing me thousands of dollars, more if you factor in legal fees and lost work time, just isn't worth it taking the risk.
My personal internet connection has a dynamic IP. I've looked up my "current" IP address several times on sites like You Have Downloaded and found that the previous holders of the addresses were using Bittorrent to download stuff -- I assume legally, since I don't presume guilt without supporting evidence; Unfortunately, the legal system doesn't always follow the same logic. Interestingly, the You Have Downloaded site is closed, citing inaccuracy concerns...
I don't have much of a choice in ISPs. That said, I have to put a lot of faith in ISP staff to do proper record keeping in order to avoid wrongful litigation from goons like the RIAA or MPAA. This is the same staff of morons who gork my bill on a regular basis, and can't give me basic info like alternate DNS settings without first following a 30 step problem resolution script.
Keeping my systems free of any legally encumbered media is unfortunately a small safeguard I must make -- I seriously can not afford to risk the alternative. Fortunately, there is a thriving local music scene where I live, and there exists creative commons licensed music and video to enjoy. I wouldn't even call what I do a "boycott" of 'mainstream' media. I'd still buy the music & movies if they came with less troubling licenses and far less dangerous litigation precedents.
Sadly, a cost vs benefit risk analysis clearly shows the danger far outweighs the entertainment value of said media. Even worse, the "lost sales" caused by me withdrawing from their markets are most certainly attributed to "piracy".
I still own a Sony Betamax dual tape deck...
Paramount once sued Sony, accusing them of contributing to copyright infringement via producing a device that could be used to record live TV, or duplicate videos. Sony won that case on the grounds that although it could be used to infringe copyright, and even if infringement was the device's primary use case, there was still the POSSIBILITY that device could be used in non-infringing ways.
My, how the times have changed, eh? I'm a long time hardware & software hacker -- I hack on all my hardware as a general rule, so I couldn't risk owning a PS3 after the Sony v G.Hotz debacle -- I would have thought his work had the POSSIBILITY of being used in non-infringing ways... Nowadays, I don't even buy their music or movies, and games with "project $10" / online unlock codes and draconian DRM are also off the table for me. Damn. This current set of copyright laws is bad for everyone.
I sometimes joke that I started making my own games because I didn't want to hang up my controller, but I couldn't find any with EULAs I could actually agree to.
When you are already serving time for murder of another adult male, most of those violent criminals fear you at least as much as you fear them, and try to work out an acceptable detente. it's when you are in that same prison for doing something that says you are prey, that you get the real trouble. Prisons have people who get beaten and worse for being 'pedos', but the guy who molested all those little girls AND killed an armed police officer with only a tire iron somehow never becomes the target for those pedo beat-downs. And, the guy who just transported dope across state lines tends to get about as many beatings and rapes as the typical molester. There are exceptions - like Jeffery Dahmer. The man who killed Dahmer was already serving time for murder himself and had reported messianic delusions, but he does claim to have acted in the interest of justice, and given Dahmer, I'm not saying he's wrong. It's not the common story, far from it. More common is to serve a lot less than life, typically only about 5 years actual time served, and have relatively little to fear from the other inmates.
Who is John Cabal?
The fact that the songs normally retail for $0.99 is completely irrelevant. It would perhaps be relevant if he were merely downloading songs for his own personal enjoyment. That's not, however, what he was doing. He was downloading and then redistributing.
The relevant price comparison should be to the cost of a fixed price license that allows the licensee to make unlimited copies and redistribute them without restriction to anyone in the world, with no requirement to track or report on any of this to the licensor.
That license is going to cost a lot more than $0.99 per song.
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
If you completely ignore interests and do not engage in superfluous activities, like eating or paying your rent.
1. To pay this guys fine and restore give him back his life... cmon, there's worse things to give a buck to
2. To fund ongoing ad campaigns for worldwide copyright reform
...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.
Who cares if they take away our liberties, as long as they hate fags and love jesus as much as we do, right?
He should have just walked into a store and shoplifted the physical albums.
The irony of your statement is that, with the advent of this fictional replicator, the baker would already have his new business model laid out in front of him: Bake his bread like usual, "record" it into the replicator, then charge a small fee for customer access to the replicator, in addition to selling the actual bread for those who want that.
Assuming decent rates for the energy and feedstock for the replicator, that means a lower cost of doing business than selling only fresh-cooked bread, which means more money in the baker's pocket. Plus keeping the real bread around (in quantities appropriate to the reduced sales) means the bakery still smells as inviting as it ever did.
The concept of copyright started when copying became a serious option, the time when printing press technology really advanced and allowed for large scale reproduction of printed works.
For thousands of years, copying a book meant hand-writing a second copy. Copying a painting meant painting your own. Sound/video recordings simply didn't exist. Big difference with the current world.
Copyrights are an important concept in our world, as are patents and trademark rights. The problem is that these concepts have grown outside their intended (and useful) scope - and that problem should be addressed, abolishing them is simply not a good idea.
Free bread would be great. Most bread that people buy is based on quite old recipes. If people stopped creating new bread recipes, few people would complain. Those of us who bake bread at home would probably continue to experiment so you'd have enough new bread recipes being released to satisfy demand even without the profit motive.
In the case of creative works, it's less obvious. Tastes and requirements change. There is not just a demand for music, for example, there is a demand for new music. The same is true of films and software. The problem is that creating new works is both hard and valuable, whereas copying them is increasingly easy, but the economic situation created by copyright means that you have to do the difficult bit for free and charge for the easy bit. As a car analogy, imagine if a car manufacturer decided that they were going to sell unpainted cars for free and then charge $10K for the paint job, then push for legislation that made painting your own car illegal.
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