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8th Circuit Upholds $220,000 Verdict In Jammie Thomas Case
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has upheld the initial jury verdict in the case against Jammie Thomas, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset. This case was the first jury trial for a file-sharing suit brought by the major record labels, and focused on copyright infringement for 24 songs. The Court of Appeals has ruled that the award of $220,000, or $9250 per song, was not an unconstitutional violation of Due Process. The Court, in its 18-page decision (PDF), declined to reach the 'making available' issue, for procedural reasons."
Sorry, forgot the best part... the fact that with the award at $222,000 they're exactly where they were 3 trials and 5 years ago: at an amount which will most likely *never* be paid in full. How many countless wasted hours or lawyers, judges, juries, court time and space have been spent on this, what amounts to realistically probably no more than $24 actual real damages to the record labels (song downloads).
Again, sorry to reply to myself but this nonsense really gets me riled up, especially if you have a look at what the adult film industry is doing with copyright these days. If you're not aware, there's a massive nation-wide campaign going on where over 300,000 people have been sued so far in a grand perversion of technology and the justice system in efforts to extort multi-thousand dollar settlements. And this movement has its roots squarely in RIAA litigation tactics. See: http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/
Punitive damages are fine and good, but these are not punitive damages; they are statutory. Punitive damages are designed to deter a law breaker whereas the statutory damages written into copyright law are designed to compensate the copyright holder as a proxy for actual damages in the case where they are unable to accurately prove actual damages. So, at face value this has fuckall to do with punitive damages. However the copyright holders are trying to use statutory damages (which 100% go to them) for a punitive purpose because the amounts, being so obscenely high, allow them to.
He might have been modded troll because he's too gopddamned lazy (or perhaps ignorant) to use his shift key. I can see the logic of modding someone who writes unreadable prose "troll", although "overrated" would be better.
Note to aliterates, illiterates, those who can't do homophones or know how to use an apostrophe: All your comments are overrated and I will mod them as such, and so will many other literates who chafe at reading uneducated tripe.
This used to be a place where educated, intelligent people come. Looking like a hipster or a jock IS a troll on a nerd site; we're nerds, not jocks and hipsters. For instance, if your honest opinion is that science is useless, you're automatically a troll here, just as an honest opinion that there is no God on a Christian site is a troll, Medicare should die on an AARP site is a troll, and an opinion that sports are stupid on a jock site is a troll.
So he and everybody else can take their hip "txtspk" and go somewhere else; they're not welcome. They are trolls. They need to go away and stop bothering those of us who read books once in a while.
Free Martian Whores!