Don't have to be Gordon Moore to figure out if the time stamps on a person HDD files, user id, ISP records and IP address all correspond with Ms Thomas' time on-line that she's into this up to her eyebrows.....
There is nothing in the 8th Amendment that applies to this case - this is a CIVIL suit that awards DAMAGES - not FINES. Damages are paid to the damaged party NOT to the state. Fines are paid to the state as a form of punishment. Ms Thomas is not "guilty" in a criminal sense - she did however willfully infringe.
Yes, the OJ trial was a travesty of justice - that doesn't mean our system of courts is broken - but some are. In this case the courts performed well. The plaintiff had a plethora of hard evidence including testimony from a dozen expert witnesses including Dr Doug Jacobson. Ms. Thomas hard-drive had time-stamped files during hours where Ms Thomas was home and NO activity otherwise. Likewise her ISP records correlate with the time stamps on her hard-drive. Likewise her screen name "terreastarr" - which she tried to disown with Kazaa - happens to be the very same one she uses with several other legal sites such as "My Space". Many people don't understand that this is a civil trial - there's no guilty or innocent here - no beyond a resonable doubt. In civil cases it's only the perponderance of the evidence that has to satisfy the jury. Another interesting facet to this case is that the original hard drive in Ms Thomas' computer is "missing" - you'd think you'd be smart enough NOT to continue illegal activity after ditching your dirty HDD....but then you'd think she would have been smart enough to settle for $4K like the RIAA offered!
You're missing some important items to this story:
1: FACT - The RIAA tried to settle for a TOTAL of $4,000.00 - called a statutory settlement in Title 17. Ms Thomas declined opting for a jury trial.
2: FACT - Ms Thomas LOST HER CASE a determined by A JURY OF HER PEERS in Northern Minnesota - hardly a bastion of corporate America or billionaire "fat cats".
3: There is no such ammendment to the US Constitution mentioning "fines" at all.
4: Owing to the fact that Ms Thomas rejected the $4K statutory settlement - and that 12 very ordinary persons - each and every one - found for the plaintiff isn't this a strong example of our civil court system at work????
5: Ms. Thomas claims to be a "nearly destitute single mom" - this means that she has few real assets, is not credit worthy and has limited income. Here's the truth WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING GOING BANKRUPT IS LITTLE MORE THAN A LEGAL FORMAILTY - however if Ms Thomas has gone BK in the past 7 years she will have to pay some of the fine.
"The high damages for distribution seem to be designed for an pre-digital era where someone engaged in distribution would have to spend, and therefore have, a large amount of money." No, although many cases seem like award amounts are simply made-up it is not entirely the fact. The basic award - or actual damages are an accounting of real loss of profit incurred by the plaintiff. It is up to the defendant to appeal for deductions for allowed costs from this amount. In cases where the infringement is "willful" such as this - statutory damages can be considerably higher but are bounded by US Title 17 Chp 5 Section 504.
The award given to the plaintiff in Ms Thomas' case was the result of deliberations of 12 jurors in the district court in Northern Minnesota. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this venue it is very liberal, very working class and is not now nor has it ever been a seat of power for as some of you would put it "capitalist pigs" nor home to corporate America. While this thought may have escaped your cognition you might want to ponder on how 12 very ordinary men and women unanamously found for the RIAA.
The UN has a definition for Intellectual Property:
"Intellectual property represents the property of your mind or intellect. In business terms, this also means proprietary knowledge.
Types of IP:
- patents for new or improved products or processes;
- trade marks for letters, words, phrases, sounds, smells, shapes, logos, pictures, aspects of packaging or a combination of these, to distinguish the goods and services of one trader from those of another;
- designs for the shape or appearance of manufactured goods;
- copyright for original material in literary, artistic, dramatic or musical works, films, broadcasts, multimedia and computer programs;
- circuit layout rights for the three-dimensional configuration of electronic circuits in integrated circuit products or layout designs;
- plant breeder's rights for new plant varieties;
- confidentiality/trade secrets including know-how and other confidential or proprietary information.
I find this resonably specific - do you find it nebulous?
Ah, yes the former CCCP....in the words of John Kenneth Galbraith
"Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under communism, it's just the opposite!"
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its failures - Spinoza
Before simply emoting over incomplete detail's of Ms. Thomas' problem, first try not to be played by the media and review the FACTS of this case:
FACT1: Ms. Thomas wasn't in court for "only 24 songs" - in fact, her Kazza computer files contained 1,726 copyrighted pieces of music illegally downloaded.
FACT2: Ms. Thomas was offered a settlement by the RIAA of a fine of $4,000.00 TOTAL - Ms. Thomas refused and decided to take her chances with a trial.
FACT3: The 24 illegally downloaded items were the focus of the trial as Kazza computer records showed subsequent illegal sharing with 110,481 other illegal downloads.
As technology changes it allows us to do things never before possible - just because we CAN do these things doesn't mean that they become legal by default.
Q1: Do you support the right of persons, groups, companies and corporations to own intellectual property?
Q2: If yes to Q1, do you then agree that these entities are entitled to determine the use and distribution of their property within existing commercial statutes?
Q3: Of what value would the commercial statutes be if they weren't backed by force of law?
Q4: Should the laws be applied differently based on a person's socio-economic status?
In the case of using digital devices to augment our human memory it is more about memorization than memory. If we see value in remembering a subject we are far more likely to do so - Example: a boy who has chronic problems remembering his homework assignments has near total recall of his favorite team's statistics. Another effect that may come into play in this story is a kind of memory management/data compression. Unlike phone numbers written down in a phone book these digital devices allow us to tokenize our memories. Using voice dialing technology means we may only see a phone number once upon entering it into our device - and never even give it a second thought as that number is now attached to a token like "Jim Smith". The final point is that human memory was doing just fine before phone numbers, passwords or even written language were invented therefore digital augmentation is unlikely to significantly change our basic ability to memorize - but what we see a need to memorize will undoubtedly change.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't have to be Gordon Moore to figure out if the time stamps on a person HDD files, user id, ISP records and IP address all correspond with Ms Thomas' time on-line that she's into this up to her eyebrows.....
There is nothing in the 8th Amendment that applies to this case - this is a CIVIL suit that awards DAMAGES - not FINES. Damages are paid to the damaged party NOT to the state. Fines are paid to the state as a form of punishment. Ms Thomas is not "guilty" in a criminal sense - she did however willfully infringe.
Yes, the OJ trial was a travesty of justice - that doesn't mean our system of courts is broken - but some are. In this case the courts performed well. The plaintiff had a plethora of hard evidence including testimony from a dozen expert witnesses including Dr Doug Jacobson. Ms. Thomas hard-drive had time-stamped files during hours where Ms Thomas was home and NO activity otherwise. Likewise her ISP records correlate with the time stamps on her hard-drive. Likewise her screen name "terreastarr" - which she tried to disown with Kazaa - happens to be the very same one she uses with several other legal sites such as "My Space". Many people don't understand that this is a civil trial - there's no guilty or innocent here - no beyond a resonable doubt. In civil cases it's only the perponderance of the evidence that has to satisfy the jury. Another interesting facet to this case is that the original hard drive in Ms Thomas' computer is "missing" - you'd think you'd be smart enough NOT to continue illegal activity after ditching your dirty HDD....but then you'd think she would have been smart enough to settle for $4K like the RIAA offered!
Yes the 8th Amendment mentions fines - but in crimnal matters - not in civil law
You're missing some important items to this story: 1: FACT - The RIAA tried to settle for a TOTAL of $4,000.00 - called a statutory settlement in Title 17. Ms Thomas declined opting for a jury trial. 2: FACT - Ms Thomas LOST HER CASE a determined by A JURY OF HER PEERS in Northern Minnesota - hardly a bastion of corporate America or billionaire "fat cats". 3: There is no such ammendment to the US Constitution mentioning "fines" at all. 4: Owing to the fact that Ms Thomas rejected the $4K statutory settlement - and that 12 very ordinary persons - each and every one - found for the plaintiff isn't this a strong example of our civil court system at work???? 5: Ms. Thomas claims to be a "nearly destitute single mom" - this means that she has few real assets, is not credit worthy and has limited income. Here's the truth WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING GOING BANKRUPT IS LITTLE MORE THAN A LEGAL FORMAILTY - however if Ms Thomas has gone BK in the past 7 years she will have to pay some of the fine.
"The high damages for distribution seem to be designed for an pre-digital era where someone engaged in distribution would have to spend, and therefore have, a large amount of money." No, although many cases seem like award amounts are simply made-up it is not entirely the fact. The basic award - or actual damages are an accounting of real loss of profit incurred by the plaintiff. It is up to the defendant to appeal for deductions for allowed costs from this amount. In cases where the infringement is "willful" such as this - statutory damages can be considerably higher but are bounded by US Title 17 Chp 5 Section 504.
Maybe you would have accepted the same offer given to Ms Thomas that SHE REJECTED - A $4000.00 fine and promise not to illegally download again.
The award given to the plaintiff in Ms Thomas' case was the result of deliberations of 12 jurors in the district court in Northern Minnesota. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this venue it is very liberal, very working class and is not now nor has it ever been a seat of power for as some of you would put it "capitalist pigs" nor home to corporate America. While this thought may have escaped your cognition you might want to ponder on how 12 very ordinary men and women unanamously found for the RIAA.
The UN has a definition for Intellectual Property: "Intellectual property represents the property of your mind or intellect. In business terms, this also means proprietary knowledge. Types of IP: - patents for new or improved products or processes; - trade marks for letters, words, phrases, sounds, smells, shapes, logos, pictures, aspects of packaging or a combination of these, to distinguish the goods and services of one trader from those of another; - designs for the shape or appearance of manufactured goods; - copyright for original material in literary, artistic, dramatic or musical works, films, broadcasts, multimedia and computer programs; - circuit layout rights for the three-dimensional configuration of electronic circuits in integrated circuit products or layout designs; - plant breeder's rights for new plant varieties; - confidentiality/trade secrets including know-how and other confidential or proprietary information. I find this resonably specific - do you find it nebulous?
Ah, yes the former CCCP....in the words of John Kenneth Galbraith "Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under communism, it's just the opposite!" Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its failures - Spinoza
Before simply emoting over incomplete detail's of Ms. Thomas' problem, first try not to be played by the media and review the FACTS of this case: FACT1: Ms. Thomas wasn't in court for "only 24 songs" - in fact, her Kazza computer files contained 1,726 copyrighted pieces of music illegally downloaded. FACT2: Ms. Thomas was offered a settlement by the RIAA of a fine of $4,000.00 TOTAL - Ms. Thomas refused and decided to take her chances with a trial. FACT3: The 24 illegally downloaded items were the focus of the trial as Kazza computer records showed subsequent illegal sharing with 110,481 other illegal downloads. As technology changes it allows us to do things never before possible - just because we CAN do these things doesn't mean that they become legal by default. Q1: Do you support the right of persons, groups, companies and corporations to own intellectual property? Q2: If yes to Q1, do you then agree that these entities are entitled to determine the use and distribution of their property within existing commercial statutes? Q3: Of what value would the commercial statutes be if they weren't backed by force of law? Q4: Should the laws be applied differently based on a person's socio-economic status?
In the case of using digital devices to augment our human memory it is more about memorization than memory. If we see value in remembering a subject we are far more likely to do so - Example: a boy who has chronic problems remembering his homework assignments has near total recall of his favorite team's statistics. Another effect that may come into play in this story is a kind of memory management/data compression. Unlike phone numbers written down in a phone book these digital devices allow us to tokenize our memories. Using voice dialing technology means we may only see a phone number once upon entering it into our device - and never even give it a second thought as that number is now attached to a token like "Jim Smith". The final point is that human memory was doing just fine before phone numbers, passwords or even written language were invented therefore digital augmentation is unlikely to significantly change our basic ability to memorize - but what we see a need to memorize will undoubtedly change.