RIAA wins a case...

[Keevan_Colton]

A court in the US has ordered a woman to pay $222,000 (£109,000) in damages for illegally file-sharing music.

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 32, from Minnesota, to pay for offering to share 24 specific songs online - a cost of $9,250 per song.

Record companies said she had illegally shared a total of 1,702 songs.

Ms Thomas, who denied the charges, was the first person accused of illegal file-sharing who decided to fight the case in court.

Each year, millions of households illegally share music files, and the music industry takes it as a serious threat to its revenue.

About 26,000 lawsuits have been filed against alleged file-sharers, but most defendants settle privately by paying damages amounting to a few thousand dollars.

Industry defiant

However, contesting the charge and losing will cost Jammie Thomas almost a quarter of a million dollars.

Kazaa screen
Thomas denied using Kazaa to share copyrighted material

Her lawyer, Brian Toder, told the Associated Press that Ms Thomas was reduced to tears by the verdict.

"This is a girl that lives from pay cheque to pay cheque, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her pay cheque garnished for the rest of her life," he said.

The US record industry said investigators located an individual with the screen name "tereastarr@KaZaA", using the Kazaa file-sharing software program.

"This individual was downloading copyrighted sounds recordings from other users of the Kazaa network, and was distributing copyrighted sound recordings stored on her computer to other Kazaa users," the plaintiffs said.


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The art form has been traded in for a bottom line
Tavie Meier, Boulder, USA

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A spokesman for the record companies said he hoped people would understand the verdict.

Richard Gabriel, a lawyer for the music companies, said the verdict was important.

"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not okay," he told AP.


Our message is: we don't want to litigate - don't leave yourself exposed to litigation
John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries

He said no decision had yet been made about what the record companies would do, if anything, to pursue collecting the money from Ms Thomas.

John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, which represents record labels, said they were "reluctant litigators".

"We do everything possible to persuade people not to leave themselves exposed to litigation. We educate, we warn, we even try and settle before a case gets to court."

He said he hoped the fine would prove a deterrent to others.

"Our message is: we don't want to litigate - don't leave yourself exposed to litigation," he added.

[Darth Wong]

The American legal system is structured in such a way as to be wonderful mechanism through which the inequality of rich and poor can be enshrined in law.

[Gil Hamilton]

"Reluctant litigators" my ass. The RIAA virtually is organized crime when it comes to racketeering with lawsuits. That is a bloody shame that the RIAA could legally do that.

[Durandal]

Reading Ars' coverage of the case, I couldn't think of a worse defendant to bring to trial. But that's not surprising. The RIAA wouldn't let a sketchy case go in front of a jury; they would only let something rock-solid go this far. And they met the burden of a "preponderance of evidence". She more likely than not did, in fact, infringe their copyrights. As a matter of law, the jury made the right decision. Not to mention that her lawyer didn't exactly do a bang-up job. His defense amounted to "Someone might've spoofed her IP address, her cable modem's MAC address and copied her ubiquitous screen name". If he was worth the $50,000 in fees he's probably charging, he would've advised her to settle.

As to the penalty, $220,000 for 24 songs is absolutely insane. The copyright statutes were written before the common person had access to facilities to let him quickly duplicate and distribute copyrighted works. They were meant to be used against large-scale piracy operations that turned a lot of profit on their infringement. The RIAA's award is severely disproportionate, and they basically just ruined this woman's life over 2 CDs'-worth of music. That's pretty disgusting, especially considering that they place the value of individual tracks in the neighborhood of $0.99 to $1.29. Copyright law needs a massive reform to deal with the case of P2P distribution by the average citizen. This was like using RICO statutes to go after a grade school bully.

The real clincher here (and opportunity for appeal) is that the judge instructed the jury that "making available" is equivalent to infringement, which is just insane. By that logic, if I throw my hard drive in the trash with all my music on it, I'm infringing their copyrights.

[DPDarkPrimus]

The fine is so high because she wasn't just downloading but distributing.

I still think it's way too high, but that's why it should be more than the "99 cents per song".

[Keevan_Colton]

The fine is so high because she wasn't just downloading but distributing.

I still think it's way too high, but that's why it should be more than the "99 cents per song".

There are some serious legal hurdles to get around to actually go after anyone for downloading, not least the Home Recording Act, but distribution is a lot easier to go for.

[Eulogy]

So when can we expect to see counterattacks by decent people?

[Mr Bean]

9000$ a song? Ok lets assume high end, that each song is worth 1.29$, in all told 30.96 for all the song. So at 9000$ we can set a range that they assume 6900 odd people all downloaded every single song, so she disrupted the songs to a minimum of 6000 people(Allowing for a few people to re download) at the high end if we assume that everyone just downloaded ONE song of the twenty four, is roughly 167,400 people who downloaded the song.


Between 6900 odd to 167,400 odd total people downloaded songs per the 9000$ a song decision. If we assume the mean, that some people downloaded some songs, some downloaded one, some downloaded all, lets say that 40,000 people downloaded the songs. Rather than spending 5,000$ a head going after 40,000 people, they instead go after the disrupter and try and get their money there.

[bilateralrope]

It seems that one of the decisions the RIAA were using as precedent here was overturned, but the RIAA lawyers didn't tell the judge about it.

Recording Industry vs The People

RIAA Neglected to Notify Judge Karas About Vacatur of Atlantic v Howell order in Elektra v. Barker; Defendant's counsel sends copy

It appears that the RIAA lawyers forgot to notify Judge Karas, the presiding judge in Elektra v. Barker, that a decision they'd sent him in August was vacated a week ago. See Atlantic v. Howell story below.

Ms. Barker's lawyers have sent the judge a copy.

October 4, 2007, Letter of Morlan Ty Rogers (Submitting Copy of September 27, 2007, order in Atlantic v. Howell)*

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

www.antimusic.com

(antiMusic) Recording Industry vs The People delivers some pretty big news "The first-ever jury trial for the RIAA, in Vrigin v. Thomas (renamed Capitol v. Thomas after Virgin Records withdrew from case), has resulted in a verdict against the defendant, Jammie Thomas, in the amount of $220,000." The fine was for 24 songs the RIAA claimed the defendant illegally made available online.

Recording Industry vs The People's editor added this opinion: I'm sorry to hear that Ms. Thomas lost, but I don't think the case is over by a long shot; the verdict -- based as it upon an entirely erroneous jury instruction going to the very heart of the case -- will almost definitely be set aside on appeal.

The heart of that claim comes from this report by the site: It appears that the RIAA lawyers forgot to notify Judge Karas, the presiding judge in , that a decision they'd sent him in August was vacated a week ago. Read more about both cases - here

Slashdot

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "When a Judge agreed with the RIAA's claim that 'making available' was actionable under the Copyright Act, in Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA was quick to bring this 'authority' to the attention of the judges in Elektra v. Barker and Warner v. Cassin. Those judges were considering the same issue. When the that decision was overturned successfully, however, they were not so quick to inform those same judges of this new development. When the defendants' lawyers found out — a week after the RIAA's lawyers learned of it — they had to notify the judges themselves . At this moment we can only speculate as to what legal authorities they cited to the judge in Duluth, Minnesota, to get him to instruct the jurors that just 'making available' was good enough."

[Big Orange]

This sounds completely paranoid BS, driven by overweening greed and outright spite. Music licensing in America is blatantly forty years behind the rest of the Western world with the US music industry causing boundless damage with their incessant cultural and social vandalism over some fucking music, severely alienating their customer base - even the big media companies seem to be damaged by convoluted music licensing woes (ie the countless TV shows barred from mainstream DVD release encouraging the widespread DVD piracy and Internet downloads of deliberately underexposed TV shows).