RIAA wins first lawsuit, defendant to pay $9250 per song

[Grav]

Jesus Christ. It's not like the defendant was a big company or something, either. It's a single mother in Minnesota.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071004-verdict-is-in.html

[Mantralord]

its over 9000!!

[WetWired]

It is over 100,000, actually.

[Vault Dweller]

Wow. That's fairly insane.

Jury by Metallica & Friends?

[Grav]

$220,000

[!King_Amazon!]

Oi, I was reading about the trial earlier, thinking to myself "there's no way the RIAA is going to win this one, the jury is going to think they're nuts"

Failed jury, IMO.

[D3V]

Wow. That's fairly insane.

Jury by Metallica & Friends?

Lmfao.

That is horrible, screw RIAA.

[Thanatos]

So why'd they target her, out of all people?

Also, what the fuck was the jury thinking? They've never downloaded songs? I call bullshit.

[Lenny]

She downloads 24 songs, and is taken to court?! That's just petty.

[!King_Amazon!]

I think the main reason she was taken to court was because she SHARED 24 songs. Downloading itself it's the bad part, it's the fact that other people downloaded from her that they get you. She potentially gave copywritten material to millions of people.

Still a bullshit case, though. Fuck the RIAA.

[Lenny]

OK then, shared. Still, it's only 24 songs. There are people who upload thousands of songs, pieces of software worth thousands of dollars, films, video games... yet how many of them have been taken to court and fined?

This looks like a case of the RIAA not seeing the forest for a tree.

[!King_Amazon!]

If they cared about their image at all, they'd be targeting that geek who sits in his parents basement has is currently sharing 10,000 songs with a million other people. Not a single mother who shared 24 songs.

The RIAA is not the brightest bunch.

[Lenny]

And the sad truth is, there's a high probability that the reason they've sued her is to 'improve their image' in a way - if they show they can come down hard on someone who only shares 24 songs, then it might deter others from doing it. Paying so much for such a little offence?

[!King_Amazon!]

Well it most definitely will scare people out of sharing music. They might have just used her as an example. It's just sad that they had to pick a single mother and ruin her life because she shared 24 songs.

I will go as far as to admit that sharing songs is immoral, though I've done it myself. However, I do not think the punishment fits the crime, in this case. Her downloading and sharing 24 songs could very well have cost the music industry $220,000, though it's unlikely. We will assume, for argument's sake, that it did. The music industry does not get it's life ruined because it's out $220,000. However, that's going to absolutely ruin this lady. She's going to end up filing bankrupcy, her credit will be ruined. She probably wont be able to send her kids to college because she will have horrible credit. They will have to do it on their own, which is entirely possible, but a lot harder.

There needs to be some sort of proportional punishment, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. If the music industry has billions of dollars, and this lady prevented $220,000 from going to them, they need to proportionally make her pay for it. A few thousand, maybe. $220,000, no.

[Thanatos]

Well it most definitely will scare people out of sharing music. They might have just used her as an example. It's just sad that they had to pick a single mother and ruin her life because she shared 24 songs.

Maybe the RIAA is paying her some money under the table so they can use this case/trial as a deterrent so other people will think twice before they share music.

[Kaneda]

Well it most definitely will scare people out of sharing music. They might have just used her as an example.
Na. It's only going to hit people once it happens to them. Just like the Earth going down the shitter. If it's not effecting people in real time, they don't care or even notice.

Ya Thantos. They probably arn't doing that but that would be a good idea.

[D3V]

Well lets see.

For example, my computer has roughly 800 songs downloaded, FOR EXAMPLE:

If they used the same 9250 per song I'd be looking at a hefy bill, $7,400,000

Wowza.. they should maybe consider just making the people pay for ALL of the CDs from Artists they stole from or something, that'd seem to be more reasonable to me.

[Kaneda]

Well the jury came up with that figure. So maybe for your 800 songs they'd only charged you around 280.00 each

[D3V]

Even still i'd just claim somebody else downloaded them.

[!King_Amazon!]

That's what she claimed.

[Vollstrecker]

So why'd they target her, out of all people?

I think it was more of a 'scare tactics' thing to the rest of the internet community. If they could track down and be willing to prosecute a single mother who only downloaded a handful of songs, they'd have no problems doing the same to others who have done worse.

I feel sorry for that lady though.

[Vault Dweller]

Someone should start a charity to support victims of the RIAA's warpath - I'm thinking specifically of her kids.

[Sovereign]

That jury must have been full of retards though. Nearly 10k in damages per song?

[Thanatos]

Yeah no shit, where'd they find the jury for that one?

[Grav]

It has something to do with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). From what I understand there is a minimum and maximum amount they could have charged her per song, the max being $150,000 and the minimum still being in the thousands. Even if the jury wanted to they could not make it $0.99 per song or whatever actually makes sense.

[Lenny]

I had a bit of fun in another thread about this on a different forum. I'll quote the pot before, and then mine:

---

Only 24 were mentioned in the trial she appears to have uploaded over 1000 to share



Oh noes! A full thousand!


I'm sorry, but even a thousand is nothing.

Let's say you get an average of 15 tracks on a CD, and a CD, when new, costs about £10.

If one person downloaded all of the 1000 tracks, then the music industry would be around £670 out of pocket.

For the industry to be £108,000 out of pocket, it needs 162 people, give or take, to download each of the 1000 songs - in other words, 162,000 songs need to be downloaded (which, out of plain interest would be the equivalent of about £749,250,000 in fines, if we take the figure that the defendant was fined).

Obviously there's going to be an error in my calculations (if anything, they might be a few million out... but when we're talking such big money, does the odd million even matter?).

Just another interesting fact to chew on - the global market for the music industry is estimated at between $30-$40 billion!

Sorry if I'm ranting a bit.



Apparently the RIAA mentioned 1,702 songs uploaded, but chose to focus on just 24.

Double pounds to get dollars.

[Vault Dweller]

Hey, check it out. Someone is doing something.

http://www.freejammie.com/

[D3V]

Sundance Says:

October 7th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Maybe I’m misguided or just plain stupid, but what is the difference between P2P and a public library? Aren’t they both sharing copyrighted work for free?

Awesome quote.

[!King_Amazon!]

It's not right, though. A public library doesn't copy books and hand them out to people for free. A public library allows you to borrow and then return a book.

Good example is if you let a friend borrow a CD and then they return it, rather than if you copy said CD and give it to your friend. They're both forms of sharing, in essence, but one of them is illegal.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is all very dumb. I also think flawed logic used to argue for or against something is dumb, especially if it's someone arguing for something I agree with, because they're just hurting our case.

[D3V]

It's not right, though. A public library doesn't copy books and hand them out to people for free. A public library allows you to borrow and then return a book.

Well true, the Publisher does the copying, but the information is still out there. It's not like ANYBODY is making money off of these downloaded songs, it's like having to pay for citing a book, same thing as downloading a single song off of a CD.

Good example is if you let a friend borrow a CD and then they return it, rather than if you copy said CD and give it to your friend. They're both forms of sharing, in essence, but one of them is illegal.

Copywright laws are so ridiculous and conspicuous to every specific argument that it's impossible to copy anything at all share put on your computer, etc, without having a loophole that could possibly land you in some sort of trouble.

One argument that could be brought up about this is say I bought a System of a Down cd, and it got lost, stolen, destroyed, etc. So I go online, and download the full album as a replacement for the CD, should that be considered wrong or immmoral? No, but according to the law it is.

[!King_Amazon!]

I'm going to end this argument before it starts and simply tell you that you are wrong. Comparing a library to P2P file sharing is flawed logic. While I disagree with P2P file sharing being illegal, that logic does not work.

[D3V]

I didn't even say that was my logic, but an awesome quote. What they were saying is that the information is out there and is being shared, just because you have no basis and you have to quit, don't call me wrong.

[Vollstrecker]

I'm having a hard time phrasing this...

The difference between a public library and bootleg copies of something is that with a library, the artist is compensated and their work is able to be sampled, however the consumer would still have to pay for permanent access to the material in question.

Obviously, an illegal copy circumvents this by giving you permanent access to the material without having to pay for it.