US govt says $1.92M P2P damage award totally fair

Source: Ats Technica

The US Department of Justice has weighed in on Jammie Thomas-Rasset's $1.92 million liability for damages, calling the amount perfectly constitutional. In fact, Congress intended for such massive damages to fall like a stone upon even noncommercial P2P users.

Thomas-Rasset was the first defendant in the RIAA's 18,000-person war on file-sharing to take her case all the way to trial. After two trials, she ended up owing $80,000 per song, for a total of $1.92 million, an amount promptly challenged as "unconstitutional" by the defense.

But the DOJ says that the range for statutory damages was clearly laid out by Congress to apply precisely to such cases. The amounts involved were last increased in 1999 as part of the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act, which "improved" statutory damages by raising the maximum to $150,000 per infringement.

According to Congressional thinking at the time, these amounts were not intended solely to apply to massive corporations; the DOJ quotes an explanation from the negotiations that says higher damages are necessary because "many computer users are either ignorant that copyright laws apply to Internet activity, or they simply believe that they will not be caught or prosecuted..."

Read more: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/us-govt-says-192m-p2p-damage-award-constitutional.ars

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Disgusting! The next time I hear anyone whine about curtailing frivolous lawsuits or malpractice tort reform I'm going to shove this in their face. It's frivolous when a regular schmuck does it but I never hear much complaining when it's big business or the government filing the papers.

Jay

frivolous __ Thats when you sue me.
It's not frivolous when I sue you.

He has packed his administration with police-state corporatists who are absolutely hostile toward the little people. A third term for the Bush agenda.

It's us against them.

The average teenager in the U.K. has 800+ illegally downloaded mp3s; 95% of people between the ages of 18-24 have illegally copied music, and half of them would be willing to share all of their music right now:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article4144585.ece

I would assume the numbers for young Americans are the same. Part of me hopes that this kind of blatant corruption will further politicize young people, but given the Democrats' love affair with the intellectual property gangsters, I'm rather afraid of how it's going to politicize young people. If I were the Republican party, this is how I would be winning back the youth vote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party

In the meantime, we will continue to fall behind technologically and economically.

The award is ludicrous, but not sure I'm going to take the "everybody does it" defense.

I think it's more of a "clean up your own back yard" statement. I'd love to take a look at the music/video libraries of some DOJ families.

Jay

I think 50$ a song would be a much more just punishment though. Not sure how anyone could come up with 80K per song.

If she had stolen an entire CD from a shop, what would her fine been?

but i guess the ridiculous fines are because she was... gasp SHARING.

I she had stolen a case of CDs and only kept one for herself and GAVE the rest away, what would be the fine? $100? $200?

Let's go ahead and get the debtor's prisons built. There are a lot of young criminals to be processed. (sarcasm)

The amounts are beyond outrageous and law desperately needs to be amended to more reasonable (fair) amounts.

Declare bankruptcy. Wworked for GM - lawsuits dropped.

I went through a bankruptcy a few years back and they were very strict on what can be included in debt forgiveness even though I was a victim of a scam. They only released my obligations to certain creditors, not including GSA loans for example. Can you BK out of a fine imposed by the courts? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

There is no way around it. Nobody can afford the millions in damages. That puts the cost straight on us in the long run.

The SC needs to overturn it.

It makes me wonder how many legislators and lawyers the RIAA owns. They must use the law firm of Wolfram and Hart (only fans of the TV series Angel will get that last sentence).

The Chinese government tells the RIAA that they'll crack down on piracy, and then they look the other way.