24 illegal song downloads cost US woman $220,000

In the first US trial to challenge the illegal downloading of music on the Internet, a single mother from Minnesota was ordered Thursday to pay 220,000 dollars for sharing 24 songs online.
Jammie Thomas, 30, was the first among more than 26,000 people sued by the world's most powerful recording companies to refuse a settlement after being slapped with a lawsuit by the Recording Industry of America and six major music labels.

She turned down an offer to pay a few thousands dollars in fines and instead took the case to court.

Unlike some who insist on the right to share files over the Internet, Thomas says she was wrongfully targeted by SafeNet, a contractor employed by the recording industry to patrol the Internet for copyrighted material.




more at:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071004233021.itudt24b&show_article=1

... songs you haven't purchased, it's also pretty clear that the record companies have been ripping off the consumers just has hard as they've been ripping off the artists for a long time.

Hard not to be happy to see the record companies get what's coming to them.

Funny that the phrase RIAA does not appear anywhere in the article. The RIAA are the real pirates.

mentions the Recording Industry of America.

but when the bands tour, charge 300.00 a seat. It will make the shows better without all the idiots standing and screaming their head off.

are the low-income people? That's not been my experience.

but to each their own, I suppose ...

I went to Roger Water's radio KAOS tour and it was half arena,5,000 people. That show ROCKED!!! I went again about 6 or 7 years ago and the house was full and that show SUCKED!!

:shrug:

It's one thing to have downloaded 24 songs, it's another to be hosting sharing of them so that millions of users can grab pieces of them to facilitate piracy. Doesn't the original writer understand there's a huge difference?

editors do.

I copied the headline as it appeared, and you're right - it should've said "sharing" instead of "downloading".

Editor must be a moron then. :) Because it's not understanding that there's a large difference, one that may actually have played a large role in the jury's consideration.

RIAA was not required to show the files had been downloaded, in turn, by anyone else. See my post below.

But rather than get bogged down in the technicalities I'll just stick with the main point: the woman shared, yes, but it's very punitive to make an example out of her, even if the law says they can.

We're all so jumpy around here these days ...

I was trying to clarify: the plaintiffs were never required to show the songs in question were shared; the headline is accurate. Way messed up.

But as far as I'm concerned, if you put up files FOR downloading, you are sharing, even if no one has to prove that others actually downloaded them. That's why I didn't feel that was accurate.

If even putting them up for sharing was not something that had to be proved, wish it would've been clearer.

It is absolutely wrong and should be appealed

> That shit shocks the conscience.
>
> It is absolutely wrong and should be appealed

If she was providing access to copyrighted materials,
then the ruling is well within the range of "correct",
especially if the plaintiffs showed evidence that her
illegally-shared material had been downloaded "n times",
causing the loss of $m dollars of potential sales.

(I don't know if they did show this.)

Whether you like copyrights or not, they are still
the law of the land and the incomes of many of us
depend on the enforcement of copyright laws.

Tesha

Jurors have a choice: it's called jury nullification.

(edited for clarity)

Try to find business, tax or property laws that have not been influenced by lobbying.

Does that mean they all can be violated or ignored?

Remember checks and balances? :shrug:

> Laws that are written by *industry lobbyists* don't deserve our respect.

I've got news for you:

The principle you're attacking is hundreds of years
old and pre-dates "industry lobbyists" and the
principle is this:

If *YOU* create Intellectual Property, then *YOU*
have the right to profit from that creation. Just
because I have printing press, a photocopying machine,
a CD burner, or a broadband connection does not mean
that I have the right to take *YOUR* work, redistribute
it, and profit from it.

And if you think otherwise, you're condoning thievery,
plain and simple. And people in the 1700s would have
recognized this principle as surely as some of us
still do here in the 2000s.

Tesha

The right of copyright holders has never been absolute under the Anglo-American system of law.

this is FUCKING bollocks. Remember the class action lawsuit fileed against several major recording companys because it turned out ther were colluding in jacking up the price of CDs? Anyone who participated received something like $25, yet these fuckstains are allowed to gouge this woman for 200K?! Fucking outrageous!!

With the facts of the case, she's clearly liable, and given that this was nowhere near the maximum award available for this amount of copyright infringement, the damages aren't excessive either.

I seriously doubt she will get anything on appeal except more legal bills.

IANAL

I don't see much, if any, chance of challenging the idea that this isn't infringement (and you certainly won't win on that; the USSC isn't going to strike down the DMCA and this would go that high), but the measure of damages that is possible with each song being assessed as a full "count" is enormous.

Her potential maximum liability here was something like $150K*1700 = $255 MILLION for willful infringement.

She made some bad decisions.

It forces you to settle, even if you are innocent, because of the draconian penalties for some victimless crimes.

10,000 dollars per song is absolutely pathetic.

She damn well doesn't deserve to have her life ruined for this shit. How many laws have you broken? Would like to be charged 220,000?

I have a court that agrees with me. What do you have
besides a bunch of fools ranting on an Internet message
board?

Tesha

And the law is Draconian. Noone deserves to have their life ruined over this. This is what happens when the music industry buys congressmen.

But right now, your argument that you should have the
right to steal the work of others seems weak to me.

Tesha

The only thing I have said is that this fine is unconstitutionally high. I have never said it should be legal to steal music. Next thing you know, youll have 10 years in prison for not wearing a seatbelt and some "progressives" will support it.

And this was pointed out in another reply by another
DUer.

Tesha

10,000 per 1 dollar song stolen. You're a corporate tool.

You seem to have no actual basis for your arguments so I guess
I'll be thankful if you stop arguing.

Tesha

You can read that in so many different ways:

a) The RIAA would be as gods.

b) We often refer to our musical heroes as 'gods'.

And finally:

c) ...each of 24 shared songs cited in the case, including Godsmack's "Spiral,"

You just can't make this stuff up...

she should have been fined a whole lot more for listening to crap like godsmack

She's an idiot for using such a horrible lawyer. I mean, shit, if you're going to take on the RIAA, have a fucking plan! I almost have to wonder if the RIAA paid them both off, just to obtain a precedent-setting case. He's an idiot for not doing any research into how the record industry operates its distribution and promotion channels. ...

If either of them had even one-half a brain, they would appeal, based on the judge's rules to the jury: he ruled that the RIAA would not have to prove that any of the songs she made available were downloaded by anyone.

It's not difficult to obtain that number, and that's the number that should be used to calculate actual compensatory damages!

It doesn't mean her lawyer was an idiot, it means that the judge agreed to give the plaintiff's instruction instead of his. I am almost certain her lawyer submitted an alternative instruction and objected to that instruction being given, but once the judge overrules, you are left only to "strenuously object" like Demi Moore or appeal.

After both parties rested in Capitol v. Thomas, the attorneys for both sides began going through Judge Michael J. Davis' proposed jury instructions. Instruction no. 14 proved to be a sticking point, as Thomas' counsel Brian Toder told Ars tonight that the judge's proposed instruction indicated that the plaintiffs must show that an actual transfer took place in order for there to be a finding of infringement. "The mere act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network without license from copyright owners does not violate the copyright owners' exclusive right to distribution," reads the proposed jury instruction. "An actual transfer must take place."

Music industry counsel Richard Gabriel argued forcefully that making a file available was copyright infringement, citing a letter from US Copyright Registrar Mary Beth Peters that he said supported the argument as well as a handful of other cases. Gabriel asked the judge to modify the instruction to include "making available"; the judge said he would rule on Thursday morning.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071004-debate-over-making-available-jury-instruction-as-capitol-v-thomas-wraps-up.html

The judge ignores UMG v Lindor, Dec. 2006.

It's not binding authority on any court in Minnesota, state or federal.

With how the law is structued, I can't see a lawyer best serving his client by recommending that you fight this to the jury instead of settling.

Copyright law may be poorly suited to the issue of individual tracks of music, but the resulting potential loss because of the number of inherent "counts" is enormous. This wasn't close to her worst possible verdict, by the way.

I'm guessing the verdict in this case will be very valuable to them in favorably settling lots of other cases. They may not have been interested in a realistic settlement.

on the key issues in every other case so far, but didn't in this one. Do you do a lot of litigation Badger?

http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=Jammie+Thomas+settlement&fr=yfp-t-501&u=www.daily-chronicle.com/articles/2007/10/02/ap/hitech/d8s1ctag0.txt&w=jammie+thomas+settlement+settlements&d=LPrB5-dmPjpH&icp=1&.intl=us

Now, it's possible that the settlement offer in this case was far more irrational than the "few thousand dollars" that's being generally cited in the media, but her liability if the case went to the jury was $18,000 at minimum, $3.6 million at maximum, plus the fees she was paying her attorney AND the fees of the music industry attorneys, which will be very considerable.

Even if the settlement was $10,000, that's still a good deal when the facts are such that you stand no chance of winning at trial.

This is the sort of claim where the defendant is just screwed. They aren't going to get out of it paying nothing baring an airport legal thriller miracle.

It doesn't sound like she did this because she faced an unreasonable settlement offer. It sounds like she did this because she believed that she could win on an actual innocence defense that seems to demonstrate considerable ignorance of how the Internet actually works.

Forcing an already judgment-proof defendant to trial by demanding, say, $100,000 in settlement and no less, could happen in a case with potential damages this size, but the music industry hasn't done that before and there's no claim that they did it in this case. Why pick just one to force to trial, when you could force dozens to trial? And why a defendant in northern Minnesota, where you're running into at least some provincial hostility even in a federal trial?

The music industry are the one's that are suing. They're not being forced to pick a sympathetic and judgment-proof defendant in the middle of nowhere.

-

And no, 1L's don't litigate for real. Two of my professors are, however, very fond of litigation simulation, so I am plenty familiar with pre-trial jujitsu.

The only way this makes sense for the defendant is if there was no reasonable settlement offer at some point in the litigation; a $100,000 settlement would be as life-crippling for this woman as a $225,000 jury award.

Otherwise, the defendant and/or her lawyer are entirely at fault for what happened because of how absolutely predictable this result is. With the nature of her defense, I can see how they could have fended off summary judgment, but that still doesn't make their odds of winning at the jury any better.

> It's not difficult to obtain that number (of downloads), and
> that's the number that should be used to calculate actual
> compensatory damages!

Maybe they knew the answer and were happy not to
have it made a part of the penalty-setting data?

Tesha

:bounce: :bounce: :hi:

and at this point she couldn't possibly have been ignorant of the law.

Anyway, she was stupid to not pay the few thousand dollars. She almost certainly paid her lawyer more than that to take it to trial.

Which were written by the copyright lobby BTW. You should not have you life ruined by downloading songs. Thats almost the same penalty Scooter Libby got for outing a CIA agent.

they just need to charge enough to make it not worth it. That much money is ridiculous. It isn't equivalent to the crime.

Her life wasn't ruined by downloading. her life was ruined
by providing stolen goods to others.

Big difference!

Tesha

Providing stolen goods? Where were the stolen goods? Who was she providing them to? How much money did she make from providing stolen goods?

God Save The Corporate Interests.

Tangible or intangible, the property is stilled
owned by someone else, not her.

I'm amazed that so many DUers don't "get" this
basic concept, but I guess a lot of people are
illegally downloading things and need to try to
justify their bad (and yes, immoral) behavior.

Tesha

Forget DU. I'm amazed that ANY American citizen could get behind a ruling like this.

You have an interesting view of morality.

wow...

At some point the penalty is not reasonable for the crime. It isn't moral to put people away for life for having a small amount of drugs, and it isn't moral to charge someone that kind of money for stealing some music. If she'd shoplifted the same amount of music, how much would her fine have been? And it sounds like this is her first offense? Certainly she should have a good size fine, but $200k is ridiculous.

I think $200k isn't reasonable for this nonviolent crime that causes no one to go without food or shelter, though I do think it should be enough to scare people out of doing it. I don't know what a fair number would be but I'd think $10k or less.

Continually amazed at the sheer glee with which some juries hand out convictions for victimless crimes. My fellow Americans are, by and large, dickheads.:wtf:

If I were on the Jury, I wouldn't award in favor of the RIAA, unless they could show damages. And no way in hell could they 220,000$ in damages.

if someone likes a song enough, they'll buy it. And I do think one has the right to be able to listen to the music first before spending money on it. I do believe that's the intention of sharing but that's just me.

:shrug:

I buy it, maybe you buy it, and my mother buys it. But I know many people who never do buy it and are even proud of the fact that 75% + of their ipod was filled "for free".

loaned it to a friend, am I breaking the law, or is my friend?

Except this woman doesn't have every right-wing freak paying her legal fees and fines for her.

I'm disgusted with the corporate tools that chimed in on this thread too. $220,000 for sharing songs is ok to you? Find some humanity before you become another souless corporate vampire...

And everyone else the RIAA mafia sues.

:thumbsup:

starts plummeting, I'll stop downloading.

times over. :shrug:

Then you an your defend your downloads. But she was
re-distributing the material and that's clearly illegal
and has been for ages.

By the way, keep your receipts/LPs/cassettes/8-tracks/
CDs/SACDs,/etc. because wome day you may need to prove
that you actually have a license to posess the music
you downloaded.

For my several months of iTunes music, you can still
find all the original CDs and LPs chucked off in a
closet.

Tesha

Do you really think someone who wanted free music is capable of paying a 200k fine?

Insane...

You must either be a copyright lawyer, or work in the music industry. There is no way I could see any regular citizen supporting this bullshit, unless they stood to profit from it...

Try this: Rob a jewelry store. share the proceeds.

See if a judge cares that you didn't fence the
stolen goods but rather, gave them away.

It's the same thing here.

Tesha

You're not going to convince me that robbing a jewelry store is the same thing as downloading 1's and 0's over the internet.

Why? Because that makes no common sense at all... None.

If a kid shoplifts a CD at Walmart, is he in the same classification as someone who robs a jewelry store? Hell no.

or the thousands of small companies making a living with 1's and 0's.

Those 1's and 0's are more valuable than jewelry. It's one of the few things that America still produces. With most tangible products being produced overseas, intellectual property is one of the few things America still has going for it.

The only organization that is going this route is the RIAA...

The RIAA and the music labels that they represent, dropped the ball on downloadable music. They sat on their asses, while regular people discovered a great new way to listen to music. They are pissed that they lost out on that early boom, and are no just going after anyone they can. Just because the law is on your side, doesn't make you right. A 200,000 dollar fine for sharing songs is cruel and unusual punishment, IMO.

> I've never heard of those companies suing middle class people
> for hundreds of thousands of dollars..

Then you're not paying attention. But in fact, in the
US, the problem of blatant software theft probably
isn't as widely-known as the problem of the theft of
music. It tends more to be small companies and cor-
porations who play fast-and-loose with software licensing,
but rest assured, many do get caught and pay damages.

Take a look at this web site -- they're the software
publishers' equivalent of the RIAA:

http://www.spa.org/


Tesha

*My point was that 1's and 0's are like jewelry and therefor companies will treat it as such. She made 1702 songs available for "sharing" (although only 24 were prosecuted). If each one were downloaded just three times that's over $5000.00 worth of product (@ 99 cents a shot). Sounds like a pretty nice diamond necklace to me.

*I'm not defending the RIAA or the damages awarded. But the RIAA makes most of it's money from middle class people. And loses most of it's money to middle class people. So it's not surprising they would go after us.

This would be more appropriate:

Rob a jewelry store, but you only take a copy of the jewels with your magic jewelry-cloning-machine.
The jeweler is free to sell the original jewels at the original price if a buyer comes along.

Intellectual property is a fundamentally different beast from physical property. I'm not saying the downloading and sharing MP3s should be legal, just that punishments should me made to fit the crime.

I think she should have been fined by a multiple of the values of the songs she stole.
e.g: an MP3 on itunes is 1.99. Fine her triple (or quadruple, or 10x, or whatever) the value of each MP3 stolen.

OR fine her for each instance that a file was transfered to someone else -- that could still add up and be quite punitive especially for the serial file-sharers.

I believe it is fundamentally unfair to ruin someone's life over this level of offense, and it should be codified in law. Don't try to jam the physical-property square peg into the intellectual-property round hole.

Just my opinion.

Hence the fine should be orders of magnitude less. But still punitive.

When originally placed on the books copyright law was only supposed to cover a work for 7 years. After that it was intended for the work to enter into the public domain. The intended purpose was tro contribute to the public good. But the idea of the public good is repulsive to corporations and thus as it stands today they have pushed back the copyright law so that nothing ever comes out from behind its protection. Every time the deadline approaches they lobby congress and push it back another decade or two.

RIAA, the group that sued this woman, is in large part responsible for the continued abuse of this law. And they are on a crusade to extract every penny they can out of the general public and they do not care who suffers as a result. RIAA steals from us and then cries foul when someone steals a few crumbs back from them.

With Corporations writing the laws there is no public good. There is only Corporate profit. That is the only measure of value of a thing.

The law permits fines of $150,000 per song, which averages to more than a million dollars per pirated CD.

The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

At a million dollars a CD, this law permits a fine twenty-one times the median ANNUAL household income in the United States ($48,000 a year, last I checked). For a family of four making the median US wage, but living at the federal poverty level and devoting the rest of the money to fine payment, it would take 49 years to pay off the fine.

Confiscating your wages for half a century as a FINE for what amounts to the theft of a $15 compact disk is a blatant 8th Amendment violation. This woman needs to ditch her current attorney and hire someone specializing in Constitutional law. Stop challenging the conviction, and start challenging the PUNISHMENT.

FWIW, I have no problem with the RIAA suing music pirates. My problem is with the methods they employ, and the fines levied against violators. The average song, on the average CD, costs a buyer between $1 and $1.50. I wouldn't have a problem if pirates were fined TEN TIMES that amount, and were forced to pay out a $100 to $150 a disk. It's still punishment, and it's definitely a deterrent, but it's low enough that an average working person can actually pay it without going bankrupt. It's a punishment, but it's not cruel. $150,000 per song IS cruel, and it's not legal in this country.

I wonder if the ACLU would be interested in taking her case on.

> I wonder if the ACLU would be interested in taking her case on.

I think not, but one never knows. I base this answer on
the fact that nowhere in the Bill of Rights are you
guaranteed a right to steal another's work and
redistribute it.

Tesha

This is an "excessive fine" as stated in the constitution. No one is argueing that this should be legal. We are just argueing that the fine is insane.

For downloading a few songs owned by people who could wipe their ass with money.

LOL Yes, I must be robbing from the rich and giving it to the poor, for thinking that it's unfair for the rich to try to leech 200k out of the poor...

> Let me guess. You are either a lawyer, or work in the music industry?

I do hang out with some ACLU lawyers from time
to time, though, so maybe you an claim partial
credit?

And Mr. Tesha and I both make some of our living
from Intellectual Property that is easily stolen
and using (and paying for!) lots of other IP
that is easily stolen so we're not exatly naive
about these issues.

Tesha

I've had this "discussion" about intellectual property rights before and it's a losing battle. People seem to think theft is OK.

My income also relies on licensing rights so I've had to defend copyright laws and enforcement. You're banging your head against a wall here.

Thanks -- I think it's the "intangibility" of the stuff
that leads people to the wrong conclusions. If they
actually had to steal the CDs, burn copies, and hand
them out themselves, I think they'd "get it" far more
readily.

Tesha

Fines are paid to the government. This is compensation for damages, a civil matter.

And by the way, the RIAA lobbied for those laws, so by all means this is a corporate fine with governmental approval.

If you spit at me, you may be fined thousands of
dollars evn though my actual damages were the cost
of a Kleenex.

Tesha

freerepublic is that way -> www.freerepublic.com

Actually you're too right wing for them, because even they are against this fine

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1907017/posts

It is damages awarded in a civil case. If you steal my 1982 Ford Escort worth say $200 and sell it for $50 bucks. You could be arrested for auto theft and if convicted you could go to jail or be ordered to pay a fine, to the state, not to me (although you could be ordered to pay restitution to me, but that still wouldn't be called a fine). I could also sue you for damages, and apparently by your logic I should be able to sue you for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages "because it's stealing". Were that the case there would be a lot of people parking their junker on the street with the keys in it.

I used the term "fine" because that term appears
several times in the original (albeit likely incorrect)
article. But Xithras brings up an interesting point
below where they examine the ambiguity of exactly
what the financial penalty actually represents.

And, IIRC, it's not unheard-of that the government
assesses penalties that end up getting paid to
non-governmental parties.

Tesha

It is an interesting point. But these are still damages, paid to the plaintiffs, not to the government. I think the reason you are getting so much resistance to your position is that it seems like technology got ahead of the recording industry, they were caught with their pants down, and the government came in and set up a structure which sort of rigs the game for them to arbitrarily squeeze a few of the thousands people that were ahead of the curve.

IANAL, but I think a skilled Constitutional attorney could still make an argument that it would apply. The original purpose of the 8th was to protect the citizenry from being penalized in ways that were not commensurate with the original crime committed. At the time of the drafting of the Constitution, those types of fines could ONLY be inflicted by the government. In the legal system of their day, punitive damages were unheard of, and fines in civil cases were limited to the actual proveable loss.

These "fines" of up to $150,000 per disk were defined by the government, not the loss-bearing RIAA, and alleviated the music industry of the need to prove actual damages. I think a clever attorney could argue that these "damages" aren't really damages at all, and that they are actually fines DEFINED by the government, which are merely passed on to the copyright holder. It wouldn't be a simple argument to make, but I think a constitutional argument for that position does exist.

everyone should check out what Radiohead is doing with THEIR new CD:

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/technology_internetcritic/2007/10/how-much-is-a-c.html

How much is a CD worth to you, and, bigger picture, how much is the effort musicians put into making a CD worth?

Those provocative questions -- a direct challenge to the evolving Internet and cultural norm of treating music as a free commodity -- are posed by Radiohead (image via the band's site), the critically-acclaimed English band, in making its new disc, "In Rainbows," available for download Oct. 10 at whatever price you want to pay.

And with this brilliant move, the band strips away all the rationales people come up with for downloading music, free, from file-sharing sites or for getting friends to burn CDs for them.

You can't say your song grab is a blow against the evil record companies, because Radiohead, despite selling millions of discs, no longer has a record company.

You can't say they're millionaires and don't need the money because, whatever their economic status, they're being stupendously decent about the whole thing and to not pay them something would make you a cad and a thief.

You can't say the price is unfair, because the price is whatever you want to pay. "It's up to you," says the page that confronts you when you click on the question mark after being greeted by the blank price box.

"No, really. It's up to you," says the second page, if you click on the question mark again.

:silly: