I find these cases to be absolutely despicable. Another recent example is the owners of the The Pirate Bay being fined $3,000,000. She "stole" 24 songs, she should be fined $23.76, with maybe a $20 additional fine. That's justice - not suing $80,000 per song.RIAA: 2, Jammie Thomas-Rasset: 0
5:09 PM, June 18, 2009
Jammie Thomas-Rasset Maybe Jammie Thomas-Rasset should have quit while she was behind. Just as in Thomas-Rasset's first trial in 2007, a Minnesota jury found today that she infringed the copyrights of two dozen major-label songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network. But the new jury handed down a much larger punishment -- $80,000 a song, not $9,250. For the labels, that's roughly equivalent to selling 114,000 songs at Apple's iTunes Store.
Thomas-Rasset didn't seem likely to pay the original $222,000 penalty, so it seems even less likely that the RIAA will be able to extract nearly $2 million from her. The trade group has always been more interested in winning the judgment than the amount awarded; spokeswoman Cara Duckworth told CNet that the group has been willing to settle "since day one." But the size of the jury's verdict may only increase calls for Congress or the courts to reduce the financial penalties for copyright infringement
Thomas-Rasset's was the first trial in the campaign against individual file-sharers that the RIAA began in 2003 and ended late last year. As such, it was one of the few tests of the legal underpinnings of that campaign, including the argument that making tracks available to others online (by keeping them in a folder that was open for sharing) was a form of infringement. U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis instructed the jury in Thomas-Rasset's first trial that making songs available was an infringement, a low threshold that would enable the labels to prove piracy just by collecting lists of the songs in people's shared folders. But Davis second-guessed himself after the verdict and ordered a new trial, mirroring the views of several other judges who had rejected the RIAA's interpretation of the law.
The result of the second trial suggests that the higher threshold isn't enough to derail the labels in an infringement lawsuit. The RIAA's anti-piracy contractor, MediaSentry, presented evidence that Thomas-Rasset actually distributed 11 copyrighted songs through Kazaa (to MediaSentry's investigators), and cited metadata from tracks in her shared folder strongly suggesting that the files had themselves been downloaded, not purchased or ripped from her CD collection. RIAA witnesses also linked the Kazaa uploads to a unique identifier on Thomas-Rasset's modem and computer and showed that the unusual username on the Kazaa account matched one that Thomas-Rasset acknowledged using on several other websites. In other words, the RIAA's case was built entirely on circumstantial evidence, but there was a lot of it.
Thomas-Rasset and her attorneys seemed eager to continue their battle against the RIAA, and although the trade group insists that it doesn't plan to file any new cases, there are still a number of older claims yet to be resolved. Defense attorneys are fighting these on several fronts, arguing that, among other things, MediaSentry's investigative tactics were illegal.
More interesting, IMHO, is the argument Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson and others are raising that the statutory damages provided in copyright law are grossly excessive -- even unconstitutionally so. The two Thomas-Rasset verdicts, each of which was reached after just a few hours of deliberations, reflect the juries' irritation with her defense. But even if she did put 24 copyrighted songs in her shared folder, it's hard to believe that the labels suffered anything close to $2 million in damages. More important, the mere threat of such a penalty could persuade some accused infringers to settle with the RIAA rather than fight, even if they weren't the ones responsible. Thomas-Rasset may not be a sympathetic defendant, and there's no excuse for illegal downloading. But she will have done all Internet users a favor if her case prompts lawmakers to recalibrate the statutory damages in copyright law.
-- Jon Healey
IMO, though, it shouldn't be considered a crime to download music. The crime in theft is not one person having something, it's in the first person (who was stolen from) being deprived of that thing. With music sharing, there's no actual theft (no one is stealing CDs, reducing the value of a store, for example), just sharing. No one is being deprived of property.
The point is occasionally made that if I get a song from a p2p network for free, I'm taking money away from the artist who I'd otherwise be paying for the song. To which I say: bullshit!
I'm a college student, and am poor enough that I wouldn't be able to buy the songs that I have downloaded, so there's no money going to the artist either way. On the other hand, when I listen to and like a certain song, I may go out and buy that specific album, or (especially) go to a concert by that band, giving them far more money than the measly 13 cents or so that they'd actually get after the record company took the rest.
You may have noticed the huge surge in successful independent bands since around 2000 - this is largely due to the internet allowing them to hear their music for free and appreciate them. No one is going to pay for an album of a band they've never heard of, and with the very limited selection of radio and MTV, the 80s and 90s were dominated by a very small number of super popular acts. Now that you can sample music online before you buy it, there's been a musical Renaissance, and thousands of new bands are releasing music each year.
Really, this is just the same as the record companies lawsuits against radio play in England in the 60s... a case of outdated laws, and greedy production companies.
I'm posting this here because I feel the same principles apply to the gaming community, especially re: abandonware.
