Judge Declares Mistrial In RIAA's Only Court Victory
from the jammie-thomas-gets-a-second-chance dept
The RIAA's only court victory in its years-long legal battle against individuals who engage in unauthorized file sharing has been declared a mistrial, and the $222,000 fine against Jammie Thomas has been thrown out. Jammie Thomas may now face a new trial, but this time, the jury will be instructed that the record labels need to have shown actual infringement -- and that simply making files available is not infringement. This is a pretty huge loss for the RIAA, who had been running around like crazy using the Thomas verdict to (a) claim that the courts recognize that "making available" is infringement and (b) that this case somehow proves that file sharers will get huge fines. Yet, now the RIAA is back to having no actual court victories against file sharers, and its "making available = infringement" argument is once again rejected.Perhaps equally as interesting, in declaring the mistrial, Judge Davis also called upon Congress to change the ridiculous fines that can be levied on file sharers, noting that they seem to be way, way out of proportion to the seriousness of the act:
The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer-to-peer network cases such as the one currently before this Court. . . . While the Court does not discount Plaintiffs' claim that, cumulatively, illegal downloading has far-reaching effects on their businesses, the damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs.
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Filed Under: copyright, jammie thomas, making available, mistrial, trial
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2. The judge said that RIAA might well be able to use the fact that *they* downloaded from Thomas as evidence of the distribution they have to prove.
So it's not as damning as you say. The judge should not have made the blanket approval of the making available argument in the first place and in admitting that, there has to be a retrial. But he's not that critical of the actual case here (but as you say, VERY critical of the level of damages).
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Given their past behavior, this would not surprise me in the least.
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But the RIAA has the right to the music! If I was on the jury and if I had to find actual infringement, I'd want evidence that someone without the legal right to the music downloaded it. And they simply do not have that evidence.
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2. Maybe they can use that evidence, except they already owned the rights to the content. What is the penalty for downloading music you already own the physical media too? I'd hope none, as I do that every time I reformat (much faster than ripping them all again).
The judge did not have to give a mistrial. The fact he did is fairly critical of the case itself on its own merits, let alone the rest of what he said (RTFA FTW)
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Umm, no a major ruling against the "P" very often leads to a settlement, so that's wildly overstated.
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Define Proof of IP in this day and age
I just hope that there are some people on the jury that understand just how easy it is to forge an IP or email address and for it to be pretty believable unless you've taken extraordinary steps to verify it.
Then of course there's always the "aw crap! I didn't know that I was sharing my files with the entire internet world" defense.
While I do not condone theft of copyrighted material, the antics of the MPAA and RIAA to date have shown them to be larger villians than any file sharer I ever heard of. And as the judge noted, the potential fines are completely out of line with the actual damages done in cases like this one.
When are the MPAA/RIAA going to realize that the solution is to invest the $$ they've been tossing at prevention in a new direction: a new business model that takes into account the potential of the internet as a market, rather than viewing it as some kind of combination of vile enemy and potential cash cow (by attempting to rape the vile enemy's agents with outdated legislature).
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Again, another sudden outbreak of common sense.
yeah!
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Awww~!!!
:-(
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
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what should suprise me but doesn't
I know why. Government sucks, but you would hope SOMEONE would see this and jump on it. Maybe even as a way to get political footholds to get elected.
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Re: what should suprise me but doesn't
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Re: what should suprise me but doesn't
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Re: what should suprise me but doesn't
We'd be a lot better off if Congress had seen the sub-prime mortgage problem coming and done something about it 4 or 5 years ago.
I'm very interested in copyright, IP, and the "War on **AA", but it has much less impact on me than what I have to pay for health insurance.
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Re: Re: what should suprise me but doesn't
The NY Times predicted it in 1999, when the bill that led to it was signed. Congress didn't care.
Likewise, Congress won't care about what this judge is saying, either. Don't expect these outrageous fines to go away anytime soon.
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Re: Re: what should suprise me but doesn't
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Common Sense has prevailed
Long live Usenet and the a.b.s.m. hierarchy.
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One word...
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In the civil realm a person can only get actual damages for economic and non-economic losses. (And there are certainly no non-economic losses in an RIAA suit, e.g., no pain or suffering).
But yet the content industry wants the opposite. They'll talk about how widespread pirating is and they'll try to recoup as much as they can way out of proportion to the individual infringement.
If someone uploads three songs, the damages should be three bucks. That's it. Anything more would be a windfall. And in nearly every other area of law, that would be improper.
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While I agree the money they typically try to "recoup" is ridiculous, $3 isn't exactly fair either. While I'm loathe to sound like I'm even in the same county as someone asserting that 1 dl = 1 lost sale, you can't equate uploading 1 song with 1 lost sale either. I don't know the specifics of the deals worked out with digital distributors like itunes or amazon (i.e. whether it's a lump sum based on expected sales or if they fork over a percentage), but I can only assume they pay more than $1 apiece for the right to sell downloads. Obviously we're not talking about people charging for the songs they're sharing, so nothing on the scale of what amazon pays for the rights would make sense, but neither are we talking about a one-time occurance. It seems to me what's fair would have to fall somewhere between those two extremes, albeit a lot closer to the $3 mark than what they go after...something tells me they've sought more than what they charge amazon from time to time.
Personally, I think they've lost more money in sales due to bad PR from they're overzealous attempts to enforce their copyrights than they have from people who would've bought it if they hadn't been able to dl for free. But given that it's entirely possible they'll be made obscolete in 10 years, and that they've past the point of no return PR-wise, I don't know why anyone expects them to do anything other than go after every penny their lawyers can make even the weakest argument for.
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Not 1 cent!
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re: IT guy
There are a few articles out yesterday and today about the initiatives of our Presidential candidates having to take a backseat until this financial mess is solved. One of the primary ones, and one that requires a lot of work and funding to fix, is the healthcare system.
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Make no mistake, the RIAA proved to the jury's satisfaction that infringing copies were made by the defendant. Statutory damages are available, but their amount needs to be ascertained. As for unauthorized distribution, the RIAA will have to "tweak" (i.e., supplement) its evidence, a relatively easy matter.
Will a retrial take place? I would be surprised if it did, expecting instead that a monetary settlement will be worked out between the RIAA and the defendant. Why? Because no matter how you cut it the evidence supports at the very least that the defendant made infringing copies.
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HAHAHA!!
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Yay...
Leaving a copy machine free for anyone to use at a library doesn't encourage copying whole books.
Having files in a share folder does not equal distributing them.
Duh... freaking asshats at the RIAA.
*facepalm*
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That is not quite true. It was a victory in a fully briefed court case that went to trial.
The RIAA has had plenty of "victories" in courts, such as getting their ex parte discovery orders approved--even though they are part of sham law suits for that sole purpose, which is supposed to be legally impermissible.
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OHH WE'LL BE BACK!!
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One word....
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