New Judge Assigned To Tenenbaum Case Upholds $675k Verdict 312
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In SONY v Tenenbaum, the new District Judge assigned to the case has disagreed with the previous judge, and instead of reducing the $22,500 per file award to $2250 per file, has instead upheld the jury's verdict. The jury initially found defendant Joel Tenenbaum to have 'willfully' infringed the RIAA copyrights by downloading 30 mp3 files which would normally retail for 99 cents each, and awarded the plaintiff record companies $675,000 in 'statutory damages.' Tenenbaum moved to set the verdict aside on both common law remittitur grounds and constitutional due process grounds. Judge Gertner — the District Judge at the time — felt that remittitur would be a futility, and on constitutional grounds reduced the verdict to $2250 per file. The RIAA appealed. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals remanded on the ground that Judge Gertner ought to have decided the question on remittitur grounds and reached the constitutional question prematurely. By the time the case arrived back in District Court, Judge Gertner had retired, and a new judge — Judge Rya Zobel — had been assigned. Judge Zobel denied the remittitur motion. And then Judge Zobel denied the constitutional motion, leaving the larger verdict in place. I think it is reasonable to expect Tenenbaum to appeal this time around."
Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)
We all agree the courts are disgusting. And yet we are doing nothing to fix them. We need an internal affairs department for prosecutors, legislators and judges, who do nothing but watch over their shoulder for this kind of thing.
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I don't think you understand the role of courts. If you disagree with a law, it is congress (i.e. voters) you should blame, not the courts.
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If it's a jury trial, I also apportion blame to the jury. Jurors who are too stupid to educate themselves about their power, including jury nullification, offend me. If the law is stupid, the original jury could have just found the defendant not guilty; end of story.
So in the end we are both blaming the common people.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, the jury in this case should be ASHAMED of themselves. There are people who are at fault accidentally killing other human beings who receive less punishment than they are handing out for someone "stealing" 30 songs.
The verdict handed down in this case is a life destroying verdict for a young man. That the RIAA keeps appealing for its huge award is DISGUSTING.
Giant corporate entities are working at utterly destroying one person's life. The RIAA deserves every ounce of contempt and disdain it gets from the people.
For companies that like to believe that they create things that move human emotions and make people think, the RIAA collectively is a horribly dark, twisted, and evil group of people (and the MPAA is even. worse.)
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That jury was hand weeded during voir dire, and is not a fair sample of the population.
Legal wise guys that actually know the law are usually the first to go.
It's not just made out of people that are too dumb to get out of it, but also those too smart to get to stay in.
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The law, generally speaking, is fine. "You infringed on $30 worth of copyright, so we're going to recoup that money."
The problem is with the ruling that it costs nearly a million dollars to recoup $30 worth of infringement.
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We all agree the courts are disgusting. And yet we are doing nothing to fix them.
Judges are supposed to uphold the law. Our elected Congressmen passed the law that allows penalties of up to what? $25,000 per song? $150,000 per song?. I am not sure but it is far, far, far above $2,250
We should not pass crappy laws and then blame the judges for upholding them. Also, perhaps he is hoping that this will go to supreme court and get stricken down as unconstitutional? (I know, fat chance...)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Judges are supposed to uphold the law.
And the Eighth Amendment is part of the highest law of the land.
We should not pass crappy laws and then blame the judges for upholding them.
We're blaming the judge for not upholding the law. Specifically, that part of the law which states that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed".
You don't have to be on the SCOTUS to knock down a law that is blatantly unconstitutional. A law that conflicts with the constitution is null and void at any level.
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Judges are supposed to uphold the law.
No. The judges are supposed to interpret the law, and they are supposed to decide if a law is constitutional. Judges can strike down a law, that is also their job.
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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
Populusque romanus, of course... but it seems it doesn't want to commit to its due work.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
"Nobody involved is Roman, you insensitive clod!"
Are you sure? What about that guy, Remittitur, they talk about?
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Stealing $30, Paying $675,000.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I got caught stealing when I was younger. What happened to me was they recovered their items and I was banned from the store until I became an adult. Maybe they should just ban him from having access to these types of things, like making it illegal for him to have internet in his home, instead of an outrageous fine that most people can't afford.
May as well just start hanging people for stealing music/movies.
Re:Stealing $30, Paying $675,000.... (Score:5, Informative)
Because the *AA's managed to pass laws that made for ridiculous statutory damages [wikipedia.org].
So, it's an inflated number to allow them to sue for massive damages on the presumption that you've cost them vast sums of lost revenue that they can't prove. It basically says that in the FBI trailer on movies.
Not defending it, but that's how we got here. The *AA's don't believe in the concept of "personal use" or "fair use" -- as far as they are concerned, you have committed Great Evil.
Re:Stealing $30, Paying $675,000.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the *AA's managed to pass laws that made for ridiculous statutory damages.
That's no excuse for the judge to ignore the Eighth Amendment.
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It's about distributing, leading to loss of sales. Since the true damages are impossible to establish, the congress allows for default statutory damages withing a certain range, in this case $22,500 per work. It may be too high, but he could have challenged the amount and got off with paying very little. Instead, on bad advice of some activist glory seeking lawyers he decided to challenge the constitutionality of the Copyright Act and continues to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole.
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Meanwhile, look at this guy having to cough up 675k, having to declare bankruptcy, default on his house and having his life ruined... but it's okay. Life is
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Basically because Sony employs thousands and thousands of lawyers, and when they win (because they have thousands and thousands of lawyers) the single defendant is required to foot the bill for all those lawyers.
The crazy part: Sony is asking for 4.5 million dollars. Also, the initial fee that Tennenbaum was asked to pay (via extortion letter in the mail, before any lawyers were involved) was $3,500.
Sony is really trying to set a precedent here, to give their extortion letters some clout. "Just pay the $
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May as well start hanging people is right, but not for stealing movies and music.
The real crime here is a 675 thousand dollar judgement for 30 dollars worth of product. The criminals are the lawyers, judges and politicians.
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And what's the average judgement amount for a wrongful death lawsuit?
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IANAL, but I skimmed through the judge's decision, and it's not just for his downloading the stuff, but also for redistribution. The judge seems to think that one way to evaluate the costs of the redistribution would be to think about how much an unlimited license for all and sundry on the Internet for the songs would be worth.
That said, it sure seems excessive, but not as ridiculously excessive as it would be just for downloading.
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I can understand what you're going for but to use your analogy that would be like if you were banned from ALL stores when you were a child.
Lost the Faith (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is a very simple-minded and ultimately incorrect view of the fault. It is not the judge's fault. We are the idiots who have allowed our politicians to write these insane laws with statutory damages. A jury of our peers levied these insane damages against this person. The judges didn't write the law and didn't make the decision. They are bound by the law and cannot just make up laws as they see fit.
Re:Lost the Faith (Score:5, Insightful)
Having now read the opinion, here's how the judge came out:
1. The jury found this guy guilty of infringement.
2. The guy had 8 years of known infringing activities
3. The guy destroyed evidence
4. The guy lied repeatedly
5. It wasn't just a matter of him downloading songs, he was uploading them too
6. The jury got to see all the evidence
7. Congress set the bounds for copyright infringement's statutory damages
8. The jury pick something on the arguably low end of the range
9. When looking at the common law rules the judge did not feel the case was inequitable under the circumstances.
I would wager good money that had 2-5 been different, the judge WOULD have found the award inequitable.
That said, I have some questions about why 2 and 5 were even in evidence at all. They seem irrelevant to copyright infringement of the songs at issue here. I haven't kept pace with this case, but I should think those are irrelevant unless they were themselves proved to be infringements.
Also, it helps not to destroy evidence or lie.
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All of your attempts to slander the defendant are ultimately irrelevant.
Nice try though: The "but he's an evil gangster" fallacy.
Re:Lost the Faith (Score:5, Funny)
It took him 8 years to download 30 songs?
I'll never complain about my Internet speeds again!
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Well, regarding point 2 I'd think it'd apply to character. Certainly you could in a battery case use a history of violence as proof that this is not an isolated case of losing your head but that the defendant has shown a pattern of violent behavior and lacks impulse control. I'm pretty sure the jury would convict the latter harder than the former.
Re:Lost the Faith (Score:4)
Interestingly, when plaintiffs proposed jury instructions on calculating the damages, they were flawed in such a way that the jury might mistakenly inflate the amount of the award. Tenenbaum's lawyers were really never on their game the whole way through, and as is typical, failed to object at the time. (Of course, a bunch of us in the gallery noticed immediately, and there was a good bit of whispering going on)
The award is an even multiple of the minimum possible award, which suggests that the jury very well may have misunderstood what they were supposed to do. I've no idea if this was deliberate on the part of plaintiffs, or if they also misread the law, but I wouldn't put it past them.
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You had faith in the justice system? Bwahahahaha! Sorry, it's not personal.
Jury Nullification (Score:2)
They jury could have have used Jury Nullification [wikipedia.org]. Jury's can find someone guilty but not agree with the punishment so acquit them. Of course if you even bring up nullification you'll probably be kicked off the jury. But I give the founders some credit for at least trying to make sure the average peer could apply common sense to laws.
I wish jury nullification was taught in every school, or included in every jury summons, to let people know the power they actually wield.
Re:Lost the Faith (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly. Judges can render laws partly or wholly invalid (or inapplicable in a specific case) should they violate the US Constitution. The original judge in fact did just that: held the statutory damage in this case to be "cruel and unusual" and thus reduced them. But yes, the primary fault is with the lawmakers. The judges do share in the blame in this case, though.
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The original judge in fact did just that: held the statutory damage in this case to be "cruel and unusual" and thus reduced them.
So when there is a US Judge on public record ruling such fines are cruel and unusual, how is it even possible for another judge to come along and uphold what legally is defined as cruel and unusual punishment?
Following the logic of this new judge, it just takes one guy to rule slavery is now overturned and because he said so it is.
It's pretty scary to think a single Judge is actually allowed to rule murder rape and torture as constitutional and have it legally binding between that point in time and an appea
Bankruptcy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bankruptcy (Score:4, Funny)
The answer is obvious: he needs to write and record 30 songs himself, and hand the copyrights over to the RIAA members involved in this suit. Payment in kind is an age-honoured tradition.
If they still require decal damages (that's 10x), then he needs to create 300 3-minute songs. He could probably rap the legal proceedings to get the required 900 minutes of audio.
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The average total wage earnings for a working adult 65yro-25yro x $50,000 is $2 million dollars (before taxes). Since court judgements don't go away in bankruptcy, he would be stuck with at least garnished wages for 1/3 - 1/2 of his wage earning life. That would put me in a depressed funk for the rest of my life. Yeah sure, he'd has his freedom, but he might as well be in jail doing time. Or, if he is of the unstable sort anyway, suicide is an option.
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was not only found guilty, but loses their appeals
I don't think his guilt was ever in question since he made the mistake of confessing. In all his interviews, he seems to admit that he did in fact do it.
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Ah, I see: the $10 you would have received from those songs would have completed your 3rd gold-plated yacht exactly 28 seconds earlier. Since you have forever lost those 28 seconds of enjoyment of your 3rd yacht, someone should be put into debtor's prison. Gotcha.
Little note: in 1796, they decapitated a whole class of people for pretty much the same attitude. You might want to work a bit on your PR there.
I'm lost.... (Score:2)
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Really, that's what they're going for. Sony has near-infinite resources compared to one guy with a Pro Bono lawyer... so they're running circles around him. They've got a dozen lawyers in court, objecting to anything he does, while another dozen lawyers fight with his ISP to subpoena his net usage history and still some more lawyers and lobbyists work to get new laws passed that make copyright infringement a felony punishable by death ... etc etc etc. Sony probably hired a crew to canvas this guy's neigh
Judge Rya Zobel (Score:2)
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Does it matter?
Case 1: Song is in Top 100 (or whatever). 'See, your honor? This is a best selling song, and we would have made tons more but for his piracy!!!"
Case 2: Song has no profits. "See, your honor? Nobody bought this song because they just downloaded his pirate copy!!!"
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And meanwhile if a corporation breaks the law ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And meanwhile if a corporation breaks the law the fine is like 50% of the profits they made from breaking the law.
50%? Hah! (Score:2)
What happens if he can't pay? (Score:3)
If the judgement is upheld, and he has to pay the $675k, he's most likely not going to be able to pay that sum.
What would happen then?
I guess they would probably seize and sell his properties, but that's probably not enough.
So would he go to jail and have his debt written off, or is he going to kept them for his whole life?
Something else maybe?
Basically, why fine someone a sum the judge knows that the defendant won't be able to pay? To make an example I guess, but is there something else?
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He can start over in some other country, it's not as bad as it sounds.
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If the judgement is upheld, and he has to pay the $675k, he's most likely not going to be able to pay that sum. What would happen then?
I guess they would probably seize and sell his properties, but that's probably not enough. So would he go to jail and have his debt written off, or is he going to kept them for his whole life? Something else maybe?
Basically, why fine someone a sum the judge knows that the defendant won't be able to pay? To make an example I guess, but is there something else?
If he eventually fails in appeal and refuses to pay/make payments, his wages will likely be garnished for a long time. He evidently obtained a PHD this year so his earning potential is well above average.
TED talk by Rob Reid (Score:3)
My amicus curiae brief in this case (Score:4, Informative)
Music? No thanks, I have a dynamic IP address. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to have thousands of my CDs ripped to .MP3s, but after I started seeing court cases like this I deleted them all and donated the CDs to my local library. I even used to purchase DRM free music too, deleted that shit. Look, I can't really PROVE that I got these music files legally. The risk of a single song costing me thousands of dollars, more if you factor in legal fees and lost work time, just isn't worth it taking the risk.
My personal internet connection has a dynamic IP. I've looked up my "current" IP address several times on sites like You Have Downloaded [youhavedownloaded.com] and found that the previous holders of the addresses were using Bittorrent to download stuff -- I assume legally, since I don't presume guilt without supporting evidence; Unfortunately, the legal system doesn't always follow the same logic. Interestingly, the You Have Downloaded site is closed, citing inaccuracy concerns...
I don't have much of a choice in ISPs. That said, I have to put a lot of faith in ISP staff to do proper record keeping in order to avoid wrongful litigation from goons like the RIAA or MPAA. This is the same staff of morons who gork my bill on a regular basis, and can't give me basic info like alternate DNS settings without first following a 30 step problem resolution script.
Keeping my systems free of any legally encumbered media is unfortunately a small safeguard I must make -- I seriously can not afford to risk the alternative. Fortunately, there is a thriving local music scene where I live, and there exists creative commons licensed music and video to enjoy. I wouldn't even call what I do a "boycott" of 'mainstream' media. I'd still buy the music & movies if they came with less troubling licenses and far less dangerous litigation precedents.
Sadly, a cost vs benefit risk analysis clearly shows the danger far outweighs the entertainment value of said media. Even worse, the "lost sales" caused by me withdrawing from their markets are most certainly attributed to "piracy".
I still own a Sony Betamax dual tape deck...
Paramount once sued Sony [wikipedia.org], accusing them of contributing to copyright infringement via producing a device that could be used to record live TV, or duplicate videos. Sony won that case on the grounds that although it could be used to infringe copyright, and even if infringement was the device's primary use case, there was still the POSSIBILITY that device could be used in non-infringing ways.
My, how the times have changed, eh? I'm a long time hardware & software hacker -- I hack on all my hardware as a general rule, so I couldn't risk owning a PS3 after the Sony v G.Hotz debacle -- I would have thought his work had the POSSIBILITY of being used in non-infringing ways... Nowadays, I don't even buy their music or movies, and games with "project $10" / online unlock codes and draconian DRM are also off the table for me. Damn. This current set of copyright laws is bad for everyone.
I sometimes joke that I started making my own games because I didn't want to hang up my controller, but I couldn't find any with EULAs I could actually agree to.
$0.99 retail price is irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that the songs normally retail for $0.99 is completely irrelevant. It would perhaps be relevant if he were merely downloading songs for his own personal enjoyment. That's not, however, what he was doing. He was downloading and then redistributing.
The relevant price comparison should be to the cost of a fixed price license that allows the licensee to make unlimited copies and redistribute them without restriction to anyone in the world, with no requirement to track or report on any of this to the licensor.
That license is going to cost a lot more than $0.99 per song.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Funny)
Should have stolen 30k songs like me. Nothing happens when you steal thirty thousand songs.
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In Assbagistan, verdict holds YOU up!
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to steal music that I would rather stab myself in the balls with an ice pick than listen, the idiot ruined his life. Why didn't he just pay $30?
Kill a man and you get off easy.
Download 30 music files and you have your life ruined.
Yep it makes total sense. Fuck the US justice system, and fuck the corporations that have bought the US government lock, stock and barrel.
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...fuck the corporations that have bought the US government lock, stock and barrel.
Yeah! And you know else they did? They put a gun to every voters' heads and forced them to vote republican or democrat. The horror!
They're getting a good deal. We handed the government over to them on a silver platter with very little persuasion.
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When you are already serving time for murder of another adult male, most of those violent criminals fear you at least as much as you fear them, and try to work out an acceptable detente. it's when you are in that same prison for doing something that says you are prey, that you get the real trouble. Prisons have people who get beaten and worse for being 'pedos', but the guy who molested all those little girls AND killed an armed police officer with only a tire iron somehow never becomes the target for those
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Not to defend the judgement, but I'm going to go ahead and say that 20 years in prison is a lot higher on the 'life-ruining' scale than $675,000.
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Depends who you ask.
3 meals a day and a bed vs 'guess I'm running from the law and living off the land, because that's more money than my gross income for the next hundred years'
Which just goes to show you that if you're caught downloading 30 songs, your best bet is to murder the policeman that comes to arrest you. At least then you'll have it easier.
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Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter, just go with the bare minimum. Any intelligent human should know instinctively that murder is a far, far, far worse crime than any amount of file sharing. So if any murderer, ever, for any level or murder or manslaughter or anything like that, gets a lesser sentence than the biggest file-sharer, there's something horribly wrong with the legal system.
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Nobody "stole" anything here. Copyright infringement is not "stealing".
Yes, there is a difference. Yes, the difference matters.
No, pointing this out does not mean I condone or commit copyright infringement myself, and yes, that IS what you were going to say.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA ruined his life. This fellow's only mistake is stealing MP3s instead of selling fraudulent loan securities.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The level of damages should not exceed 10 times the value of the product/song
2) The charges should not be able to be brought until it can be proved that the person being sued actually commited the crime
There's also that third thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real theft is being done by the copyright holders, they're stealing our culture from us.
Re:There's also that third thing... (Score:5, Informative)
The Copyright Act of 1790 provided for a 14 year term, which could be renewed for another 14 years if the author were still alive. So, by those terms, anything pre-1984 would now be in the public domain. And, I'd argue that's enough "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The Beatles weren't thinking "we won't do this, if we can't get royalties 50 years from now" when they recorded "Love me do."
In 1831, the term went to 28 years + a 14 year extension.
In 1909, 28 + 28.
1976, life of the author + 50 years. (75 years from publication, 100 years from creation for "works for hire."
1992, "renewal" became automatic.
1998, life of the author + 70 years. (95 years from publication, 120 years from creation, for "works for hire")
Re:There's also that third thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
what really pisses me off is the retroactive removal of works from public domain.
Just proves who is really in charge of the country, since otherwise that would have been slammed out the door as an ex post facto violation.
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Breaking copyright is absolutely ok and I advocate it. Guess what? the entire world does it daily. That's why things like fair use exists, because copyright is improperly asserted in it's current form. Copyright as is, simply does not apply properly to digital products.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is truly arguing that breaking copyright is ok.
I am. I'm a researcher, and copyrights have been nothing but a tool for publishers to beat me and my colleagues over the head and collect profits. So I hate them. Copyrights got absolutely NOTHING good for the common person (that includes us, scientists).
Let me be clear: I support licenses (especially CC-style licenses), because giving credit where it is due, is important. But copyrights? Fuck those.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Except they wouldn't. There are thousands of years of art, all created before copyright existed, and much of it better than the drivel we have now.
People create art because we are human. Thats what we do. We're not going to stop doing that because people stop being willing to sacrifice all their rights to my imaginary property.
Further, you ignore the fact that artists can make money without relying on imaginary property. Go to a concert, see them live, go see an exhibit, etc...
People who claim that content will die if revenue dies are morons.
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The concept of copyright started when copying became a serious option, the time when printing press technology really advanced and allowed for large scale reproduction of printed works.
For thousands of years, copying a book meant hand-writing a second copy. Copying a painting meant painting your own. Sound/video recordings simply didn't exist. Big difference with the current world.
Copyrights are an important concept in our world, as are patents and trademark rights. The problem is that these concepts have g
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Interesting)
1) The level of damages should not exceed 10 times the value of the product/song
And where did you get that number from? So, if you are a music artist and you sell your song for $1 from your small, low traffic website, I, as a big corporation can take your song and distribute it from my big high traffic website for free and sell a million dollars worth of advertising. And the most you can sue me for is $10?
Actually, this is close to the scenario for which the statutory damage amounts were created for. We should distinguish between someone who pirated a single copy of a song for personal use vs a person (or organization) who is willfully redistributing for profit.
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And all this case proves is that the studios are greedy fucks that care about how much blood they'll squeeze out of this turnip, and not how much blood they themselves have lost from the defendant's actions.
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The damages are there not because he downloaded the song, but because he distributed the song. His motivation is his business. The damages to the copyright owner in terms of lost sales are the same whether he did it for profit or not.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Those lost sales are a total fantasy.They aren't actual damages. They are something that was made up to address professional pirates. They are entirely inappropriate when applied to an individual.
Such a verdict also violates the tort reform concepts that so many people like you would apply to corporations.
What this really boils down to is "tort reform for the rich, and crime and punishment for the poor".
The idea of "imaginary damages" needs to go.
They are clearly unjust regardless of what kind of excuses you would like to make for them.
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The damages to the copyright owner in terms of lost sales are the same whether he did it for profit or not.
And can you tell me what the damages were? Just what were they? How much potential profit did they actually lose? Even they don't know that!
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
The situation you describe would certainly be criminal infringement [wikipedia.org] as it is performed on a commercial scale. No civil lawsuit would be necessary or sensible in such a case.
The major problems that most people have (admittedly excluding those who advocate abolishment of copyright) are with the ridiculously overboard civil issues that must be endured. To quote Judge Gertner regarding this case:
"(The damages are)...far greater than necessary to serve the government's legitimate interests in compensating copyright owners and deterring infringement. In fact, it bears no meaningful relationship to these objectives. To borrow Chief Judge Michael J. Davis' characterization of a smaller statutory damages award in an analogous file-sharing case, the award here is simply 'unprecedented and oppressive.'"
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The principle is the same. Ok, forget about the 'commercial scale' whatever that means. Replace big corporation with an individual, and million dollars with say $300. The point is that the damages can easily be more than $10 and that picking such a simple number as ten times the price does not work.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Without a paying customer you have no real damages.
THAT is what separates a commercial criminal enterprise from some guys on a torrent swarm. The transfer of money directly to the perpetrator in exchange for the product is the only thing that demonstrates that there are any lost sales here.
Anything else is a self-serving fantasy.
There are no damages if there are no willing customers.
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The situation you describe would certainly be criminal infringement as it is performed on a commercial scale. No civil lawsuit would be necessary or sensible in such a case.
Not necessary, but often sensible because you don't have to prove anything beyond reasonable doubt unless your case is so watertight they're going to outright cave anyway.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello Superman.
Many studies have shown that downloaders are often loyal fans. Yes they download but they also buy a lot of stuff. As author Charles Stross (meaning he has more gravita on this matter then you) observed it makes no sense to punish people who are your customers. He says he's gained many fans from people who downloaded book one, and then bought books two thru six in the series. He made five sales where otherwise he would have had none.
And besides the punishment is ridiculous. When I steal a baker's loaf of pumperknickel bread, I've deprived him of his property. I've caused real harm. But if I *copy* the loaf then he's lost nothing. He still has his loaf of bread which he can eat himself or sell to himself.
Now you may argue that the baker "lost a sale" but I argue that's nonsense. I never would have paid for that bread anyway, especially since I don't like pumperknickel. So the potential for a sale never existed.
ANYWAY this punishment is nuts. It's a life sentence (how long it takes to payoff the fine). The punishment exceeds the damage caused. It is equivalent to if I touched your nose, you prosecute me for assault, and I get a 50 year sentence. Nuts.
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Now you may argue that the baker "lost a sale" but I argue that's nonsense. I never would have paid for that bread anyway, especially since I don't like pumperknickel. So the potential for a sale never existed.
So you wouldn't have bought that bread, but I'm pretty sure you'd buy something to eat. I'm sure everybody can find a bread at the baker they wouldn't have paid for, so that they can get it for free. Everybody gets free bread and the baker makes no sales. Sounds sustainable. I'm sure you can fill your days with movies you wouldn't have watched, songs you wouldn't have heard, games you wouldn't have played and applications you'd never use if you had to pay full retail price for them. And if you would have us
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The irony of your statement is that, with the advent of this fictional replicator, the baker would already have his new business model laid out in front of him: Bake his bread like usual, "record" it into the replicator, then charge a small fee for customer access to the replicator, in addition to selling the actual bread for those who want that.
Assuming decent rates for the energy and feedstock for the replicator, that means a lower cost of doing business than selling only fresh-cooked bread, which means
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Free bread would be great. Most bread that people buy is based on quite old recipes. If people stopped creating new bread recipes, few people would complain. Those of us who bake bread at home would probably continue to experiment so you'd have enough new bread recipes being released to satisfy demand even without the profit motive.
In the case of creative works, it's less obvious. Tastes and requirements change. There is not just a demand for music, for example, there is a demand for new music. The
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The average musician only earns $16,000 a year (as of 2009). Let's say this average musician is like my friend who performs 10 songs per Saturday night for a year. $16k/520songs == $32 per song. Divided by 10-20 listeners at the club is $1.60 to $3.20 per person.
So by downloading my friends' music instead of going to the club and paying for it, I should have to pay $3.20 times the thirty songs == $100 to my friend. THAT is a reasonable fine, and it is based upon the average musician salary. You could e
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>I, as a big corporation can take your song and distribute it from my big high traffic website for free and sell a million dollars worth of advertising.
Funny you mention that. The record corporations were sued by Canadian artists because the megacorps were using the songs on compilation/greatest hits CDs and not paying the royalties due.
They owed billions but settled out of court for millions (mere pennies per song). Why is it that corporations can steal *directly* from their employees and only be punished a few pennies per act, but a citizen with essentially no money gets punished 675K/30 == $22 000 per act.
Our system is bass-backwards and your defense of it makes little sense. This young man is the one who should be punished for mere pennies/song while the billionaire corporations get whacked with the 675,000 fine (per employee-artist ripped off).
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It's because corporations are of a higher social class and thus permitted to get away with more.
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It's part of your Constitutional law: that damages awarded cannot exceed ten times the damages endured by the plaintiff. However, this Constitutional protection is cheefully disregarded by your copyright law, which renders your copyright law unconstitutional. It also seems that judges aren't very good at math, since $150,000 damages on about $0.50 per song is 300,000x damages, which is greater than 10x damages. (The copyright holder doesn't collect the full $0.99 re
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
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Hear, hear! I say, the judges should quit fucking around. Just cut his hands off and be done with it.
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He should just shoot them (Score:3)
You're right; if he has nothing left to live for, he should do his best to make sure these bastards never harm anyone else again.
He should walk into their offices with an AK-47 and just start spraying bullets. He should preferably, take out all the execs and their lawyers if he can.
And you know what? The penalty he'll get for murdering 50+ people is probably less than what he's being charged with now. Chances are he'll be out in 10 years, whereas, if he accepts the fine, he'll be an economic prisoner for 90
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I'm pretty sure that the RIAA feels that in case the pleb revolts, they can just hire a few armed guards for their gated communities and electrify their fences.
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I don't pirate. But I don't buy any music at all. As long as this blasphemy of copywrongs exists in its current twisted form I will never support them. All the music I listen too is on the radio, public domain, or independent.