Stop me if you've heard this one, but: Illegally downloading music files is probably not a good idea. And if you don't believe me, there's a 32-year-old Minnesota mom who might convince you otherwise.
Last week, a second jury convicted Jammie Thomas-Rasset of using her Kazaa account to illegally download 24 songs. The actual number of songs she allegedly snagged is roughly around 1,700, but she got sued for just these 24 little ditties.
The first jury found her guilty and assessed a fine of $222,000, or roughly $9K per tune. Jury No. 2 decided jury No. 1 simply didn't appreciate Vanessa Williams or Journey enough, and upped the ante to nearly $2 million, making those songs worth $80,000 a pop.
I admit, "Don't Stop Believing" does sound better if you haven't heard it for a while, but is it $71,000 better? That's kind of hard to swallow. Reactions from the blogosphere ranged from "insane" to "friggin' insane" to words I am not allowed to repeat here because there might be children present.
First, let us stipulate for the record that the defendant is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She's more like a spoon, or maybe a plastic spork.
Judging by what I've read of her defense, Thomas-Rasset's attorneys didn't deny music files were downloaded to her computer. They simply tried to claim the ex-boyfriend did it, or maybe the ex-husband, or maybe gremlins snuck into her house in the middle of the night and logged on to Kazaa using the same online handle she's used for 15 years.
The human-to-computer connection is almost impossible to prove without eyewitnesses or videotape. Trouble is, the RIAA didn't have to prove Thomas-Rasset actually swapped files. They just had to convince a jury of that. The fact that Jammie appears to have tried to fool the RIAA by submitting the wrong hard drive to them during the first trial's original discovery period probably didn't help her case. Just a hunch.
The file-swappin' Minnesota mom says she's broke, so I guess the record companies will have to send their goons over to her house to collect her furniture and sell it on eBay. Maybe she can work off the debt by agreeing to wash RIAA chief Mitch Bainwol's cars.
However, PC World's JR Raphael points out the excessive size of the award could play to Thomas-Rasset's favor:
The Supreme Court has previously indicated that "grossly excessive" punitive damage awards are a violation of the U.S. Constitution. An award can be considered "grossly excessive" if there's too big of a gap between the actual harm done and the amount of money being named. Courts can also consider the "degree of reprehensibility" of the defendant's actions, along with how the penalty compares to similar ones issued in the past.
So it's remotely possible some good may come from this case by revisiting the insane financial penalties tacked onto copyright infringement (up to $150,000 per violation). It won't let Jammie Thomas-Rasset off the hook (at least, not entirely), but it might help other folks who get squashed by bloodless corporate cartels.
If the record companies were hoping this trial would make them look less like Snidely Whiplash tying poor Nell Fenwick to the railroad tracks, they are mistaken. But it seems they don't really care what people think of them.
Over the last five years (and some 35,000 lawsuits), the RIAA has been using the same tactics employed by terrorists: Isolate and attack vulnerable individuals to intimidate the general populace. But over the past year, even they have had to accept that this strategy isn't working. Now they're trying to get ISPs to play bad cop. Same evildoers, different tactics.
And now for the usual disclaimer: Nobody here is saying artists shouldn't get paid. They should. The question is by whom and how much. What are the odds of any of the artists whose songs got shared seeing a dime of that $1.92 million judgment? Not bloody likely.
The more important case to watch is unfolding in Rhode Island right now, as Joel Tenenbaum and a team of Harvard legal eagles are trying to put the RIAA and its terrorist tactics on trial. The attorneys in that case and Thomas-Rasset's are also teaming up to cook up a class-action suit against the RIAA. (Let's hope Joel's attorneys are driving that bus, not Jammie's.)
Like Vanessa Williams sings, "Save the Best for Last."
As a favorite character of mine (Lt. Phil Esterhaus) used to say, "Hey - be careful out there."
* Guns N Roses "Welcome to the Jungle"; "November Rain"
* Vanessa Williams "Save the Best for Last"
* Janet Jackson "Let’s What Awhile"
* Gloria Estefan "Here We Are"; "Coming Out of the Heart"; "Rhythm is Gonna Get You"
* Goo Goo Dolls "Iris"
* Journey "Faithfully"; "Don’t Stop Believing"
* Sara McLachlan "Possession"; "Building a Mystery"
* Aerosmith "Cryin’"
* Linkin Park "One Step Closer"
* Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar on Me"
* Reba McEntire "One Honest Heart"
* Bryan Adams "Somebody"
* No Doubt "Bathwater"; "Hella Good"; "Different People"
* Sheryl Crow "Run Baby Run"
* Richard Marx "Now and Forever"
* Destiny’s Child "Bills, Bills, Bills"
* Green Day "Basket Case"
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I'd say that collection of songs is worth about $15 tops.
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^ At best.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rewsintegra
theres no such thing as vtec fluid noob.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TireMeltingRSX
Hell yeah, called Predators. And who directs it is a moot point, putting a predator in any movie automatically makes it awesome. Imagine how good The Notebook or Dirty Dancing could have been if there was a predator in them.
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Yeah, read that over the weekend, I think. I suspect it was just an example to be set. At the end of the article I read, it said it was likely an agreement would be settled out of court and the fine dismissed--to the tune of $3,000 - $5,000 (pardon the pun).
Isn't it odd that when the "little guy" sues corporate America, the courts don't allow more of a fine than the damages incurred. Isn't it odd that legislation was initiated (some time back) to put a cap on the amount of money one could get from having a doctor fuck up your life. $200,000 is the number I seem to remember. Yet, when it's "the big guy" taking the little guy to court, apparently the rules change. So, we are left with, let's see, this possibility: John Doe goes in for surgery, gets fucked over and can no longer work his job and support his family. Result? $200,000 judgement--the max. But songs... $1,000,000 +. Go figure.
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Your right, but they do have the IFPI.. and extradition.. amongst other 'bodies'.
Yeah but they don't rule how countries should react to illegal downloads.
Here they don't care about you unless you have thousands of files. The supreme court ruled that it costs too much money to do those prosecutions for those kids who download not a lot of files Unfortunately I cannot find the news article
In 2004, the Canadian Recording Industry Association(CRIA) was dealt a blow in its bid to take action against 29 internet users with extensive file sharing activities. The CRIA filed suit to have the ISPs reveal the identities of the 29 file sharers. In the ruling, both the Federal Court of Canada and the Federal Court of Appeal judged that the CRIA's case was not strong enough to support interfering with the defendants right to privacy and questioned whether the CRIA had a copyright case at all based on its evidence. Because the ISPs were not required to reveal the identities of their clients, the CRIA could not go on to sue the file sharers in a manner mimicking the RIAA's legal proceedings in the U.S.A. The court further found that both downloading music and putting it in a shared folder available to other people online were legal in Canada. This decision dealt a major blow to attempts by the CRIA to crack down on file sharers.
Quote:
2007: RCMP Tolerates Piracy for Personal Use
Around the same time that the CRIA successfully took Demonoid offline, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) made it clear that pursuing Demonoid’s users is not a priority for them. Demonoid came back online in April 2008, but is now hosted in Ukraine.
According to the RCMP it is impossible to track down everyone who downloads music or movies off the Internet. The police simply do not have the time nor the resources to go after filesharers.
“Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,” Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the RCMP, said in an interview with Le Devoir. “It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it,” he added.
St-Hilaire explained that they would rather focus on crimes that actually hurt consumers such as copyright violations related to medicine and electrical appliances, as well as ones that affect organized crime.
Interesting fact...
Quote:
Canada has the greatest number of file sharers per capita in the world according to a report by the OECD. As well, the same report states that the number of file sharers in Canada is steadily rising unlike the number of file sharers in the U.S.A.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Slynky
Yeah, read that over the weekend, I think. I suspect it was just an example to be set. At the end of the article I read, it said it was likely an agreement would be settled out of court and the fine dismissed--to the tune of $3,000 - $5,000 (pardon the pun).
Isn't it odd that when the "little guy" sues corporate America, the courts don't allow more of a fine than the damages incurred. Isn't it odd that legislation was initiated (some time back) to put a cap on the amount of money one could get from having a doctor fuck up your life. $200,000 is the number I seem to remember. Yet, when it's "the big guy" taking the little guy to court, apparently the rules change. So, we are left with, let's see, this possibility: John Doe goes in for surgery, gets fucked over and can no longer work his job and support his family. Result? $200,000 judgement--the max. But songs... $1,000,000 +. Go figure.
They're definitely going for scare tactics and shock value, but even as much as I like to see artists get paid, I wonder how much longer it's gonna take before the music biz realizes that screwing your consumer base from behind over & over is just going to make everything even worse...reminds me of Airheads when they go to the record company, and Rex says "Be careful guys, record execs make their LIVING screwing people!"
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rewsintegra
theres no such thing as vtec fluid noob.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TireMeltingRSX
Hell yeah, called Predators. And who directs it is a moot point, putting a predator in any movie automatically makes it awesome. Imagine how good The Notebook or Dirty Dancing could have been if there was a predator in them.
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Car 3: '06 RSX (wife's)
Well (and suspecting a lot of members reading this are involved in illegal downloads), while I don't like the tactics and the brute force of the RIAA, the fact remains that it's illegal. And the predominant feeling out there among (moslty younger) people is that if you can get it somehow, then it's alright / OK.
Using shoplifting as an example, it bugs me that I am paying more in a store because of shoplifters as the retailers pass the losses on to me. The same goes for music purchases. The costs for music would be lower for everyone if only EVERYONE would buy instead of steal. And that goes for movies, etc. The pirating that goes on helps fuel the prices staying high to make up for the losses incurred in the illegal ways.
Theoretically.
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Which is why we have posting rules in place that prohibit the the discussion of illegal downloads and warez. It just protects everybody. Even the Top Gear thread violates our on site TOS rules.
Hmmmm.
Better go lock that baby down!!! :ibtl:
BRB...
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Originally Posted by rileyrat
Come on man, we are Honda/Acura guys. We are the nerds of the auto performance world...it's only fitting lol.
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The thing that grinds my gears about this crap is that the RIAA will swear till the day they die that downloading is killing their business, when in reality they've been sticking their head up their collective ass and pretending that they're the martyr for decades now. Um, how about the long-term effects of $150 concert tickets, re-issuing a CD 6 months after it comes out with 1 bonus track and expecting people to buy it all over again, controlled composition clauses that screw artists and make it nearly impossible for bands to ever recoup their expenses, propagating single-oriented disposable flavor-of-the-week bands, and I could go on, but I think you all catch my drift.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by rewsintegra
theres no such thing as vtec fluid noob.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TireMeltingRSX
Hell yeah, called Predators. And who directs it is a moot point, putting a predator in any movie automatically makes it awesome. Imagine how good The Notebook or Dirty Dancing could have been if there was a predator in them.
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Unfortunately I cannot find the news article 
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