Suckers never die, they just exchange places with each other - A proberb
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Jammie Thomas-Rasset asks for a third trial
AS WE EXPECTED, Jammie Thomas-Rasset has asked the court to overturn or reduce the $1.92 million judgment against her for sharing music files online, or to give her a third trial.
The motion, filed yesterday in Minnesota federal court, says that the verdict in this case was shocking, in that for 24 songs, available for $1.29 on Itunes, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per song.
"Such a judgment is grossly excessive and, therefore, subject to remittitur as a matter of federal common law," Jammie Thomas-Rasset's brief said.
Thomas-Rasset's lawyers argue that the $1.92 million damage award is, on its face, an unconstitutional breach of the Due Process clause. Case law says that anything over a ratio of 1:10 is considered suspect.
It's hard to imagine Judge Michael Davis will want to hear another trial, which Thomas-Rasset has requested. Although he did feel that a $222,000 award was too high.
A third option is to reduce the award to the statutory minimum of $18,000 which would make the case appear more reasonable while at the same time allowing the RIAA to call it a victory.
After all, money is not really the point here and $18,000 to a single mother is still a lot of dosh.
However there is another plan of attack on the case. Judge Davis allowed evidence to be presented by an outfit called Media Sentry. Thomas-Rasset's team argues that Media Sentry broke private investigator rules and all of its evidence should be thrown out. If Media Sentry evidence is not allowed then it would be hard to see what sort of case the RIAA would have against Thomas-Rasset.
Meanwhile the record labels are asking the judge to write a permanent injunction against future copyright infringement, which we think is probably over-egging the pudding. But then it is important from a PR point of view that Thomas-Rasset is seen as a commercial operation, rather than a single mother who stuck files on Kazaa. Even if evidence in court showed that she never made a dime on P2P piracy. µ
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The RIAA did not sue for anything. A jury of HER PEERS awarded the RIAA the money. They were free to award whatever they thought was appropriate. Maybe if they didn't feel their intelligence was offended by the defense they would've been a little more lenient.
Suing $1 million for 24 songs is like the national representative of american drivers suing your mom for $1 million for jaywalking; citing that it causes stress on drivers, may force them to use their brakes, shortening the life of the car parts, and increasing the risk of accidents and injuries.
But hey, your mom's a "bimbo" and she should get "life in prison" "for her crimes" and "stupidity" huh.
This Bimbo will probably get a reduction in the fine but she should still pay a million dollars and spend six months in jail for her crimes. If they punished people for stupidity - she'd get life in prison.
And while I'm at it I might say that I have been reading comments on this site and many others concerning Jammie and her 'alleged' theft. I have seen her accused of stealing more times than I care to count. A most libelous position considering that her trials have never been about 'theft'.
You seemed to have missed a significant fact with your quickness to punish Jammie for her 'criminal' actions. This was 'NOT' a 'criminal' trial but a 'civil' trial and the ramifications are different.
Really? Because I didn't realize I was arguing, only asking questions.
In all technicality, CD redbook audio is a track of 1's and 0's in uncompressed form. a Ripped version of the disc is compressed and in no way a "copy" in the technical sense.
In a non technical sense it is a lossy copy.
Before you get all excited, please remember I have not made an argument. I do however have yet another question.
"7. No, because it's not a copy of the same license." etc...
I assume that was in response to:
If I own the music, and have it on a file share, and someone else owns the music, and downloads it from me, I can be sued?
So... No - I can't be sued? Because it's not a "copy" of the same license?
That doesn't even make sense. Did you "FAIL" ?
*sigh*
1. No, unless you're humming it in front of a crowd that paid to hear you hum it.
2. No unless you distribute it
3. Yes, but is up to the copyright holder to tell YouTube to remove it.
4. Yes, because it was illegally placed there.
5. No, Best Buy could not be sued. Each cd is a license to listen to that cd. If someone steals a CD they're stealing the license to that cd. PJP works are unlicensed, which is the problem.
6. No, not if the music was truly stolen. A stolen CD is not illegal distribution anyway since the license is with the cd. If someone stole your MP3 collection then those would be unlicensed copies and would be illegal. If someone copied your MP3 collection it too would be illegal. The only time it would be legal is if you transferred the license (cd) to them as well.
7. No, because it's not a copy of the same license. The copy of the CD inherits the license from the CD it was copied from. See the case UMG vs mp3.com
The only thing ridiculous is your arguments, because they all FAIL.
There is a concept that the punishment should fit the crime, though.
$1.92M fine impoverishes this woman for the rest of her life... how does that fit the crime?
I honestly don't know the answer to these questions:
1) Is it illegal to remember a song? (and hum or sing it?)
2) Is it illegal to record a song off the radio?
3) Are Music videos on youtube illegal?
4) If you record the track off youtube is that illegal?
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Can Best Buy be sued for distributing music if someone steals it from Best Buy? (Since Best buy didn't take better measures to secure it's inventory?)
If Someone steals the music from me can I be sued?
If I own the music, and have it on a file share, and someone else owns the music, and downloads it from me, I can be sued?
This whole subject matter is rediculus and only shows that the Kangaroo courts have no idea what they are doing.
The law has never been tit for tit (That's not the expression Dwight... well it should be). If it was, stealing a physical CD from Best Buy should only cost you $12.99, not 6 months probation + 500 hours community service. The punishment is to reform the guilty and warn the onlookers.
With a punishment that matches what the legal behavior would've set you back, there would be no incentive to stay legal. The average person would say "Hey, I could download this song illegally for free and risk paying $4 for it if I get caught, or I can just spend $1 and get it legal outright." Lots of people, as Napster/PJPs/Torrents/etc. have shown, are inconvenienced by being forced to pay $1.
The same logic applies to other crimes. Drivers running from gas stations without paying for the Gas they pumped. Hunters illegally shooting game without a license. A shopper slipping a pack of gum into their purse or pocket. The punishment not only has to compensate the victim for their loss of product, time, energy, etc. but must also be a deterrent to the offender and future offenders.
She should just declare personal bankruptcy. It might be a pain in the a** but not compared to paying a ridiculous amount of money to those greedy pigs.
Hell - even feign mental illness so you're not fit to go into the courtroom 'the stress was too much'.
Downloading or not downloading, It would be a cold day in hell before I payed them a cent.
But the number is still very small and the point valid.
I think she really did download and share some of the songs, but not all of them, hence her desire to keep denying it. However I don't think she's guilty of any infringements if you consider the law the way it was intended when written. I'm sure the authors never intended it to be applied to such a small insignificant case.
No-one has even attempted to define in court the cost to the Record Labels by Jamie's actions. I think the defense should have attempted this and left it to the labels to prove them wrong. I'll go through a small analysis as I see it:
Cost per song. Case 1 - Jamie downloaded the songs and then continued to share them. Because every song downloaded by any user is automatically shared back to the network, on average each shared song only represents at most 2 lost sales - one for Jamie's download, and a download by one other person.
Case 2 - Jamie ripped the songs and uploaded them to Kazaa (this doesn't seem likely because Jamie used a different codec when ripping to the songs that were found shared.) In this case we need to estimate the number of times a song is downloaded vs the number of original copies uploaded to Kazaa. As far as I know there were many copies of songs uploaded to Kazaa, with a few of those copies becoming dominant and being shared by many people but most remaining insignificant and barely downloaded at all. The only way I can think of to even estimate a number here is to estimate the expected number of music sales by extrapolating growth from the pre-kazaa era. Subtract the actual sales and you're left with the supposed number of lost sales. Divide this number by the total number of songs available on all the major sharing platforms (Kazaa, Napster, emule) and you've got the average lost sales per unique song upload. I would be very surprised if this number is over 100. It is absolutely nothing like the 62000 to one ratio the damage award suggests.
I don't think the labels could prove case 2 anyway therefore the real damage Jamie caused was at most the cost of 48 songs. If it was decided a putative award was appropriate then case law states that a 1:10 ratio is appropriate. Basically the maximum the Record Labels are eligible to is 10 * 12 * $1.29 == $154.80.
The labels have managed to turn the court system into their own personal fine and infringement enforcing system. If you speed you get a ~$200 fine, even though speeding causes many deaths and tremendous cost(in accidents) nationally. If you get caught they don't try and punish you for every person who has ever sped, you just get a punitive $200 fine. If you share 24 songs you get a punitive $3000 - $5000 fine, and $1.92 million if you dare to challenge it.
In short - Jamie's lying about the hard drive swap and general appearance of being guilty doesn't change the fact that she just be fined a maximum of $200 and told to move along.