Posted on 11/05/2010 9:27:54 PM PDT by JoeProBono
MINNEAPOLIS, - A Minnesota mother was ordered by a jury to pay $1.5 million to the Recording Industry Association of America for illegally downloading and sharing 24 songs.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset was ordered to pay the sum, $62,500 for each illegally downloaded song, by a Minneapolis court after two previous convictions were thrown out on appeal, the New York Daily News reported Friday.
Thomas-Rasset was ordered to pay $222,000 following a 2007 trial but the decision was declared a mistrial upon appeal.
She was next ordered to pay $1.92 million in a June 2009 trial, but the judge lowered the amount to $54,000. The RIAA offered to settle for $25 million, but Thomas-Rasset instead appealed the decision and ended up on trial a third time.
You can stream pretty much any song you want to hear off of youtube. People post links to favorite songs on this forum all the time. Somehow that's legal and acceptable. Download a song from a file-sharing site however and you're an arch criminal.
That reminds me of people who used to make tapes of songs aired on the radio.
Lock me up!
My friends and I used to tape each other's LPs onto cassettes as well back in the 80s. Doesn't make it right but we did it anyways.
In retrospect, I guess I stole food from the mouths of Bon Jovi's children.
I worked with a guy who told stories of his childhood when used set-up a tape recorder next the radio and recording songs.
Yep! Some of my best mixed tapes were recorded straight from the radio, back when the DJs used to talk through the first 20 seconds of the song in a deliberate effort to discourage this.
LP 2 CD, one of the many audio conversion products offered by Ion Audio, lets you convert your vinyl records directly onto a CD or onto your Mac.
I never made a copy of aired music (I didn’t like the crappy sound quality with the electronic noise). However, I did make the occasional copy of cassette albums that I really liked. These were “listening copies” that I could play over and over again while keeping my purchased album in good order (this was when I was a kid and bought tapes with hard-earned money and didn’t want to trash my albums).
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I would use that for some of my rare and long-out of production vinyl (stuff that just can’t be found on CD).
Yeah, we used to do that with our reel to reel recorders in the mid '60s by holding a mic up to the radio speaker.
I knew one person with enough savvy to rig a cable with a headphone jack at one end and a microphone jack at the other end...
One shyster lawyer can steal all you assets for copying a couple of songs?
I had almost forgotten, but I helped my Dad do the same thing, except he hooked up his reel to reel to the TV set to record some of live broadcasts that weekend when President Kennedy was killed in 1963. I still have those tapes out in my garage somewhere...
Wow! Make digital copies of those because those are an historical record!
Yeah I think I will. Luckily, I have access to high tech digital equipment and reel to reel tape decks.
P.S. My Dad was Army Air Corps 1942 to 1945.
Beyond, the concept that the courts can seize such vast assets and award them to another is a prime example of cruel and unusual punishment. Again, trying to find some example from the time of the founding fathers where a court had the ability to seize not just one lifetime's accumulation of income, but multiple generations, is beyond any reality.
The price today to download legally 25 songs is under $25, or for a $15 fee, you have unlimited access to vast libraries of media. I'm not a supporter of theft, so I'm completely against the RIAA, those in Congress who violated the constitution in awarding these extravagant protections, and the courts overreaching their charge.
Because the biggest theft of all is being committed by the RIAA.
There's a singular solution which would fix all these problems. Limit copyright for ethereal creations and ideas to a five year protected period. The moment that's passed, you'll see the industry flock to making media access affordable, easy and an end to these endless John and Jane Doe lawsuits.
While this is a ridiculous case, as a writer who isn't famous or anything but who has his works protected by copyright, I can only say...
You will get my royalties when you pry my cold, dead fingers from them.
Why one thinks they have the right to something I (or any other person who actually creates) made, I have no idea. Seems to be the answer always comes down to, "Because I really want it."
Then either every other person who did this on the site should be sued, or the site owners should be the only ones sued. IMHO. It's like suing someone for distributing burned CD copies who met her customers at a place called Burned CD Copy Exchange.
I have one like the one in the picture. I bought 2000+ albums over the years, I’ll be damned if I’m buying them again! (Many of which aren’t on CD anyway.)
If this were prosecuted according to the frequency of the criminal's actions, I'd be the first American executed for taping stuff off the radio.
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