ONE BILLION DOLLARS!
Posted on 01/30/2008 10:54:17 AM PST by Snickering Hound
Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA's perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn't mean it won't become law.
The change to statutory damages is contained in the PRO-IP Act that is currently up for consideration in Congress. We've reported on the bill before, noting that Google's top copyright lawyer (and the man who wrote a seven-volume treatise on the subject of copyright law), William Patry, called the bill the most "outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US."
The industries pushing it (music, especially) have an "unslakable lust for more and more rights, longer terms of protection, draconian criminal provisions, and civil damages that bear no resemblance to the damages suffered," he said.
Public Knowledge head Gigi Sohn testified before Congress last year that statutory damages are already "disproportionate penalties for infringement," pointing that it hardly seems fair to bill someone like Jammie Thomas more than $9,000 per song when each track costs a buck. Even accounting for a punitive penalty, that seems absurdly high.
Both Patry and Sohn attended a Copyright Office roundtable on statutory damages a few days ago, and Public Knowledge's staff attorney Sherwin Siy has posted a fascinating writeup of the closed-door session.
The meeting was a small affair, with only 30 or so stakeholders in attendance, and it quickly became clear that even content owners had different takes on the situation. The Magazine Publishers Association, for instance, argued for maintaining the current law. If the PRO-IP Act passes, anyone found guilty of copying a magazine could be liable for hundreds of separate acts of infringement (at the judge's discretion), but magazine accused of copyright violations would face similarly huge penalties.
Patry wasn't pleased with the PRO-IP Act, nor was Public Knowledge. On the other side, the argument seemed to be that people could take advantage of the law to copy "greatest hits" albums or other compilations but be liable for less damages than if they had ripped the songs from ten individual albums. As Siy points out, no one in the room could offer any actual evidence of such "crafty defendants," and the change in law would likely do little to change the behavior of file-swappers.
Given the huge amounts already available to copyright holders (who can always collect actual damages if the statutory damages truly aren't large enough to cover their costs), an increase in statutory damages seems only useful when pursuing true "pirates" and large-scale infringers. Unfortunately, the PRO-IP Act would would make the damages an option in small-scale file-swapping cases, the kinds of cases that the European Court of Justice doesn't seem real worried about. When it comes to casual, non-commercial users, current awards are high enough already.
Sponsor: John Conyers Co-sponsors: Rep Berman, Howard L. [D][CA-28] - 12/5/2007 Rep Chabot, Steve [R][OH-1] - 12/5/2007 Rep Cohen, Steve [D][TN-9] - 12/5/2007 Rep Feeney, Tom [R][FL-24] - 12/5/2007 Rep Goodlatte, Bob [R][VA-6] - 12/5/2007 Rep Issa, Darrell E. [R][CA-49] - 12/5/2007 Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [D][TX-18] - 12/5/2007 Rep Keller, Ric [R][FL-8] - 12/5/2007 Rep Schiff, Adam B. [D][CA-29] - 12/5/2007 Rep Smith, Lamar [R][TX-21] - 12/5/2007 Rep Wexler, Robert [D][FL-19] - 12/6/2007
Seems like a pretty good example of cruel and unusual punishment to me.
Copy ping!
I’ve got close to 700 Cds, store bought, ripped to my hard drive. When a friend needs a song he likes, I just email it to him. If he wants the whole disc I do it one song/email at a time. I never use open p2p sharing sites or software.
Most mp3s are 5mbs and only take a few seconds on broadband DSL extreme.
Argh, Bob Goodlatte, my old hometown rep, is signed on to that monstrosity. Rick “Mr. Peepers” Boucher (D, VA-9) needs to come across the aisle from the Dem side and slap some sense into him.
If nothing else, it’s proof that the RIAA and their minions work both sides of the aisle equally. Conyers and Sheila “Mars” Jackson-Lee on one side, Goodlatte and Darrell Issa on the other.
}:-)4
Copy ping!
I’ve got close to 700 Cds, store bought, ripped to my hard drive.
I wish that line were focused on. That's the issue behind the issue. If I am copying something I already own, as opposed to freely distributing it on the public Internet, how can the "damages" be set so high?
Was there 1.5 million $ of damages?
Is this why Edwards dropped out of the race?
Does any of this apply to China?
bump for later reading
This whole thing might explain part of why cassette tapes aren’t being produced any more. Are they? What are people supposed to listen to in their cassette players? A cassette player is certainly smaller than a portable CD player. You can’t pop a CD player into your pocket.
Disproportionate laws breed contempt for all laws. But no one ever said Congressmen were smart or logical. A pox on all their houses.
Copy ping!
Copy ping!
Crap... We're up to $4.5 million so far...
I just acquired a used Bose Lifestyle system that plays and stores copies of CDs automatically. I wonder if Bose will be an accessory to copyright infringement.
Aren’t there bigger fish to fry like the makers of blank cd’s? Of course they’re probably owned by corporations like sony. They’re going to sue folks for using the products they sell. What a country!
Did they have Dr. Evil come up with a one million dollar figure, and then run in by the lawyers who said “if you want one million after a 33% lawyer fee, you’ll need $1.5 million”?
Most of what I have acquired from friends music collections is/was not something I was willing to buy in the first place, and if I’m forced to delete it, there is no real loss to me.
RIAA...good luck with your enforcement. I’ve already stopped buying your products, maybe I’ll stop using them too.
Was it full of the previous owners music? I never new the Lifestyle system did that. Pretty cool. I use Bose 301s in the front and the 101s in the rear. Infinity center and JBL sub. Rocks nicely.
Well, then there are at lest two ISPs who have a record of your transaction right there...be careful.
Not surprised to see Lamar Smith’s name on this.
A CD only has one track. It runs in a spiral, just like a vinyl record.
Or untouchable by powerful doner$.
My own rep, Dave Camp, voted for the repellent DMCA. I haven't voted for him since.
No, the previous owner either never used the feature or cleaned it. It could be pretty cool, because it has a built-in CD database, the same one used by iTunes. I’m wondering if this kind of function is going bye-bye.
Fascism on the march.
I hate the RIAA.
DOJ ought to look into who these reps are taking money from, and how much.
The industry has long known about non-marketed “mixtapes”.
The industry is trying to change “the rules” of infringement decades late.
It is acceptable fair use at this point.
ONE BILLION DOLLARS!
I saw a documentary I recall as being titled “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”. It isn’t that well made but there is an interesting segment (maybe a supplement on the DVD) about the MPAA’s lobbying office in DC.
The entertainment industry has long pushed for rewrites of the laws to suit their interests.
The documentary doesn’t go into the history but originally an artist who sang a song onstage or recorded his performance of said song on a record or cylinder didn’t have to pay the songwriter. That songwriter got his money through selling the sheet music.
Then when radio came along, the records played on the radio were played for free of charge (leading to outrage by the live musicians that wanted to earn a living playing on radio).
And of course extensions to the LIMITS of copyright keep happening. At least in the US. In the EUSSR, they didn’t extend them the last time. So works that are 50 years old are public domain there now. Elvis, Sinatra, etc.
And this is what scares Big Media, they will only continue to see the exclusive dollars on these for US releases, they will have to release “special” editions from the vaults to continue to make money from these works in Europe.
Dwindling receipts. No new talent to take the mantle. They are screwed.
There have been mandated “taxes” on blank CDs and cassettes before. Now how does the RIAA “determine” which acts were “wronged”? Who gets the money? The industry does. The artists don’t. Even if the artists are known, the publisher of the music gets it, not the band that recorder it.
What a scam.
How do they know what’s on my hard drive? How do they know what CDs I’ve ripped to get onto my iPod?
I don’t see how this is any different than when I recorded tapes for my Walkman.
Also, what about performances that have been recorded only on LP? I can buy a CD or a download. Am I breaking this law when I convert the LP tracks to MP3s for my iPod?
While I certainly agree, the question is 'why would they?' Taking on a favored donor of A LOT of important people is a little more than one can expect from any but the most suicidal civil servant.
Dude, you alone could rescue this troubled industry!
True, but no one is above the law.
For all the FUD going around, no one has ever been sued for solely ripping CDs and copying them to an IPod.
The vast majority of people sued for “downloading” are really being sued because they made their music library available for others to download through peer to peer software. In most peer to peer applications, downloaded music is put into a shared folder that others can access.
This new law is a bad thing, but it will still be impossible for the RIAA to find out anything that doesn’t involve sharing music over the internet.
It is my understanding that this is not correct. The contemporary equivalent of a ‘mixtape,’ and ripping CDs to your hard drive, is not fair use. I believe the AHRA speaks to the industry not following through on prosecuting people who make personal copies for their own use, but it remains technically ‘unauthorized,’ and NOT fair use.
That’s why Jennifer Pariser’s testimony in the Jammie Thomas trial came off worse than she ever intended it to, but to the best of my knowledge, the industry does maintain that ANY copies made are unauthorized even if they choose to not prosecute. And why would they? It doesn’t make sense that they’re going to actually start looking at people’s hard drives.
What they DO want to do is legalize P2P sharing by instituting a monthly tax to be added to everyone’s ISP bill. And there’s a lot of chatter that indicates that a lot of people believe that to be a foregone conclusion. With an opt-out for those who don’t want to pay.
This ties into ATT talking about using filters to make sure they’re not serving a customer base that are infringing on the copyrights of others. I do think it’s possible that the RIAA may line up ISPs as targets for damages for not policing their traffic if they don’t adjust their fee structure to allow for a monthly payment per ISP customer directly to the copyright holders.
Difficult to believe, but that’s what they’re talking about, and constantly. So the idea of what is & isn’t ‘fair use’ might be a moot point in the near future. But, for now, ripping CDs to a hard drive remains ‘unauthorized’ unless the CD owner has permission directly from the copyright holder.
I was thinking this morning, I wonder how many music conglomerates are tied into corporations that produce computers and software. They might be providing the public with the technology necessary to copy cd’s. I’m sure you’ve seen that stupid coke commercial where executives at coke want to sue coke for making coke zero. Maybwe the RIAA should start suing Sony-BMG.
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