Posted on 10/04/2007 9:44:30 PM PDT by janetjanet998
DULUTH, Minn. (AP) -- The recording industry won a key fight Thursday against illegal music downloading when a federal jury ordered a Minnesota woman to pay $222,000 for sharing copyrighted music online.
The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.
"She was in tears. She's devastated," Thomas' attorney, Brian Toder, told The Associated Press. "This is a girl that lives from paycheck to paycheck, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her paycheck garnished for the rest of her life."
Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies, said, "This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK."
He said no decision had yet been made about what the record companies would do, if anything, to pursue collecting the money from Thomas.
Toder said the plaintiff's attorney fees are automatically awarded in such judgments under copyright law, meaning Thomas could actually owe as much as a half-million dollars. However, he said he suspected the record companies "will probably be people we can deal with."
Jurors left without commenting.
In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, the record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn't have a Kazaa account.
Record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.
The RIAA says the lawsuits have mitigated illegal sharing, even though music file-sharing is rising overall. The group says the number of households that have used file-sharing programs to download music has risen from 6.9 million monthly in April 2003, before the lawsuits began, to 7.8 million in March 2007.
During the three-day trial, the record companies presented evidence they said showed the copyrighted songs were offered by a Kazaa user under the name "tereastarr." Their witnesses, including officials from an Internet provider and a security firm, testified that the Internet address used by "tereastarr" belonged to Thomas.
Toder said in his closing that the companies never proved "Jammie Thomas, a human being, got on her keyboard and sent out these things."
"We don't know what happened," Toder told jurors. "All we know is that Jammie Thomas didn't do this."
Gabriel called that defense "misdirection, red herrings, smoke and mirrors."
He told jurors a verdict against Thomas would send a message to other illegal downloaders.
"I only ask that you consider that the need for deterrence here is great," he said.
Copyright law sets a damage range of $750 to $30,000 per infringement, or up to $150,000 if the violation was "willful." Jurors ruled that Thomas' infringement was willful but awarded damages of $9,250 per song; Gabriel said they did not explain to attorneys afterward how they reached that amount.
Thomas, of Brainerd, works for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe's Department of Natural Resources.
Before the verdict, an official with an industry trade group said he was surprised it had taken so long for one of the industry's lawsuits against individual downloaders to come to trial.
Illegal downloads have "become business as usual, nobody really thinks about it," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, which coordinates the lawsuits. "This case has put it back in the news. Win or lose, people will understand that we are out there trying to protect our rights."
Thomas' testimony was complicated by the fact that she had replaced her computer's hard drive after the sharing was alleged to have taken place -- and later than she said in a deposition before trial.
The hard drive in question was not presented at trial by either party.
Record companies said Thomas was sent an instant message in February 2005, warning her that she was violating copyright law. Her hard drive was replaced the following month, not in 2004, as she said in the deposition.
"I don't think the jury believed my client regarding the events concerning the replacement of the hard drive," Toder said.
The record companies involved in the lawsuit are Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Yeah, LOL, I think they’d look for the person who actually copied the entire article rather than people who read it.
“Ohhh so its ok to download songs on the web so long as they go after the person that shares them right?”
Quite a jump from my statement to yours. Reading an entire article on the internet - copied from one site to another by someone else - is somehow comparable to intentionally downloading music? That’s contains so many incongruencies I won’t bother to point them out.
“I don’t, but I also don’t think that owning an iPod and copying songs from my cd collection to it is theft.... You do, one of us is consistent one is not..”
I’ve never said no one should be able to copy music they bought to an IPod. I’ve said the copying should be restricted to the personal use of the person who purchased the music. I copy songs from my CD collection to my computer, and sometimes burn a CD of selected songs for personal use.
Most all this thread has been about downloaded music, not about purchased music and how it can be used. I think attributing something to me that was in the article, or that someone else wrote.
Is it legal to profit by preying upon people that download software, even if no actual money is exchanged?
If that is legal in today's world, then our company may stay alive!
From a former Kazaa user AND a believer in property and intellectual rights . . .
This stinks!
This woman should have been fined the market value of each song PROVEN to be downloaded and on her harddrive. This award was so unjustified, I'm wondering how many jurors are getting a kickback from the RIAA.
“I agree. One problem. I wish I could get my LPs into that narrow little slot in my car!! Or is that slot for 45s?”
Lol, I had the same problem. Finally just bought my favorite albums on CD, once I figured it all out.
NEVER put your software on the net! LOL, you would most likely be screwed since software is pretty much unprotected.
“Where the RIAA has jumped the shark is when they started saying ‘and if you buy a CD’ and put the song on your iPod thats stealing too.”
I doubt that issue has been settled. Generally we can make a backup copy of a computer program, so I would assume the same would apply for a music CD, or file.
Taking that a further step, I would expect courts one day to rule we can store our backup copy in the format, and on the device of our choice.
That seems like equity, which is the underlying principle of most property laws.
Once again, can I put my software on the internet and take anyone that dares to download it to court?
If so, I smell some major profits in my future!
Spell check is your friend - see “country”.
:-)
“BTW, thanks for taking on my equal protection argument, no one else will since it is a very very good argument.”
It’s an important and complicated area. As I said, that’s why there are huge government bureaucracies and armies of lawyers involved with trying to answer the questions.
I am finally understanding how I can follow the music industry and make some major profits by abusing our court system!
Music and software are only coded bits of a disk file. I can pretend that my software is a music file and replicate it all around the world.
If anyone downloads my software, I can then take them to court (even if they thought it was only music)and demand my arbitrary selling price of $500,000 per copy.
This court case is OUTSTANDING and I expect to earn some major profits in the near future.
Well yes and no,
First yes they are both covered under copyright laws, but software can be reversed engineered, songs can't, that is called plagiarism and is pretty easy to spot. However a cool editor or a spread sheet, or a relational database, can be reproducted without using any of the original code, (see Linux) so copy rights mean absolutely nothing to software. The end result being music gets ubber protection while software get none.
“First yes they are both covered under copyright laws, but software can be reversed engineered, songs can’t, that is called plagiarism and is pretty easy to spot. However a cool editor or a spread sheet, or a relational database, can be reproducted without using any of the original code, (see Linux) so copy rights mean absolutely nothing to software. The end result being music gets ubber protection while software get none.”
I’ve always found it interesting that a guy who wrote key portions of the first spreadsheet (VisiCalc) as an employee, soon afterwards wrote, on his own, a much more successful spreadsheet which he owned outright (Lotus 1-2-3).
I now know how to turn lemons into lemonaid!
Pretend that my software is a music file, and take them to court if anyone downloads it.
Pure Profits!!!!
“Veteran musician here, next time you are at a bar/nightclub that has live or recorded music and has a cover charge look on the entrance door for a BMI or ASCAP sticker, if you see such that bar/nightclub pays a fee to have that music in their business.”
OMG. Don’t tell me there are really laws, business practices, and people actually old fashioned, lame and stupid enough to observe and follow them?
I’m told in this thread how “out of touch” and “clueless” that is.
I guess the hipsters would just say: “...we don’t like this law, so we won’t follow it, or pay. Laws like that are for clueless people 85 years old.” Crash down the door, rush inside and make the performers pay for nothing.
While they are at it, how about drinks on the house, every night, all night.
Call it theft, call it copyright infringement, call it illegal duplication, call it illegal distribution. It all has a common principle.
I don't see any reason why an up and coming moviemaker today should not be able to poach off Disney in the same way that Disney poached off the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.
And that is why the folks with the most money win and common sense is thrown out the door. Putting my bar owner hat back on, Why am I the one sued when some band I hire plays copy righted music? I did not play it? Why isn't the band sued, they played the damn song not me,.One reason, money, house band have very little and club owners do (not this one). As far as I am concerned this whole music copy right thingy is a shake down by thugs. And I will continue to think that until all intellectual property recieved eqaul protection under the law.
I want to see patents good for two life times plus twenty years, dido great software apps. Either that or music in the public domain after 8-11 years.
Yup! It is called...
Abusing our legal system to exchange money, that you have not earned!
“I don’t see any reason why an up and coming moviemaker today should not be able to poach off Disney in the same way that Disney poached off the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.”
I’ve often heard it said that everything is derivative, and that’s probably true. But these days it just can’t TOO derivative.
“There’s nothing new in the world”, another old saying.
LOL, yup, but the greatest software rippoff artist of all time, Bill Gates, microsoft, kicked his butt with excell. Dido word perfect, MS Word and so many many others.
Hold on there, hoss...did I address you in my post?
I was simply trying to inject a bit of off-color humor to a phonetically challenged FReeper.
Take it easy...I ain’t jumping down your throat.
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