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Woman fined $1.9 million for illegally downloading 24 songs

RightinNYC said:
You can only be compensated for your total loss. The first guy who had to pay you all of it can then sue the second guy to force him to reimburse the first guy for his share.
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Uhh this is...strange...reasoning. Let me make sure I understand this:

1. The police find the guy who stole my sofa and I sue him.
2. Since my house had previously been broken into, and my TV and my computer were stolen (all on separate occasions), I can sue the sofa thief for all of those items.
3. The police then find the TV thief.
4. Sofa thief has to sue TV thief directly, to recover the cost of my TV and half of the cost of my computer, even though the two have never met or had any contact with one another before.
5. In the meantime, my car is stolen when it is parked on the other side of town.
6. The police then find the computer thief.
7. I sue the computer thief for the cost of my car (but not for the cost of my computer, since I already sued sofa thief for that, who in turn sued TV thief to recover half of that cost)
8. TV thief and sofa thief file a joint lawsuit against computer thief for the cost of the computer.

Is this correct? Is there a single example of anything like this occurring anywhere in the United States?

RightinNYC said:
The alternative is to effectively repeal copyright protection. I believe that would cause greater harm than this.
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It would not effectively repeal copyright protection. Record companies just have to choose their battles wisely. Go after the offenders with thousands of downloads and thousands of uploads, rather than someone who downloaded 24 songs. And work with companies like iTunes and Zune to give the smaller fish a legal outlet.
 
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This is definitely excessive. If seems as if the record companies are partially at fault here. If you want to go after more users to prevent music sharing... GO AFTER MORE USERS. Any one of us could very easily go onto a P2P client and pull out 50 IP addresses. Why doesn't the record company?

By this justification, it seems as if I can start up my own shop, allow people to rob my store as I look the other way and then whenever I feel like it pick a random person and file a lawsuit for millions of dollars even though they stole a CD.

Also, the way you made it seem- with the "splitting up" example- could that same person not just give up 1.9 million IP addresses, effectively reducing her total cost to $1?
 
Kandahar said:
Well OK, but you were REALLY busting them for vandalism, even if the actual charge was littering, right? I would assume you don't often arrest people for small stuff like throwing a McDonald's wrapper out their car window?
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Why arrest when you can issue a citation (ticket)???

Hell, I even do that for pot instead of arresting.
 
Now that's just like executing a person for stealing a gum. :doh
 
The sad part: the artists they claim to help with these lawsuits won't see a dime of this money. It will all go back to the legal fund of the company [ies?] involved.
 
The total price of the music she stole was about $24. Would they punish someone $1.9 million if they stole, say, a DVD of the same value?
 
talloulou said:
$1.9 million is ridiculous. Owing $1.9 million could destroy a person. While I also think it's unreasonable to just charge her the small amount the songs would have cost I have to agree $1.9 is complete and utter overkill.

Then again my husband once sued in court and won and winning doesn't necessarily mean crap. It was decided by the courts that we were owed $7,688. But the person never paid still to this day. My grandfather also won an asbestos suit decades ago. He too, supposedly was going to be receiving money from his claim. He died and that still hasn't been paid.

So maybe she can just not pay. I don't know much about how that all works but simply not paying seems to be common enough.
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When a person wins a suit and gets a judgment they then have the right to establish leans on any property that person has and garnish wages. If you're not getting paid. On most occasions this is how you'll ever see a dime, because it's the rare looser who will cut a check and just pay the debt.
 
**** them, don't pay it. The music industry has been ripping us off for years and now they're pissy that they're getting a little of it back. And 24 songs ain't worth no 1.9 million, at most you can pump up the value for having to go to court and such. But they don't hire people to clean up the internet to prevent this, they don't do the investigations or any of that. Way too much money for something so trivial as downloading music.
 
Kandahar said:
It does not make sense. If society deems that this crime is severe enough that it needs a stronger deterrent effect, then it should prosecute the crime more often...not fine some random person $80,000 per illegal download while allowing everyone else to get off scot-free. That is just stupid and excessive. Fortunately the punishment will almost certainly be thrown out on appeal, as it should.
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There are murderers that get off easier than this. This is why the American justice system is really screwed up.

This whole issue is ironic considering that records companies are some of the biggest crooks out there.
 
RightinNYC said:
The jury awarded it. Also, if the odds of being prosecuted for a crime are low, the punishment has to be high to have a worthwhile deterrent effect. Sucks for the person who gets caught, but it makes sense.
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It doesnt make sence, Big Corps going after working Mother that is a sad state of affairs.
 
Dav said:
The total price of the music she stole was about $24. Would they punish someone $1.9 million if they stole, say, a DVD of the same value?
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No. One is criminal charge (shoplifting). The other is a civil offense (copyright infringment).

Statutory damages under the Copyright Act can range from $750 per infringement up to $150,000. The U.S. has a long legal history of protecting copyrights, so the penalties are severe. In the case of a DVD the music was already paid for by the retailer, so there is no copyright infringment. I'm not saying she should have to pay $1.9 million, I'm just pointing out why stealing a DVD is legally not even close to the same thing. Whether our legal system makes any sense at all is another question.
 
stekim said:
No. One is criminal charge (shoplifting). The other is a civil offense (copyright infringment).

Statutory damages under the Copyright Act can range from $750 per infringement up to $150,000. The U.S. has a long legal history of protecting copyrights, so the penalties are severe. In the case of a DVD the music was already paid for by the retailer, so there is no copyright infringment. I'm not saying she should have to pay $1.9 million, I'm just pointing out why stealing a DVD is legally not even close to the same thing. Whether our legal system makes any sense at all is another question.
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OK. If she burned a copy of her friend's 24-song CD for her personal use, would they fine her $1.9 million?
 
Just to correct a common misconception in this thread, Thomas was sued for uploading copyrighted works, not for downloading. It's entirely plausible that she uploaded the songs or parts of them (although I don't think Kazaa does chunking) to hundreds of people, which is one of the reasons that the penalties are so harsh. They are still completely and utterly excessive, but the shoplifting analogy does not quite fit.
 
Kernel Sanders said:
Just to correct a common misconception in this thread, Thomas was sued for uploading copyrighted works, not for downloading. It's entirely plausible that she uploaded the songs or parts of them (although I don't think Kazaa does chunking) to hundreds of people, which is one of the reasons that the penalties are so harsh. They are still completely and utterly excessive, but the shoplifting analogy does not quite fit.
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More like putting tampered Tylenol back on the shelf...?
 
Kandahar said:
OK. If she burned a copy of her friend's 24-song CD for her personal use, would they fine her $1.9 million?
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Don't know. But proving it would be a bit tough. I'm guessing (and that's all it is) that she would not get a $1.9 million fine. If you download a song you can distribute 100,000 copies of it real quick. Burning it to CD for personal use does not steal the same song 100,000 times. That's what the crackdown is really about. One person can cause millions of copies of a song to be stolen without payment to the artist. It is certainly stealing. I don't think it warrants a $1.9 million fine. But stealing it is.
 
Kandahar said:
Why doesn't this record company sue someone who downloaded thousands of songs and allowed thousands of other people to download the songs from him...instead of someone who just stole $24 worth of merchandise? That would actually be cost-effective for them.
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She did download thousands of songs (1,700 I believe), but she was only being charged for twenty-four of them.
 
I think it would be hilarious is someone tried this same logic in other civil suits. For example, suing Lockheed or Raytheon for cheating during a bid for a defense contract. Since such corruption is pretty much never punished, you make the same argument for insane damages. If you went 90000x the damages of a 100 million dollar contract, you could sue them for 9 trillion dollars.

So NYC, how exactly is my situation any different than yours?
 
Kernel Sanders said:
Just to correct a common misconception in this thread, Thomas was sued for uploading copyrighted works, not for downloading. It's entirely plausible that she uploaded the songs or parts of them (although I don't think Kazaa does chunking) to hundreds of people, which is one of the reasons that the penalties are so harsh. They are still completely and utterly excessive, but the shoplifting analogy does not quite fit.
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This is more reasonable. However, can she argue that she was not responsible for the subsequent file-sharing that happened? Most non-computer saavy users have no idea how to stop Kazaa (or whatever they use) from appearing on startup. Files they download are automatically shared to other users, usually without consent. Is ignorance a defense here? Unless you go through the menus, it usually isn't in large text "All downloaded files are shared to thousands of users."
 
Smoke[MaxX] said:
This is more reasonable. However, can she argue that she was not responsible for the subsequent file-sharing that happened? Most non-computer saavy users have no idea how to stop Kazaa (or whatever they use) from appearing on startup. Files they download are automatically shared to other users, usually without consent. Is ignorance a defense here? Unless you go through the menus, it usually isn't in large text "All downloaded files are shared to thousands of users."
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Ignorance is not a defense. Even if it were, while it's been a long time since I used Kazaa, I believe that the program does such things as ask you to select files to share during the setup in a way that makes it clear that you are making the files public. Even if it doesn't, Thomas was certainly not ignorant of filesharing software. In college she wrote a paper on Napster in which she concluded, both a bit ironically and possibly tellingly, that it was legal.
 
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Kernel Sanders said:
Ignorance is not a defense. Even if it were, while it's been a long time since I used Kazaa, I believe that the program does such things as ask you to select files to share during the setup in a way that makes it clear that you are making the files public. Even if it doesn't, Thomas was certainly not ignorant of filesharing software - in college she wrote a paper on Napster
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Gotcha, though I'm still not sure reasonable ignorance isn't a defense. Obviously stupid ignorance is, but reasonable ignorance? I don't know. Perhaps my Law and Order memories deceive me. ;)
 
Kernel Sanders said:
In college she wrote a paper on Napster in which she concluded, both a bit ironically and possibly tellingly, that it was legal.
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p2p programs [not Napster (I) as it was centralized], of course, are legal. It is what you use it for that will or won't get you int trouble.

Obviously this is an example of using it illegally, uploading works without permission from the copyright holder. Question is, does the punishment REALLY fit the crime?
 
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Smoke[MaxX] said:
Gotcha, though I'm still not sure reasonable ignorance isn't a defense. Obviously stupid ignorance is, but reasonable ignorance? I don't know. Perhaps my Law and Order memories deceive me. ;)
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While the suit and the subsequent damages are for uploading, the intent behind the campaign of lawsuits was to go after people who download music. The "I didn't know I was uploading the songs I stole" defense probably wouldn't have cut it if anybody had tried it.
 
Kernel Sanders said:
While the suit and the subsequent damages are for uploading, the intent behind the campaign of lawsuits was to go after people who download music.
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The perfect showcase of "do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy and indecisiveness. Seems like, looking back at their websites on this matter they are indecisive on whether or not they are doing it for themselves or the artists they claim to be helping, and whether they want P2P completely eliminated or want to promote using it legally.
 
Travelsonic said:
The perfect showcase of "do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy and indecisiveness. Seems like, looking back at their websites on this matter they are indecisive on whether or not they are doing it for themselves or the artists they claim to be helping,
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They're doing it for themselves. I would be extremely surprised if any artist ever saw a cent from a lawsuit over a song of theirs.

and whether they want P2P completely eliminated or want to promote using it legally.
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If it somehow came to pass that the RIAA could unilaterally declare that all P2P software is illegal I have no doubt that they would. The content controlling organizations (mostly the RIAA, MPAA, and IFPI thought there are many others) initially took an extremely myopic view of the internet, which continues to contribute to a dearth of compelling legitimate internet-enabled services. There's a couple of okay services out there such as Pandora and Hulu, but for the most part the entertainment industry has completely failed to capitalize on the internet
 
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