Woman ordered to pay $1.5 million for file-sharing 24 songs

[Qalbert]

I would owe well over a billion dollars.

[Antithesis]

I don't know why they even bother anymore. They aren't going to put and end to this no matter how hard they try.

[Ksandra]

I don't know why they even bother anymore. They aren't going to put and end to this no matter how hard they try.

this is an old case, even in the article it mentions:

In December 2008, the RIAA said it will stop suing people who download music illegally and focus instead on getting Internet Service Providers to take action.

This case just wasn't finished yet at the time they said it.

[aurik]

"Settlement" letters are essentially a shakedown.

1.5m is a ridiculous result, clearly contravenes the 8th amendment.

[Killgannon]

http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleim...bay_header.jpg

relevant, though against TPB

so lets see here.. 32216x382353=1,232,358,648

sweet, i only owe a trillion dollars (probably more)! no worries... despite the fact that 99% of my music is either completely legal or bootlegs or indie artists that dont give a fuck!

[Fhqwghads]

Did you?

No... I quoted the article using a room filled with monkeys on typewriters until they came up with something that sounded close enough to what I'd imagine the article would contain. It's pretty obvious I read it, so what's with the smart ass reply?

It's her own damn fault for not settling in the beginning.

If, based on the article, she was being sued for a ridiculous amount of money simply for downloading 24 songs, it is absolutely NOT unreasonable for her to appeal. My opinion was based solely on what I read in the article. I've no idea what the original judgement award was, but assuming that:

1) this was when CDs were still big
2) a typical release had 12 tracks on it so the cost would be $1.33 a song
3) penalties for illegally downloading copyrighted material would be up to the judge and perhaps $50

...she'd have to cough up around $100. Maybe more for court costs. That would not be unreasonable. Knowing what the RIAA was trying to fuck people over with back then, however, the amount was probably in orders of magnitude more than that. I would have told them to go fuck themselves too in that case. IF I wasn't a retard allowing people to download off of my shares, that is. You start distributing copyrighted material and you're in for a world of hurt.

[Ksandra]

No... I quoted the article using a room filled with monkeys on typewriters until they came up with something that sounded close enough to what I'd imagine the article would contain. It's pretty obvious I read it, so what's with the smart ass reply?

The smart ass reply is you attack others for not reading, without education yourself about the situation.

Here you go:

First trial

The proceedings and trial were held in Duluth, Minnesota and were presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Michael J. Davis. Thomas was represented by Minneapolis attorney Brian Toder.[7] In the trial, the plaintiffs alleged that on February 21, 2005, Jammie Thomas shared a total of 1,702 tracks online. The plaintiffs, however, sought relief for only 24 of these.

Thomas contended that she was not the person behind the "tereastarr" account and denied having downloaded any files.[1][8] During the trial, her lawyer suggested her computer could have been under the control of people elsewhere due to "a spoof, a zombie or some other type of hack".[9] Juror Michael Hegg later commented, "She's a liar."[10] A hard drive containing the copyrighted songs was never presented at the trial. Thomas turned over to the plaintiffs' attorneys a hard drive that contained neither Kazaa nor the infringing files.[9][10]

The jury was instructed that merely "making available" sufficed to constitute an infringement of the plaintiffs' distribution right, even without proof of any actual distribution.[1][11][12] The issue of whether copyright infringement required actual distribution was raised by the defense during examination of Sony BMG's head of litigation on the first day of trial, but the court sustained the plaintiffs' objection and did not permit the topic to be revisited until jury instructions were prepared just before the end of the trial.[12] Despite disagreement from the defense, the court proceeded to interpret making available as distribution for purposes of instructing the jury.[12]

On October 4, 2007, after 5 minutes of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict finding her liable for willful infringement, and awarded statutory damages in the amount of $9,250 for each of the 24 songs, for a total of $222,000.
[edit] Retrial

The retrial found Thomas-Rasset liable for willful copyright infringement, and awarded plaintiffs damages of $1.92 million. The judge in Thomas' trial had ordered the retrial because recent case law had cast doubt on the theory of "making available" as sufficient for infringement.[13][14][15]

In May 2009, during preparation for the retrial, Brian Toder stepped down as Thomas-Rasset's lawyer. Thomas-Rasset then accepted Joe Sibley and Kiwi Camara's offer to defend her pro bono.[16][17]

The retrial was held on June 15, 2009 under the updated case name Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset. In this trial, the jury was instructed to find the owners' copyrights were infringed provided the ownership claims were valid and provided there was an infringement of either the reproduction right (via Thomas-Rasset "downloading copyrighted sound recordings on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners") or the distribution right (via Thomas-Rasset "distributing copyrighted sound recordings to other users on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners"). For each song reproduced or distributed, the infringement had to be assessed as willful or non-willful, and damages assessed accordingly. The jury was not allowed to be specific about which rights (distribution or reproduction) were infringed, and unlike in the first trial, the judge didn't attempt to define distribution.[18]

After 5 hours of deliberation on June 18, the jury found Thomas-Rasset liable for willful copyright infringement of all the songs, and awarded to the plaintiffs statutory damages of $1.92 million ($80,000 per song, out of an allowed range of $750 to $150,000).[19][20]
[edit] Motion for injunction

On July 6, 2009, the plaintiffs filed a motion asking for an injunction against Thomas-Rasset that would require her to destroy all infringing sound recordings on her computer and desist from any further infringement of their copyrights. Their motion claims trial evidence established that Thomas-Rasset "was distributing 1,702 sound recordings ... to millions of other users" and that the plaintiffs would face "great and irreparable harm" if she were to continue to infringe upon their copyrights.[21]
[edit] Reduction of damages and settlement offer

Also on July 6, 2009, Thomas-Rasset filed a motion asserting the statutory damage award was so disproportionate to actual damages as to be unconstitutional, and announcing her intention to appeal two prior court orders permitting the plaintiffs to present certain evidence at trial. The evidence in question includes allegedly incomplete and therefore inadmissible copyright registrations, and evidence collected by MediaSentry that the motion claimed should have been inadmissible because it was collected in violation of state private investigator and wiretap statutes. The motion called for either a retrial with that evidence suppressed, a reduction of damages to the statutory minimum ($750 per song; $18,000 total), or a removal of statutory damages altogether.[22]

The following January, Judge Davis reduced the amount of the damages to $54,000, characterizing the original damages as "monstrous and shocking."[3]

A few days later, the plaintiffs proposed to Thomas-Rasset a $25,000 settlement, which she declined.[23] The plaintiffs then rejected the damage reduction ordered by the judge.[24] Because of the parties' failure to reach a settlement, the court on June 18 appointed a special master to facilitate negotiations.[25] After the settlement negotiations were unsuccessful, a third trial to re-determine the amount of damages was set for October 4, 2010.[26]
[edit] Third trial

On November 4, 2010 Thomas-Rasset lost another round in court as a jury in Minneapolis decided that she was liable for $1.5 million in copyright infringement damages to Capitol Records.

She initially lied in court that it wasn't hers. It wasn't just downloading, she uploaded it too. She shared about 1700 songs but was only getting trialed for 24 of them. Twice they offered her settlements and she refused each time.

[Fhqwghads]

The smart ass reply is you attack others for not reading, without education yourself about the situation.

Here you go:

She initially lied in court that it wasn't hers. It wasn't just downloading, she uploaded it too. She shared about 1700 songs but was only getting trialed for 24 of them. Twice they offered her settlements and she refused each time.

...and none of that was in the article that was posted. As I stated: I read the article, and based on the contents of this thread & that article, people seemed to speculate all sorts of things that weren't mentioned in it. I even stated in my post that if she did more than what was reported there then she was an idiot, and I suspected there was more to it since the media loves generating sensational eye-catching titles and articles. The way people were replying without any reference to other more in-depth information lead me to believe they were replying without even reading the article. I'd hardly say that me calling people out for not reading the article is a huge jump in logic given what this thread contained up until I posted my response.

[Deadgye]

She initially lied in court that it wasn't hers.

Well, is it certain this was a lie? If it wasn't her actions make complete sense to me. The hard drive turned over had neither kazaa nor the files on them. It should have been easy to determine if the hard drive turned over was altered. Personally, I think none of us have enough information to pass any judgment without making a multitude of assumptions.

The one thing we can say for sure is that she's stubborn as fuck. :D

[Dimmauk]

http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleim...bay_header.jpg

relevant, though against TPB

so lets see here.. 32216x382353=1,232,358,648

sweet, i only owe a trillion dollars (probably more)! no worries... despite the fact that 99% of my music is either completely legal or bootlegs or indie artists that dont give a fuck!

That is horrible! Vanilla Ice songs should be worth more than that!

[Ksandra]

Well, is it certain this was a lie? If it wasn't her actions make complete sense to me. The hard drive turned over had neither kazaa nor the files on them. It should have been easy to determine if the hard drive turned over was altered. Personally, I think none of us have enough information to pass any judgment without making a multitude of assumptions.

The one thing we can say for sure is that she's stubborn as fuck. :D

I think we can assume it was a lie because in her later cases she didn't deny it anymore. If in all three she was fighting it because she claimed innocence then I could understand. The second two were about her feeling she shouldn't have to pay.

I'd hardly say that me calling people out for not reading the article is a huge jump in logic given what this thread contained up until I posted my response.

you asked first, I explained you sounded very hypocritical. Let it go.

[Ikith]

Isn't the person that pays for the internet connection the one that is held liable for shit like this?

[aurik]

"She shared over 1700 songs" is utterly without consequence if she only was trialed on 24 of them. A couple few reasons why:
- findings of fact were made with respect to the 24 songs, and may or may not hold for the other 1676.
- the RIAA is in no way barred from following up this lawsuit with another for the some or all of the remaining 1676 songs, and in fact could use legal precedents AND findings of fact established in the initial case to make their subsequent case stronger.

[Vuitton]

The laywer for this woman wants the damages owed to be extremely high. The higher the better because when they go to trial AGAIN and AGAIN the stupidly high damages award helps their cause in having these damages deemed unconstitutional, making case law.

What does this woman care if the damages are 54,000 or 5 billion dollars? She can't afford to pay either, and because they are civil damages, she is going to declare bankruptcy and have it wiped out. The goal is to prevent excessive damages like these from being used in the future.

[Kerberoz]

With shit like Pandora/Napster/Lastfm, who the fuck downloads music anymore?

Fuck streaming for anything other than 2-minute cute kitten or skateboarding ball-shot clips, and fuck this obsession that everyone seems to have with it for the last couple years, as if it's some revolutionary awesome new technology. There's nothing good about streaming anything that you want to view/hear more than twice. Nothing. Also, fuck lossy audio. </rant>

[Cream Soda]

I'd owe as much money as qualbie

[Priran]

shouldn't have been listening to gaga in a warzone

[Pooky]

Fuck streaming for anything other than 2-minute cute kitten or skateboarding ball-shot clips, and fuck this obsession that everyone seems to have with it for the last couple years, as if it's some revolutionary awesome new technology. There's nothing good about streaming anything that you want to view/hear more than twice. Nothing. Also, fuck lossy audio. </rant>

Fucking THIS. The only thing sites like Last.fm are good for (and the only thing I use it for) is to track your listening habits to help you find new artists or people with similar tastes.


On topic however: I wouldn't settle either, just because I know that not a fucking cent is going to the artists who created the tracks that were shared. I love music, I support the artists every chance I get through merch/live shows, but I don't buy albums if they're signed to major labels. The American record industry deserves to fucking die, and if by my downloading songs puts another nail in their coffin I'm not stopping.

[Snprphnx]

she needs to take it to the US Supreme Court. While what she did was illegal, i would hope there is no way the Justices would allow a 1.5million fine, especially after the RIAA stopped going after the individual.

[Corrderio]

True it's severe, but it's also her fault in a way since wasn't the original settlement around 25,000 dollars and she refused?