Jammie Thomas Judgment Lowered from $1.5M to $54K

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It is pretty damn sad that this is considered a victory. I guess it beats paying $62,500 per song though.

Last year, Rasset was ordered to pay $62,500 for each of the 24 songs she was accused of uploading illegally to the Web but in a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis that sum was lowered to $2,250 per song. The total damages award she is required to pay now has fallen from $1.5 million to $54,000.
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Over 2k a song? wow. even lowered, that is still an incredible amount to award.
 
The fine should have been $2400, plain and simple. Downloading a song is akin to stealing a candy bar, if a kid stole a box of 24 candy bars would we condemn him to be in debt for the greater part of his life?
 
So 2,250 times the value of the actual goods?

If someone stole a $50,000 car, could we see a judgement of $112,500,000? Or at the previous rate, $3.125 billion for that same stolen car? Maybe if the RIAA owned it, I guess. They seem to be able to get unconscionable judgements out of the courts.

Too bad that civil cases don't fall under the eighth amendment. Perhaps condemning a citizen to a lifetime of debt is only bad when the government does it; corporations can do no wrong.
 
They've got this totally wrong. The only way to make it fair is to set the amount
per infringement to one trillion dollars per song. Its the only way to make the punishment the same for everybody.
 
fattypants said:
So 2,250 times the value of the actual goods?

If someone stole a $50,000 car, could we see a judgement of $112,500,000? Or at the previous rate, $3.125 billion for that same stolen car? Maybe if the RIAA owned it, I guess. They seem to be able to get unconscionable judgements out of the courts.

Too bad that civil cases don't fall under the eighth amendment. Perhaps condemning a citizen to a lifetime of debt is only bad when the government does it; corporations can do no wrong.
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Yeah... That is a bit steep, I don't see why they are all in a hissy fit I'm sure she had no intention of buying them beforehand and now has a chance to listen to them.
 
Complete and utter BS. If the RIAA had completely ruined my life like that... I would probably snap.
 
rhone89 said:
Complete and utter BS. If the RIAA had completely ruined my life like that... I would probably snap.
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The good news is, by the time you get out of jail for the murder charge, you've paid at least 1/32 of the music downloading fee.
 
Not enough of a fine, IMO. She should be hanged.

It reminds me of a time I saw a friend loan someone a couple DVD's, I beat him nearly to death because obviously the other guy didn't have a license to watch those DVD's, especially for free. Freeloading scum.
 
It's not about downloading, it's about uploading. The copyright violation is the distribution of material that you have no right to distribute. Copyright law grants the copyright holder the exclusive right to distribute the copyrighted work(s).

The copyright holder can seek actual damages or statutory damages. Proving actual damage is difficult (in some cases, you have to rely on third parties or even on the infringer's accounting methods, which is inherently unfair for a variety of reasons).

The statutory damages were written well before the advent of P2P file sharing, and probably need to change -- but don't think that the damages were either arbitrary or akin to a fine for "stealing." Her possession of the tracks was irrelevant, except to the extent that she shared what she possessed.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Not enough of a fine, IMO. She should be hanged.

It reminds me of a time I saw a friend loan someone a couple DVD's, I beat him nearly to death because obviously the other guy didn't have a license to watch those DVD's, especially for free. Freeloading scum.
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I lol'd at this.

Those freeloading scumbags worse than the nazi's I tell you!
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Not enough of a fine, IMO. She should be hanged.

It reminds me of a time I saw a friend loan someone a couple DVD's, I beat him nearly to death because obviously the other guy didn't have a license to watch those DVD's, especially for free. Freeloading scum.
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HAHAHA!!! For some reason I read "Freeloading scum" as "Rebel scum" :D
 
Wonder if this reduced sentence correlates to every last penny and possession she has.
 
The problem with the system is the unemployed or blue collar workers get penalized the same as the white collar workers or wall street mega millionaires. This is one area where being treated as individuals vs how much you take home sucks.
 
In this thread: Candy bar and car analogies being used to describe copyright infringement.
 
srangara said:
In this thread: Candy bar and car analogies being used to describe copyright infringement.
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You could remove the other nouns entirely and just leave amounts and the analogies would still work. Just because you don't like cars and candy bars in analogies doesn't mean that the analogies aren't valid.

The companies' actual damages were $24. To award damages sixty thousand times that (or even two thousand times that) is ludicrous, analogies or not.
 
fattypants said:
You could remove the other nouns entirely and just leave amounts and the analogies would still work. Just because you don't like cars and candy bars in analogies doesn't mean that the analogies aren't valid.

The companies' actual damages were $24. To award damages sixty thousand times that (or even two thousand times that) is ludicrous, analogies or not.
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Your missing the point. They arent after her for what she downloaded, they are after her for what she potentially uploaded to others, potentially thousands or tenths of thousands of others.

This is like having a Semi outback that replicates say a Subaru WRX, and just leaving it open to the public to make as many as they see fit, come one, come all. Since she owned the machine that made and shared these copies, she is responsible for it.

(There's another analogy to add to the thread. May be a sorry one, but you get the point. )

It's not about the songs she downloaded, but the songs she shared. I think its all utter bullshit myself, I wonder how they come to determine that she shared it to X amount of people so the RIAA supposedly loss X amount of dollars, thats what I dont understand. She could have uploaded to one person or nobody for all they know, just their bots running around grabbing IP's of suspected people sharing.
 
like squeezing blood from a stone.

she's the kind of person who doesn't give a shit about her credit or declaring bankruptcy.
she's a single mom of 2 kids. She's broke already.

although the riaa may be able to garnish her wages, it would take forever to get their money.

If there's anyone who can be made an example of, it's college kids...... who have daddy's money and loans to pay their ransoms.
 
MrRuckus said:
Your missing the point. They arent after her for what she downloaded, they are after her for what she potentially uploaded to others, potentially thousands or tenths of thousands of others.

This is like having a Semi outback that replicates say a Subaru WRX, and just leaving it open to the public to make as many as they see fit, come one, come all. Since she owned the machine that made and shared these copies, she is responsible for it.

(There's another analogy to add to the thread. May be a sorry one, but you get the point. )

It's not about the songs she downloaded, but the songs she shared. I think its all utter bullshit myself, I wonder how they come to determine that she shared it to X amount of people so the RIAA supposedly loss X amount of dollars, thats what I dont understand. She could have uploaded to one person or nobody for all they know, just their bots running around grabbing IP's of suspected people sharing.
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Technically she might have only given out a few bytes of each song and then turned her machine off, because she is part of the swarm when her machine is on. Its not like she uploaded complete songs to each individual on the net, if she did then you could sue her for uploading complete songs. Somewhere their missing this point at her trial.
 
She didn't only take the candy bar, she stole the ingredients, and gave them away for free to countless more without permission. That's why the fine is so expensive.

Why do all these sudden law experts pop up, criticizing the system each time a thread like this is opened?
 
Salavat23 said:
She didn't only take the candy bar, she stole the ingredients, and gave them away for free to countless more without permission. That's why the fine is so expensive.

Why do all these sudden law experts pop up, criticizing the system each time a thread like this is opened?
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You work for the RIAA or MPAA don't you?
 
Salavat23 said:
She didn't only take the candy bar, she stole the ingredients, and gave them away for free to countless more without permission. That's why the fine is so expensive.

Why do all these sudden law experts pop up, criticizing the system each time a thread like this is opened?
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Because we..*cough*, THEY, look at their 100+ gb music collections and think about how obnoxious the fine would be.

Also this:
Technically she might have only given out a few bytes of each song and then turned her machine off, because she is part of the swarm when her machine is on. Its not like she uploaded complete songs to each individual on the net, if she did then you could sue her for uploading complete songs. Somewhere their missing this point at her trial.
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And after August 2nd (if the US gov't continues to fuck up as usual), that amount will again change to...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf7uJDhVZIE"]‪Dr. Evil 100 Billion Dollars‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]
 
DarkStar02 said:
Because we..*cough*, THEY, look at their 100+ gb music collections and think about how obnoxious the fine would be.

Also this:
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$1.5 million for 24 songs.

at that rate, i owe (wait. lemme calculate).......

$26250 million.

or, $26.3 billion. Do you take Monopoly dollars ?
 
RyanLucier said:
The fine should have been $2400, plain and simple. Downloading a song is akin to stealing a candy bar, if a kid stole a box of 24 candy bars would we condemn him to be in debt for the greater part of his life?
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Terrible example. A song shared to 10 people.. Becomes 100... becomes 1000... becomes 10,000. Get the picture? What happens if you share a candy bar? It gets eaten and is gone.
 
MrRuckus said:
Your missing the point. They arent after her for what she downloaded, they are after her for what she potentially uploaded to others, potentially thousands or tenths of thousands of others.
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Wrong, they're after her to make a point. She unfortunately was the one who was caught, and crucified as a symbol for all others to see.

Granted this occurs everywhere, if you steal the box of candy bars you're going to get a fine/jail time which exceeds the cost of those candy bars to act as a warning to all others who might want to take candy. However the big difference is that no one fucking sues in civil court if you took a box of candy bars, or if you steal a car you're facing criminal charges not civil. Which is the huge cluster fuck that is the problem, because in a civil trial you're not innocent until proven guilty, you actually need to prove your innocence, and it requires much less to make you lose, where as in a criminal case I doubt any one who's fought the RIAA would lose with the whole "look at this computer print out with IP addresses, this is all the proof I need" type of arguments, and they know this. They're not going to make any money making people go to prison, so sue them in civil court, seriously these are the ambulance chasers of industry
 
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