[rab777hp]

it also depends on how she was doing it, if she simply downloaded some files, or used something like limewire or torrents, and actively proliferated the pirated files.

[wardoggie]

I didn't see any mention of how she got the songs (and I've been following this trial almost from the beginning). So, we don't know that she downloaded them from a file-sharing network. That's why no one is asking that particular question. The trial is about her sharing them and she was found guilty of doing that twice.



Also, it's not about the cost of the rights of the songs. According to copyright law mentioned in the article, fines "range from $750 to $150,000 per violation." If it were tied to the price it takes to obtain the rights to a piece of intellectual property, people like JK Rowling would be screwed. I would wager her publisher's advances are worth millions -- and that's before she even begins writing! If someone "pirated" one of her books just once, and the ceiling was $150k, it wouldn't even come close to representing her damages.



If the RIAA had to justify the damages they were seeking, it would go a long way toward making the situation clearer. But because the law only establishes a range, and doesn't tie it to any supportable claim, it frees juries to conjure up their own rationales for whatever penalties they want.

[hillstones]

rab777hp said:

She deserves the fine, she stole, she pirated, she knowingly broke the law and cheated people out of money. Now she pays for it

Give me a break! Not too long ago you BRAGGED about how cool you were about refusing to pay for software (Delicious Library 2) because you figured out a way to circumvent the trial version. You are the first one to avoid paying for something that you use. Hypocrite.

[hayesk]

mrbach said:

She didn't steal anything. People need to understand what copyright means.
You can't steal something if you have a copy of it only.

Every time an article about copyright violation appears, someone writes a post like yourself.

Here's something you (and others) need to understand: everyone knows the difference between copyright violation and stealing a physical object. However, the use of the word "stealing" while technically is not correct, is a much more convenient term, and everyone understands what it means.

I used to correct people between the difference of "nauseated" and "nauseous" but I gave up - why? Because it doesn't really matter.

There's no use trying to correct people on the difference between stealing and copyright violation, because it doesn't matter. Stealing has become slang for copyright violation - accept it.

This woman "stole" music - and deserves a fine, plain and simple. However, in my opinion, the fine was way too high.

[Rand]

Ars Technica has a day by day account of the retrial. Its an interesting read if you have 30 minutes to spare. Ars doesn't agree with the final verdict (of the first trial) but based on the testimony they report on in their article the something is fishy with what the lady is saying.
http://arstechnica.c...law-abiding.ars

[Galloway]

wardoggie said:

No, she was found guilty of sharing 24 songs. The RIAA alleges that she actually made 1702 available, but were only able to prove that she shared 24.

If this is true my original post is essentially still valid. If 1702 songs were "made available" but they could only prove 24 were uploaded -- i.e. stolen -- by someone else, then she's still only responsible for $23.76 in lost revenue to the record companies. They can't prove whoever stole the songs shared them afterwards. If the RIAA only proved that 24 songs were uploaded, they can probably find out who uploaded them. How come they didn't go after THEM for the theft equivalent, i.e. $23.76?

You can argue this woman's responsibility till the cows come home, lost future revenue, blah blah blah, but you're arguing things that are impossible to prove, and it's a very, very steep and slippery slope into putative nonsense. These lawsuits are meant to prevent piracy, right? Have they? Isn't music piracy accelerating? A better strategy has always been to make buying music convenient and inexpensive... to make searching out P2P software and stealing less convenient than buying it. Which is what Apple did with the iTunes store. So of course the RIAA fights with Apple over every nickel and time, because apparently getting $0.70 per song for doing nothing isn't enough. Piracy isn't killing the music business, the MUSIC BUSINESS is killing the music business.

Hell, the RIAA is now trying to claim that ringtones constitute a performance of a song, and want to charge every person on the planet who has ever used a song as a ringtone for royalties. The lawyers of the RIAA are clinically insane.

I'm not in any way saying music piracy is right. But why is the RIAA going after the Jammie Thomas's of the world, and not the pirates in Asia who steal thousands of times more than the P2P networks do? The RIAA comes across, at every step and in every way, as a bully. No one has sympathy for their "plight". So even though piracy is wrong, people cheer for the pirates.

[rab777hp]

There's a difference from legally using a trial software, and illegally downloading pirated files.

[Rand]

[quote name='Galloway']
>

wardoggie said:

> No, she was found guilty of sharing 24 songs. The RIAA alleges that she actually made 1702 available, but were only able to prove that she shared 24.

If this is true my original post is essentially still valid. If 1702 songs were "made available" but they could only prove 24 were uploaded -- i.e. stolen -- by someone else, then she's still only responsible for $23.76 in lost revenue to the record companies. They can't prove whoever stole the songs shared them afterwards. If the RIAA only proved that 24 songs were uploaded, they can probably find out who uploaded them. How come they didn't go after THEM for the theft equivalent, i.e. $23.76?

No.....SHE downloaded 24 songs, and made 1702 available for download by others. What I think screwed her was her own conflicting testimony. On numerous occasions she was "shady" at best, to the point that I think the jury got pissed off at her. She wrote a college paper about Napster and how file sharing was NOT illegal, then claimed she didn't know what Kazaa was. Read the Ars article linked above.....if the "facts" they quote are accurate.....she was at best stupid, but far from innocent.

[Galloway]

[quote name='Rand']
> [quote name='Galloway']
> >

wardoggie said:

> > No, she was found guilty of sharing 24 songs. The RIAA alleges that she actually made 1702 available, but were only able to prove that she shared 24.
>
> If this is true my original post is essentially still valid. If 1702 songs were "made available" but they could only prove 24 were uploaded -- i.e. stolen -- by someone else, then she's still only responsible for $23.76 in lost revenue to the record companies. They can't prove whoever stole the songs shared them afterwards. If the RIAA only proved that 24 songs were uploaded, they can probably find out who uploaded them. How come they didn't go after THEM for the theft equivalent, i.e. $23.76?

No.....SHE downloaded 24 songs, and made 1702 available for download by others. What I think screwed her was her own conflicting testimony. On numerous occasions she was "shady" at best, to the point that I think the jury got pissed off at her. She wrote a college paper about Napster and how file sharing was NOT illegal, then claimed she didn't know what Kazaa was. Read the Ars article linked above.....if the "facts" they quote are accurate.....she was at best stupid, but far from innocent.

I've read the Ars article now, and I'm back to my original point, which is STILL valid. Actual damages are only $23.76 (at $0.99/song). Yes, the copyright infringement laws allow for statutory damages in excess of the actual damage, but even the Chief Justice of Minnesota argues that fines beyond 100 times actual damage -- or $5400 in his calculations, $2376 in mine in this case -- are excessive.

(You are also misreading what the Ars article actually says a little I think, though. The article states she wrote a paper on Napster in college, yes, claiming that what Napster was doing was legal. The article does NOT say whether this paper said FILE SHARING was legal. And Napster was only indexing shared files, not sharing them. Without reading the paper itself, neither of us know what her point really was. And certainly having written a paper about Napster doesn't require she knew about Kazaa, which only came about some time later, IIRC. Nitpicky point, I know, but still valid. And I agree with your "at best stupid, (at worst) far from innocent" assessment of Ms. Thomas.)

I was back on the fence about the fine when I was unsure if the RIAA was pursuing her for sharing the 1702 songs, or downloading the 24. Now that I know it was about downloading the 24, the RIAA is back to looking like a ginormous bully again. Especially when they can't, under any circumstances whatsoever, prove that Jammie was the one who actually did the copyright violation.

Of course, copyright itself needs a vast, VAST legal overhaul, but that's a topic for another day.

[rab777hp]

Still- no one is answering my question! Why the hell did she download them in the first place1?!?!?!
Its not like she didn't know it was illegal, she knowingly and willingly participated in the piracy of music.

[wardoggie]

While I agree with your conclusion, you misstate the facts (which are not provided in the Ars Technical article you linked to).
1. RIAA investigators accessed Thomas' computer via Kazaa

2. They took screen shots of 1,702 files in her share folder. This is where the "she made 1702 songs available" allegation comes from.

3. They downloaded 24 songs from her share folder as evidence that she was engaging in copyright infringement

4. One month after the infringement was detected, Thomas got a new hard drive. (See 5th paragraph in the "Bulldog on defense" section.) This is why the RIAA can only prove she shared 24 songs. The only evidence she shared more than that are screen shots. No one knows what happened to the hard drive in question, so no forensic evidence is available other than those screen shots. I assume (and IANAL) that the RIAA didn't want to submit evidence that could be contested, so they stuck to the 24 songs they had "in hand" so to speak.

I still haven't seen anywhere that SHE downloaded the songs to begin with. And it's irrelevant, because she was not charged with illegally downloading music. But yes, her conflicting testimony seems to be what did her in.

Again, I don't think there's any doubt she's guilty of copyright infringement. But I agree with Jeff Bertolucci (author of the article we're discussing) that the damages are way out of line with the crime.

[Rand]

Yeah the punishment does seem a little harsh, however Jeff is saying she deserves a new trial. She got one and she lost again.....and a different jury liked her even less than the first one.

Don't get me wrong, I despise the RIAA and their tactics.....but I guess without actually either reading the entire court transcripts for myself or actually having sat on either of the two juries I still got to ask how did two separate juries come away and find in favor of the rat bastards at the RIAA? Something about her story really must have hit a nerve with both juries.

I'll add, I agree with the other posters when they say that the music industry is contributing far more to the decline of their industry than illegal downloaders. I know in my own case easy access to legally downloadable songs has given the music industry far more of my hard earned dollars in the last 3 years than I spent in the previous 10. Unfortunately many companies don't seem to understand that sometimes less is more. They'd rather sell 10 CDs of 10 songs than 1000 downloads of 1 song. Makes no sense to me. I don't want that one song bad enough to buy 9 other lousy songs just to get it, I'll pass on all 10.

[Wondercow]

rab777hp said:

There's a difference from legally using a trial software, and illegally downloading pirated files.

If one has to circumvent the lock-out to certain features then one is not "legally using a trial software":
bq. and its not stealing, its just that, i only need a couple features it offers, but one of them is restricted without the license, so i found a work around with the trial version, so i have what i need.
>She deserves the fine, she stole, she pirated, she knowingly broke the law and cheated people out of money. Now she pays for it
And yet you steal from Apple by using OS X on non-Apple hardware. Hypocrite, troll, thief, liar--and you get upset when people talk of the general values and education associated with Third World countries, like the one(s) your family comes from, and where you've firmly affixed your mentality.

[kenhare]

As this discussion has gone way beyond being useful and has degenerated into name calling, could someone politely advise a relative newbie how to stop continuing to get emails alerting me to new, unnecessary posts in said discussion?