The millionare neo-nazi can probably cover the bill.
The repo department tried confiscating an apartment he owned, but it was so deep into bills and debt that they lost money on it. :P
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
Not that it has all that much to do with it, but this reminds me a lot of when my dad served as jury foreman on a malpractice suit. The surgeon left five sponges in a woman's abdomen, which naturally got infected later on. When she kept coming back to the hospital for the pain, they tried to admit her to a psych facility for drug abusers. The woman sued for medical expenses, wages lost, and legal fees, and while the jury eventually found her in the right, it was for a paltry sum only a fraction of the original amount.
My dad said several jurors told him, "getting sick is a part of life and people don't need that much money to get by."
My only experience of called for jury duty was pretty good. Even given that everyone was incredibly pissed at being called in off work and frequently waiting 8 hours to not even be used on half their service days, all my fellow jury members were balanced, considerate, and very keen to reach a well thought-through decision. In part this was due to the judge effectively summarising information and reminding us of our duties and required considerations at each stage.
That being said, I thought the only power of juries was to declare a straight guilty/non-guilty verdict. Sentencing/fine levels etc. - what the hell? I hadn't heard of a legal system in the world where the jury had any say in any of this, for the exact reasons mentioned above - it encourages a distorted emotive bias rather than the use of professional judgement and precedent. If both verdicts and sentencing are passed by juries, what role does the judge play?
In relevance to the above case - does this mean that when this generation is middle-aged, copyright law will be completely worthless, as juries will simply not convict or give incredibly lenient fines at trials involving it?
Part of me doesn't feel sorry for defendants in these cases because by now we are all aware that downloading songs is illegal, and can come to bite you in the ass. Sure, the chances of it happening to you are small, but that's a risk you to take.
Nonetheless, judgments like these are mindboggling stupid. I don't think they should just fine them 99 cents for song, since then that would be no detterent at all, but 1.8 million? Fucking christ. It'll be lowered, I'm sure, but still. Lady is pretty much fucked for the rest of her life.
Some people still don't know somehow. My boss back in the beginning of this year said she just got a new mp3 player and mentioned she was gonna get songs from..blah blah blah. I jokingly mention the pitfalls of such things and she had no clue of the various shit storms that she could be in.
This fine is crazy, though. Were they even good songs and do the artists get a cut from this fine? Knowing the music industry they will get fucked over in this aspect as well.
Edit: just got a chance to read what she downloaded.
Thomas-Rasset downloaded work by artists such as No Doubt, Linkin Park, Gloria Estefan and Sheryl Crow.
She has some eclectic tastes or she was downloading for the whole family. That's a good mom.
And? People do remember hit songs from 2002. My wife and I started downloading a bunch of hit songs we remember from high school, all completely unrelated to one another outside of us gushing over how much we used to listen to them when we were 16.
The only music I ever download is from minor label stuff that is also available free either on the band's website or in person at a show. And if they sell it at the show ill' probably buy the vinyl.
I don't think ive' ever downloaded anything that was ever top 40 at any point.
What is that fine based off? Are in the US fines based off of how much you annoy juries? that seems a bit stupid..
It's a complex system of levers, pulleys, and air-filled bladders.
Actually the person filing the suit asks for $x amount, and if they win the judge/jury gets to decide what percentage of $x amount is legitimate. It's a combination of real damages (how much money was actually lost) and punitive (how much money will make it 'all better' for the complainant).
You know, I'm fine with copyright holders suing people over illegal downloads (assuming they have actual evidence), but this judgment is a tad excessive. Like, really fucking excessive. The law governing the maximum compensation needs to be brought in line with real life and not this bizzaro land where a few CDs are worth $2 million.
You know, I'm fine with copyright holders suing people over illegal downloads (assuming they have actual evidence), but this judgment is a tad excessive. Like, really fucking excessive. The law governing the maximum compensation needs to be brought in line with real life and not this bizzaro land where a few CDs are worth $2 million.
I agree but I don't understand why people are somehow blaming the RIAA for the dollar amount of the award. Reading the beginning of this thread made me want to facepalm really hard.
Surely if you pirate something and get caught, you can get a friend to buy you the CDs and just tell the courts 'well I've had these CDs in my collection for ages, these downloads are backups'.
the issue isn't really the theft (because there technically is none) it's the sharing.
Basically, the RIAA's complaint here is really that she denied them of potential income because the people that she uploaded the music to through filesharing might have paid for that music legally otherwise.
Plus detterent placed on top of it, of course.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
That complaint, however, is rather tenuous given the past incarnations we've had relating to piracy and how one pirated song /= one lost sale.
The only music I ever download is from minor label stuff that is also available free either on the band's website or in person at a show. And if they sell it at the show ill' probably buy the vinyl.
I don't think ive' ever downloaded anything that was ever top 40 at any point.
Im' not too worried
at some point, I mostly stopped listening to anything that touches the RIAA, and started listening to said small artists.
It wasn't any sort of political stand, it's just easier. I don't have to jump through hoops. I don't have to risk spyware getting stuck on my PC when I try to rip a CD. Half the time I don't evene have to pay (legally).
The RIAA's biggest mistake, IMO, is that they've caused the industry to become un-user friendly.
That complaint, however, is rather tenuous given the past incarnations we've had relating to piracy and how one pirated song /= one lost sale.
Oh, I don't disagree. I'm not for the RIAA here, just explaining how a few cds could equal a couple million dollars in damages, on a theoretical level.
Punitive action should still reflect a basis in reality. A single mom that isn't already wealthy is not and never will be able to pay $1.9m, and it's a rather shocking jump up from $220k, which at around $19k per song, is still quite excessive. Unless they were just ballparking something absurd to it could be 'toned down to a reasonable level' that's still five or six figures, I really can't see the mindset that would ever believe this was acceptable or necessary.
The going value for 24 songs online is typically $24. Increasing that by an order of magnitude seems fair to me. Doing so again seems like quite a deterrant; I sure as hell don't want to pay $100 per son. Increasing it another eighty-fold is excessive.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
The only music I ever download is from minor label stuff that is also available free either on the band's website or in person at a show. And if they sell it at the show ill' probably buy the vinyl.
I don't think ive' ever downloaded anything that was ever top 40 at any point.
Im' not too worried
at some point, I mostly stopped listening to anything that touches the RIAA, and started listening to said small artists.
It wasn't any sort of political stand, it's just easier. I don't have to jump through hoops. I don't have to risk spyware getting stuck on my PC when I try to rip a CD. Half the time I don't evene have to pay (legally).
The RIAA's biggest mistake, IMO, is that they've caused the industry to become un-user friendly.
They were way too late in setting up some legitimate way to get music quickly and cheaply online. If they had embraced the internet instead of trying to prosecute their customers, things would have turned out differently.
Now, they're stuck playing Whack-A-Mole in which the number of hole equals the number of computers in the entire fucking world.
Punitive action should still reflect a basis in reality. A single mom that isn't already wealthy is not and never will be able to pay $1.9m, and it's a rather shocking jump up from $220k, which at around $19k per song, is still quite excessive. Unless they were just ballparking something absurd to it could be 'toned down to a reasonable level' that's still five or six figures, I really can't see the mindset that would ever believe this was acceptable or necessary.
The going value for 24 songs online is typically $24. Increasing that by an order of magnitude seems fair to me. Doing so again seems like quite a deterrant; I sure as hell don't want to pay $100 per son. Increasing it another eighty-fold is excessive.
Again, she tried to lie to a jury. The jury got pissed and slammed her hard. It's doubtful the RIAA will ever try to collect.
Actually, the RIAA stated from the beginning, and still states, that it is willing to settle for a far smaller amount.
The only music I ever download is from minor label stuff that is also available free either on the band's website or in person at a show. And if they sell it at the show ill' probably buy the vinyl.
I don't think ive' ever downloaded anything that was ever top 40 at any point.
Im' not too worried
at some point, I mostly stopped listening to anything that touches the RIAA, and started listening to said small artists.
It wasn't any sort of political stand, it's just easier. I don't have to jump through hoops. I don't have to risk spyware getting stuck on my PC when I try to rip a CD. Half the time I don't evene have to pay (legally).
The RIAA's biggest mistake, IMO, is that they've caused the industry to become un-user friendly.
They were way too late in setting up some legitimate way to get music quickly and cheaply online. If they had embraced the internet instead of trying to prosecute their customers, things would have turned out differently.
Now, they're stuck playing Whack-A-Mole in which the number of hole equals the number of computers in the entire fucking world.
honestly, I think they've got things as good as they could have been. Since there has been music, it has been copied. Art is a hard thing to hold and sell. Additionally, the industry has built up too much of itself too big, and essentially built a system where they are far too dependant on things going their way to maximize profits. Essentially, they've attempted to use short-term maximization tactics as a long term plan, and failure is an inevitable result.
What they OUGHT to do is accept that some ammount of file-sharing is inevitable, just like people taping songs off of the radio was, and find a way to use the file-sharing as viral marketing instead. Then, they need to find a way to incentivise album sales. It's easy to do with physical products (fancy packaging and pack-ins) but you can do it with digital products as well, through sweepstakes and whathaveyou.
I'm interested in how or why they would even come to that amount? The maximum fine for shoplifting is $2000 per item plus a surcharge. If they didn't convict her of running some kind of redistribution ring, how'd it end up forty times that?
Edit: Okay, beaten to the punch I guess.
Isn't the going rate for shoplifting something small like a cd 10 times the amount of the item? We'll call this two cd's at 12.99 each. I would say that $259.80 cents+tax would be the most reasonable amount to fine her.
honestly, I think they've got things as good as they could have been. Since there has been music, it has been copied. Art is a hard thing to hold and sell. Additionally, the industry has built up too much of itself too big, and essentially built a system where they are far too dependant on things going their way to maximize profits. Essentially, they've attempted to use short-term maximization tactics as a long term plan, and failure is an inevitable result.
What they OUGHT to do is accept that some ammount of file-sharing is inevitable, just like people taping songs off of the radio was, and find a way to use the file-sharing as viral marketing instead. Then, they need to find a way to incentivise album sales. It's easy to do with physical products (fancy packaging and pack-ins) but you can do it with digital products as well, through sweepstakes and whathaveyou.
I'd be interested to see how well sweepstakes work for the demographics in question. In any case, the old major label system needed to die anyway. Unfortunately, I'm not all that enthused with how things are going so far, although I remain hopeful that a better, fairer system for artists emerges.
And? People do remember hit songs from 2002. My wife and I started downloading a bunch of hit songs we remember from high school, all completely unrelated to one another outside of us gushing over how much we used to listen to them when we were 16.
I too have a "nostalgia" playlist that is full of unequivocally bad music. Just awful stuff that's only good cause it reminds me of middle school and high school.
But really, what kind of crazy system lets juries choose sentencing. They have no concept of what is a reasonable sentence based on precident. I know I'd have no idea how to put a monetary value on something beyond the actual physical cost to replace it.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
Is the argument at all that when you torrent things, you have to be uploading them as well as downloading? Or purely for downloading the songs?
The charges are about uploading, although this was KaZaA which is not a torrent program but a direct P2P network. The evidence presented was that the prosecution was able to download these songs from an account at her house with the same user name as her Myspace and other accounts.
honestly, I think they've got things as good as they could have been. Since there has been music, it has been copied. Art is a hard thing to hold and sell. Additionally, the industry has built up too much of itself too big, and essentially built a system where they are far too dependant on things going their way to maximize profits. Essentially, they've attempted to use short-term maximization tactics as a long term plan, and failure is an inevitable result.
What they OUGHT to do is accept that some ammount of file-sharing is inevitable, just like people taping songs off of the radio was, and find a way to use the file-sharing as viral marketing instead. Then, they need to find a way to incentivise album sales. It's easy to do with physical products (fancy packaging and pack-ins) but you can do it with digital products as well, through sweepstakes and whathaveyou.
I'd be interested to see how well sweepstakes work for the demographics in question. In any case, the old major label system needed to die anyway. Unfortunately, I'm not all that enthused with how things are going so far, although I remain hopeful that a better, fairer system for artists emerges.
depends on which demographic you are talking about, and what the prizes are.
there is going to be some percentage of the market that NEVER pays for the music. This simply needs to be accepted. Harness them for marketing purposes, if you can, but otherwise they should be treated like a sunk cost, because you are just never going to be able to do anything about them.
On the bright side, piracy is SO GOOD for music as long as we aren't counting monetary factors
Unfortunately, that matters a lot too.
to who? Not to anyone in the bands I listen to. They ain't living high but they make money off merch and vinyl and sometimes yeah they get signed.
Dedicated fans of music will always pay to play, especially in narrowed scenes. The right people are getting attention and exposure--plenty of the wrong types still exist in the myspace crowd--but never before have audience and artist been so intimately connected and informed.
If you get lost in the top 40 struggle im' not going to bother with the sympathy cards.
On the bright side, piracy is SO GOOD for music as long as we aren't counting monetary factors
Unfortunately, that matters a lot too.
there are actually areas where filesharing has had positive monetary effects, if you net everything out.
It's just that the big organizations like the RIAA aren't seeing them, in a large part because the internet itself obsoletes much of what the RIAA does.
On the bright side, piracy is SO GOOD for music as long as we aren't counting monetary factors
Unfortunately, that matters a lot too.
to who? Not to anyone in the bands I listen to. They ain't living high but they make money off merch and vinyl and sometimes yeah they get signed.
Dedicated fans of music will always pay to play, especially in narrowed scenes. The right people are getting attention and exposure--plenty of the wrong types still exist in the myspace crowd--but never before have audience and artist been so intimately connected and informed.
If you get lost in the top 40 struggle im' not going to bother with the sympathy cards.
Although I agree with you, it's not your place to tell people what their ambitions and goals should be.
@Evander: That is true. We still need to make sure that we create a system that's fair to all artists, not just the ones we particularly like or admire.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
The difference between seeding an album online and stealing one from the store:
-Stealing the album means it's the store, not the label, who loses money. An uploaded album doesn't cost labels anything except in the sense of (people who would have bought it but now will not - people who would not have bought it but will after trying it)
-Media corporations are trying to frame file sharing in the context of copyright infringement, seemingly at 1 offense per file uploaded.
@Evander: That is true. We still need to make sure that we create a system that's fair to all artists, not just the ones we particularly like or admire.
I agree. I'm a capatalist. I think that folks should be free to sell out their art if that's what they want to do.
But I also don't think that they have a RIGHT to have people purchase it if no one thinks it's worth buying.
Ambitions and goals? If you want to make pop music go right ahead. "THIS IS AMERICA I WANT TO CHURN OUT CRAP AND HAVE 12 HOUSES"
The market will still support these morons--but I wouldn't mind if they found another corporate interest to whore themselves to rather than a greedy conglomerate of "musicians"
Maybe Britney can suck the dick of Coca-Cola and be their official strumpet that is her perogative.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
Yeah, remember this all started because fans were sick of buying an album for the 2 or 3 songs on it and paying $20 for mostly filler. Piracy gave way to iTunes, possibly the most significant development in music distribution since radio.
But really, what kind of crazy system lets juries choose sentencing. They have no concept of what is a reasonable sentence based on precident. I know I'd have no idea how to put a monetary value on something beyond the actual physical cost to replace it.
Yeah. Even though the TPB verdict was way off scale, at least the judge wrote about his reasoning and how he came up with the size of that fine.
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The repo department tried confiscating an apartment he owned, but it was so deep into bills and debt that they lost money on it. :P
My dad said several jurors told him, "getting sick is a part of life and people don't need that much money to get by."
Yay, juries.
Well, trial by jury is sort of like democracy - it's a bad system, but the alternatives are worse.
That being said, I thought the only power of juries was to declare a straight guilty/non-guilty verdict. Sentencing/fine levels etc. - what the hell? I hadn't heard of a legal system in the world where the jury had any say in any of this, for the exact reasons mentioned above - it encourages a distorted emotive bias rather than the use of professional judgement and precedent. If both verdicts and sentencing are passed by juries, what role does the judge play?
In relevance to the above case - does this mean that when this generation is middle-aged, copyright law will be completely worthless, as juries will simply not convict or give incredibly lenient fines at trials involving it?
Some people still don't know somehow. My boss back in the beginning of this year said she just got a new mp3 player and mentioned she was gonna get songs from..blah blah blah. I jokingly mention the pitfalls of such things and she had no clue of the various shit storms that she could be in.
This fine is crazy, though. Were they even good songs and do the artists get a cut from this fine? Knowing the music industry they will get fucked over in this aspect as well.
Edit: just got a chance to read what she downloaded.
She has some eclectic tastes or she was downloading for the whole family. That's a good mom.
Ha, no. The lawyers will eat it all.
RIAA actually loses money on lawsuits. Even if they win.
from 2002....
She has a time machine?!?!
Guess her problems are solved.
I don't think ive' ever downloaded anything that was ever top 40 at any point.
Im' not too worried
Actually the person filing the suit asks for $x amount, and if they win the judge/jury gets to decide what percentage of $x amount is legitimate. It's a combination of real damages (how much money was actually lost) and punitive (how much money will make it 'all better' for the complainant).
I agree but I don't understand why people are somehow blaming the RIAA for the dollar amount of the award. Reading the beginning of this thread made me want to facepalm really hard.
the issue isn't really the theft (because there technically is none) it's the sharing.
Basically, the RIAA's complaint here is really that she denied them of potential income because the people that she uploaded the music to through filesharing might have paid for that music legally otherwise.
Plus detterent placed on top of it, of course.
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at some point, I mostly stopped listening to anything that touches the RIAA, and started listening to said small artists.
It wasn't any sort of political stand, it's just easier. I don't have to jump through hoops. I don't have to risk spyware getting stuck on my PC when I try to rip a CD. Half the time I don't evene have to pay (legally).
The RIAA's biggest mistake, IMO, is that they've caused the industry to become un-user friendly.
Oh, I don't disagree. I'm not for the RIAA here, just explaining how a few cds could equal a couple million dollars in damages, on a theoretical level.
The going value for 24 songs online is typically $24. Increasing that by an order of magnitude seems fair to me. Doing so again seems like quite a deterrant; I sure as hell don't want to pay $100 per son. Increasing it another eighty-fold is excessive.
They were way too late in setting up some legitimate way to get music quickly and cheaply online. If they had embraced the internet instead of trying to prosecute their customers, things would have turned out differently.
Now, they're stuck playing Whack-A-Mole in which the number of hole equals the number of computers in the entire fucking world.
Again, she tried to lie to a jury. The jury got pissed and slammed her hard. It's doubtful the RIAA will ever try to collect.
Actually, the RIAA stated from the beginning, and still states, that it is willing to settle for a far smaller amount.
honestly, I think they've got things as good as they could have been. Since there has been music, it has been copied. Art is a hard thing to hold and sell. Additionally, the industry has built up too much of itself too big, and essentially built a system where they are far too dependant on things going their way to maximize profits. Essentially, they've attempted to use short-term maximization tactics as a long term plan, and failure is an inevitable result.
What they OUGHT to do is accept that some ammount of file-sharing is inevitable, just like people taping songs off of the radio was, and find a way to use the file-sharing as viral marketing instead. Then, they need to find a way to incentivise album sales. It's easy to do with physical products (fancy packaging and pack-ins) but you can do it with digital products as well, through sweepstakes and whathaveyou.
Isn't the going rate for shoplifting something small like a cd 10 times the amount of the item? We'll call this two cd's at 12.99 each. I would say that $259.80 cents+tax would be the most reasonable amount to fine her.
I'd be interested to see how well sweepstakes work for the demographics in question. In any case, the old major label system needed to die anyway. Unfortunately, I'm not all that enthused with how things are going so far, although I remain hopeful that a better, fairer system for artists emerges.
Unfortunately, that matters a lot too.
I too have a "nostalgia" playlist that is full of unequivocally bad music. Just awful stuff that's only good cause it reminds me of middle school and high school.
But really, what kind of crazy system lets juries choose sentencing. They have no concept of what is a reasonable sentence based on precident. I know I'd have no idea how to put a monetary value on something beyond the actual physical cost to replace it.
The charges are about uploading, although this was KaZaA which is not a torrent program but a direct P2P network. The evidence presented was that the prosecution was able to download these songs from an account at her house with the same user name as her Myspace and other accounts.
depends on which demographic you are talking about, and what the prizes are.
there is going to be some percentage of the market that NEVER pays for the music. This simply needs to be accepted. Harness them for marketing purposes, if you can, but otherwise they should be treated like a sunk cost, because you are just never going to be able to do anything about them.
to who? Not to anyone in the bands I listen to. They ain't living high but they make money off merch and vinyl and sometimes yeah they get signed.
Dedicated fans of music will always pay to play, especially in narrowed scenes. The right people are getting attention and exposure--plenty of the wrong types still exist in the myspace crowd--but never before have audience and artist been so intimately connected and informed.
If you get lost in the top 40 struggle im' not going to bother with the sympathy cards.
there are actually areas where filesharing has had positive monetary effects, if you net everything out.
It's just that the big organizations like the RIAA aren't seeing them, in a large part because the internet itself obsoletes much of what the RIAA does.
The capital is there, there will be other backers--it leaves room for independent producers to step in and mix up the game.
Although I agree with you, it's not your place to tell people what their ambitions and goals should be.
@Evander: That is true. We still need to make sure that we create a system that's fair to all artists, not just the ones we particularly like or admire.
-Stealing the album means it's the store, not the label, who loses money. An uploaded album doesn't cost labels anything except in the sense of (people who would have bought it but now will not - people who would not have bought it but will after trying it)
-Media corporations are trying to frame file sharing in the context of copyright infringement, seemingly at 1 offense per file uploaded.
I agree. I'm a capatalist. I think that folks should be free to sell out their art if that's what they want to do.
But I also don't think that they have a RIGHT to have people purchase it if no one thinks it's worth buying.
The market will still support these morons--but I wouldn't mind if they found another corporate interest to whore themselves to rather than a greedy conglomerate of "musicians"
Maybe Britney can suck the dick of Coca-Cola and be their official strumpet that is her perogative.
Yeah. Even though the TPB verdict was way off scale, at least the judge wrote about his reasoning and how he came up with the size of that fine.