For those of you that don't keep up with things like this the RIAA had sued a woman for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. The original trial took place about a year ago with a guilty verdict and an award of $222,000. A couple of weeks later the judge decided that he had messed up in his jury instructions and threw out the whole trial and they started again.
The new trial just ended yesterday and unsurprisingly a guilty verdict was again rendered. However, the damages awarded this time around were $1.92 million. This is just ludicrous. I'm not going to argue over whether or not she was guilty as the evidence mostly seems to point that way, but isn't completely solid as in theory someone else could have used her computer, but it seems unlikely. What is ridiculous is the amount awarded to the RIAA. Based on the standard industry price of around $1.00 a song, the amount should be around $24 multiplied by the number of times the song was downloaded. Even if you figure it was downloaded 50 times, which seems to be a rather high estimate based on the number of other users probably sharing the same thing, the loss comes out to be $1200. Even 3-5 times that amount might be reasonable, but to award an organization with the resources of the RIAA $1.92 million from a single mom with two kids is simply retarded.
There are currently plans to appeal the case. Given any luck it will make it up to the Supreme Court and these kinds of damages will be ruled unconstitutional and we'll finally see the end of ludicrous damage awards in these kind of cases.
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2 comments:
God this type of thing drives me nuts. It's rediculous how many suits get brought against the populace for "ripping off" an industry but the reverse is virtually not allowed.
With this type of thinking, the entire country should be able to sue the pi$$ out of the oil industry for ripping off the entire country for the last 8 years. But ooooh no, they're protected by the feds.
1.92 MILLION dollars for sharing 24 songs? Yeah, first off, she'll never be able to pay that. Second off, the amount is just plain idiotic. There is no way her sharing of 24 songs to even a few people could constitute 1.92 million in losses or damages. That's just plain retarded and greedy. I'm sorry but the judge and jury in that case should all be taken out back, slapped upside the head and called a dumb@$$.
It's idiotic crap like this that makes the rest of the world look at the US and point and laugh like we are all sitting around acting like a bunch of morons.
Solution: take Nykk's figures. Add 2 years probation and 300 hours community service and move on to a case that truly deserves not only one trial...but TWO. DAMN!
Actually in this particular case I have to hold the judge blameless. I've heard that he thought the original $220,000 was ridiculous. Unfortunately the amounts are not for him to decide, but for the jury. I know that personally if I ever had to go through a court case where I was being sued for ridiculous amounts of money, I would NOT want a jury trial. In most of these outrageous settlement cases it's a jury awarding the ridiculous amounts while the judges tend to be more moderate.
As for the community service, I'm don't think it's possible for that to happen in a civil case. However, IANAL so I don't know that for sure.
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