News Thomas-Rasset gearing up for an appeal

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/07/07/thomas-rasset-gearing-up-for-an-appeal/1

Jammie Thomas-Rasset is gearing up for an appeal as her lawyers have filed a motion requesting a new trial or for the judge to alter the jury's verdict.

 

While i do think that piracy should be punished, i also think that 80Large per song/album is grossly excessive.
By all means, make the guy pay... he shouldn't come off scott free, but the fee is a bit high. Lower that to 80K total, and tell him to not do it again.

 

They should just make him pay the original album price, or the original itunes price, whichever is higher, and make him realize that it doesn't cost that much to actually own the music.

 

That's what I thought.
I mean we all remember AllofMP3.com... 1.6 effin TRILLION. Even more ridculous than this.

 

Do you pay to listen to music on the radio? Do you pay to watch films on tv? (disregard the bbc licence fee).

So can you get punished for making a recording off tv of a film and watching it in your own time?

$80,000 for some **** song that you could easily listen to on the radio is absolutely disgusting.

 

its a she i believe

 

He is not being punished for the songs he had, he could have acquired them legally. Its that he was sharing them. They are punishing him for the lost sales due to him making them available for free. But I highly doubt he shared those songs with 80,000 people each.

For bootleggers that sell copies of movies its easier to mark lost sales because they have a physical item. then fines on top of that. But in a virtual environment, when an item could exist infinitely, its really easy for them to put a bloated price on each item.

 

good call...

 

also a single mother I believe, I mean WTF are they trying to do, make an example of her.
The best they could do is sue a woman who had 24 "illegal" songs on her computer? WTF
I know people that never paid for music and they got humongous music collections, that's the people they should go after, but again some people are wiser than others when it comes to dloading stuff from the interwebs...

 

Does anyone know how many times the album(s) was downloaded? Well if they do then maybe she could petition to get the people who downloaded the tunes to say that they deleted the files and never listened to them and all is sorted, no one gets hurt. I think that they are trying to make an example of this woman but this will cause a bigger stir in the pirate / uploader circles. They should fine her alright but make it relative to her income, not to what the huge multi-national record companies "think" they're out of pocket by. As far as I remember the albums she uploaded were crap anyhow so there was probably only a few downloads of them.

 

Nope, no one knows, not the defense nor the prosecution. How could they?

 

and supposing she did somehow manage to pay this. do you honestly think the artists who recorded the songs he downloaded would see a single penny? hmmmm?

 

If the MPAA/RIAA really cared about the artists/actors I'd be more than surprised.

 

lol!
Kinda like saying "do you pay to drive a car? (disregard the road tax, insurance costs, fuel and cost of the car itself)"
We all pay as they're funded by advertising or the license fee.

They wanted it to be illegal back when VHS and Betamax were released.
Same argument when home taping off the radio was common.
They launched the olden day equivalent of the knock-off Nigel ads back then saying piracy was killing music.
Funnily enough, it didn't.
And that's also where the pirate bay's logo came from, the old piracy ads.

Obviously the quality of the song is subjective and if she went to the trouble of downloading it, she didn't think it was ****. And you can't listen to it any time on the radio, you have to listen to what they're playing at that time and more importantly, the adverts between the music.

IMO, one download does not equal one lost sale.
Since she didn't share them for profit it could be interpreted as free advertising for the artist.
Basically, I agree with everything the defendant's lawyers have said.

 

(thumbs up)

 

well others have stated for him to pay what it cost to buy it and well thats not enough how do you learn your lesson then??? I think like the first poster stated, drop it to 80k total not 1.92mil but even at 1.92mil doesnt matter all he will do is file for bankruptcy.

 

The statutory fines are not meant to coincide with money the industry actually lost, it is supposed to be punitive. Just like a $500 fine for littering, does it cost them that much to clean it up, no, its so you won't do it again. That said, 80,000 a song is beyond ridiculous and a single mother will never pay it whether they change it or not. I am more concerned with the other part of her lawyers argument. If it can be proven that the RIAA gathered this information illegally all of the cases will be thrown out. Let's hope so.

 

I believe there were more than 24 songs on her computer, but they limited the case to just 24 songs.

Payment way over the top, I don't think they expect to get a penny of it.

 

I can't remember where I read it (probably Slashdot) but firstly, Jammie is a woman, and was a single mother at the time of the infringement (was Thomas then, but has married <Bloke> Rasset since trial started) the court fees so far has seen her file for bancruptcy - she is completely penniless so even if the damages fee holds, no money will ever be exchanged, it is merely a media frenzy example. This could possibly be why such a rediculous fee was levied, as the judge knew it wouldn't actually be paid and so set it as high as he could get away with to serve as a deterrant ("I don't have that much money, do YOU? Don't steal from teh tubes" etc.)

Put simply, the whole trial is a complete farce. The evidence is hotly disputed, there's plenty of evidence that sharing music actually benefits the artists (Shaggy in the UK would never have gotten to his heights without Napster) and that total is an absolute joke. As has been pointed out many many times in various places, the artists will not see a single penny or cent from that total - partly because Jammie legally cannot pay it due to bancruptcy and partly because the RIAA will take a huge chunk for themselves, the lawyers will get a huge chunk and the record labels will absorb the rest for themselves.

What they need to do is a test case study. Get permission from the record label to host a song on a fileshare service and log the number of people that download the song. That number should then be multiplied by the cost on iTunes or similar and that is the fine. That's all.

On a lighter note, part of me thinks it'd be amusing if the judge when passing on the fine accidentally added an extra 3 zeros ("damn, was it million or thousand, always get them mixed up") and when he realised dismissed it as too late to change...

 

Sums up:

1) She downloaded it and shared it (unknowingly) she did not bought it. So no income anyway for Record industry
2) Then it got downloaded by a unknown amount of people (we make a gamble and guess its 80 people) those people did not bought it so this is also no income for Record Industry.

Conclusion: Record Industry did not loose any money because none of the dowloaders actually bought it or wanted to buy it. Else they would have gone out to the recordstore or itunes store.


When I am home, turn on the radio and invite all my friends for a party. I share hours and hours of music to about 40 people coming out of my loudspeakers. (probably sharing music to my neighbors to)

So thats is a multiple loss of income for the Record Industry or is it not? I am waiting for them to sue me now...