Ambulance chasing in the 21st century. $80k a track. Who was the jury. The CEO and their kids of the fortune 500?

Jammie lied and lied through two public trials. Now she wants a third?

The RIAA shouldn't get a cent - the fine should go to the US taxpayer. And Jammie should be tried under a different law:

Whoever—

(1) having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true; or

(2) in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code, willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe to be true;

is guilty of perjury and shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. This section is applicable whether the statement or subscription is made within or without the United States.

You'd think she'd realise that the time has come to cut any deal she can, but I guess she's got idiot lawyers behind her who tell her "this time we might win". The story seems to be that the juries are so impressed by her lies, hiding evidence and all the rest of it that by the end of the trial they'd be happy to sign her up for a long fall and a short rope...

... is that the courts need babysitters so bad that the ludicrousness of this award amount didn't occur to them at the time.

On the other hand, if the damages are actually incalculable as claimed then we have no option but to fall back on the current market value which was supposed as $1.29 each, or in the face of a staggering $1.92m alternative, round it off to $0 per song.

What the content holders still sorely lack is not just evidence they suffer any losses from filesharing, but the balls to suggest that if filesharers didn't get these tracks from Ms. Thomas, that they'd have just said "oh well" and given up.

It's high time we face that fact that no one individual filesharer who is sharing things already released to the wild (even if by illegal sharing), is actually causing damages so long as other sources remain present. You can't punish one person for what others do and pretend you are upholding justice for very long.

To make sure the system works she needs to file a counter-suit for harassment, claiming this has destroyed her life and mental health unfairly.

Win the trial for a large sum and the system will have meted out the justice we all want. I think a $3-$4m dollar figure sounds about right. And getting the RIAA award down to about $10k.

Go USA justice system. WOOT

She was fined $220K, but won a retrial on the basis the judge's direction to the jury that the RIAA didn't have to prove actual downloading was wrong. Presumably with correct direction, the new jury awarded the RIAA $1.92m? Now she's going for another trial - what's the damages from that going to be - $5m?

I read the other day that someone who lost three family members in a car crash managed to sue for $75,000, that's worked out at only $24,000 per person. Meanwhile the RIAA sues Jammie Thomas ( who I personally think is an idiot but good luck to her for proving the law is as usual an ass! ) for something like $150,000 per MP3 file. So offering a computer file that harms no one directly, is worth six times a person's life.

The other fact was that if the average MP3 is worth $1 to buy, then she would have had to uploaded 2 million copies of these files in the space of a few weeks, average size 4MB, that works out at 8TB uploaded on 256k ADSL line!

Way to go RIAA, put things into persepctive!

A few thousand dollars is a better deterrent than millions of dollars that everyone knows she cannot afford to pay. The record companies now look like utter bastards and the record buying public feels sorry for her even though she is a thief.

Some years ago I was working at a company where a trainee engineer died in an unsafe work environment. The company was fined $50,000. Still, that's $30,000 cheaper than daring to put a single song on Kazaa.

Yes, I know it's apples and oranges to an extent. And I l know that the $1.92 million would never actually get paid. All the same $1.92 million for sharing 24 songs is absurd. The politicians who voted this law into effect were not considering the welfare of the people first and foremost.

Well yeah......$1.92 million is rather fucked up. I cannot see how more then a Dollar 92 will make it to the artist themselves. *shrugs* As much as I feel for her I really gotta say our legal system is retarded to let damages of that amount be awarded in the first place.

And yes I know this comment runs the risk of the flametards attacking me because of it but fuck it, FLAME ON *goes and draws a large flaming number 4 in the sky*

/Beer beer beer is good its grain and protein, it's a meal.

"Get 'yer copy of the motion right here (PDF). ®"

Shouldn't that read "Get yer motion's Copyright here (PDF)"??

I bet you can hear the shitty, mass-produced songs for free on the radio, which you could then record on a tape deck. Nobody knows, nobody cares.

But because they can trace this instance of it happening? LITERALLY INCALCULABLE DAMAGE.

Just like they are inflicting on their own public image.

Perhaps if artists were only paid royalties it would make piracy seem more like stealing, instead of the record companies paying small royalties that only supplement the million dollar deals that get signed before any music has even been produced.

I prefer to buy from the label direct online, then at least I know most of the money is going to the people that have provided a service. I'd rather buy from the artist direct, but whatchagonnadoeh?

All the RIAA are going to achieve is lots (more) poor American people declaring bankruptcy and them still not getting shit all.

So.... 63,000 times the value must mean each song was uploaded to another user 63,000 times. At about 3MB per song (and could easily be more), that'd be 63000 * 3 * 24 = 4536000MB, or /1024 = 4430GB of uploads - just over 4TB.

Assuming her upload speed was 256kb/s (typical for ADSL) and ran continuously at that speed for 24 hours per day, then in one day she could upload 21GB per day. Therefore it would have taken 210 days of constant maxed-out uploads, assuming she could do 256k/sec continuosly and that her PC was never switched off for this to be the case. I kind of think her ISP might have noticed....

@ Ian 45: Technically, she's not a thief, just someone infringing copyright. Theft implies the original owner no longer has the item in question (like a CD from a record shop).

The whole copyright of music is crazy beyond imagination. For example, CDs usually contain in the small print a clause to prevent public performance, so I technically broke the copyright by using the track in a pass-the-parcel game at my son's birthday party. Copying it to my iPod is an infringement I believe.

These fines are designed to deter people from running their own CD pressing facility churning out counterfeits.

As for the 'incalculable damage' claim - if they were to actually try to work out the damage, they would have to admit, in a court of law, that a proportion of the shared files led to legitimate purchases, a proportion would have been listened to once and then discarded and the copier would never have bought the item anyway and only a small amount would be regularly listened to. Which of course they would never do.

This fine is just crazy on so many levels. As James O'Brien suggested, the artists probably won't see any of the fine since the copyright is held by recording company. So, the big companies screw two groups at the same time - artists and consumers.

Skizz

"Perhaps if artists were only paid royalties it would make piracy seem more like stealing, instead of the record companies paying small royalties that only supplement the million dollar deals that get signed before any music has even been produced."

Um, you do know that a "million dollar contract" isn't actually free money to the artist? It's a LOAN. It's what the label is going to invest in producing the recordings / tour costs / advertising etc based on what they think the returns will be - and they fully expect it to be repaid. If an artist signs a "million dollar contract" and then only makes $100,000 back for the label he/she will be expected to pay back the remaining $900,000.

It's a common misconception (unfortuantely also amongst small new bands) that as soon the contract is signed they can empark on a spending spree...

Call it a "music mortgage". When the bank gives you that $150,000 mortgage they're not kindly offering to buy the house for you... they're just covering it until you pay it back.

"Are they trying to punish her? Quite possibly. And if so, then it very well may have something to do with the fact that she lied under oath about the account not being hers and that it was someone illegally using her unsecured wireless access point (despite the fact that she didn't have one), and her willful destruction of evidence (having her hard drive replaced before it was allowed to be examined) and lying about that."

So she should be prosecuted in a separate trial for perjury and the like. I suppose you believe it's alright to convict someone for any crime because you just don't happen to like them very much.

"if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Let me correct that for you: if you think injustice exists in this world, just kill yourself.

"Don't mess with a bull, you might get the horns."

Let me correct that for you: if you're not a magnate, just do as you're told, whatever that may be.

"If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."

Let me correct that for you: if you can't do the time for murder don't shoplift.

"music for which she had already lawfully purchased the CD's, "

She already has a hard copy. She was downloading a digital copy for a backup. There is no laws broken here.......

"She's tried on some quite shocking lies with two courts already and had them (understandably) knocked back. "

Exactly. Some posters here still don't get it.

"Ambulance chasing in the 21st century. $80k a track. Who was the jury. The CEO and their kids of the fortune 500?"

Two juries of citizens (not ONE but TWO) were completely sick of her lying. She brought it on herself. It was Jammie's decision, not the RIAA's decision, to go to court with just a bag full of lies.

Was she hoping for a jury of 12 Freetards?

Eventually you get what's coming.

She'd be a Jammie [fine] dodger!

... If you're going to be dumb; you'd better be tough.

Funny, I was going to say the same thing about McKinnon. Maybe she and he should get together for a little computard session.

@Skizz

Yes, she is a thief. She took what wasn't hers and didn't pay for it. She took what wasn't hers to give away and gave it away depriving the lawful IP owner the right to sell a copy of it.

@zerofool2005

Acutally you're wrong. The metadata in the songs showed they were in fact ripped by someone else, downloaded onto her computer, and then made available for others to download.

For awarding a ludicrously high damages award for "incalculable harm" that'll never be paid out. Perhaps they were sick of her lying and wanted to make an example of her, but really, what was the point? They might as well have awarded damages of eleventy-billion-googolplex dollars because it's no less likely to be extracted from Ms Thomas than the near $2mil will be. If you want to punish her for perjury then throw her ass in jail FFS.

Hardly does the recording industry any PR favors, either, not that it deserves any of those after years of crap product and RIAA terror tactics. Serves both sides right if they come out of this looking like the worst sort of c**ts possible.

The jury did find her guilty of sharing those 24 songs. They probably weren't entirely happy with her arguments either. I don't have any problem with that - I'm very much from the "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" school. Fair cop guv etc.

However, I do feel there are two instances where we've lost a bit of perspective:

1) everybody does it and it's extremely easy to do

It's a bit glib, even puerile. But I guess, as a liberal (bordering on freetard), I believe the law should be shaped by social behaviour as well as social values. It must be frustrating for record companies to see their profit being undercut by what they perceive as people stealing from them, but I believe that they have not done enough to anticipate this, they've massively missed the boat on DRM, and have then not provided an adequate incentive for moving away from piracy. Even notwithstanding evidence both for and against piracy having a measurable impact on profits. Society as a whole doesn't believe distributing mp3s is as bad as the record companies think - the RIAA certainly hasn't helped here - and I believe it is the duty of the state to recognise this fact.

How would a parent feel if they found their child happily scoffing cookies from the jar they had left open? Or if they found that their eldest son had found daddy's magazines he had hidden under the mat in the toilet?

2) existing copyright law is inappropriate for the crime that Jamie has been convicted of

Although existing copyright law may be applicable, I don't believe that it is appropriate when it comes to mp3s. People have hundreds or thousands of mp3s, not just one or two. The scale of the projected damages is now so enormous as to lose significance against the crime, especially given the accessibility of the crime. How can a jury of Jamie's peers understand the sort of amounts they've been asked to award, even if it is only for 24 mp3s?

Perhaps we should have some sort of amnesty or honesty scheme, where people can pay a certain amount a month they feel represents what they're taking from the music industry. At least something that is more progressive than trying to shoot the cat they've let out of the bag.

Flame because people are going to flame me