Amateur musician on RIAA jury
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- An amateur musician is among 12 jurors who’ll decide if Jammie Thomas, an Ojibwe mother of two, is the filesharing criminal and thief Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal say she is.
She’s the first of the estimated 30,000 men women and children across America whom the Big 4’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) says are “devastating” the corporate music industry, to actually reach a civil judge and jury.
But Brian Toder, her lawyer, says the labels haven’t even proven that Thomas, who works for the Department of Natural Resources of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, shared the songs.
“Most of the 26,000 people the record industry group has sued have settled by paying a few thousand dollars,” continues Associated Press incorrectly.
In August last year when the number of people who’d received subpoenas had reached 8,400, only 1,700 had been frightened into paying up under the RIAA’s extortionate settlement scheme, admitted spokesman Jonathan Lamy, and it’s unlikely that the proportions are very different today, especially given that more and more people are standing up to the Big 4 and their hired legal guns.
Toder is quoted as saying:
She came into my office and was willing to pay a retainer of pretty much what they wanted to settle for.
And if someone’s willing to pay a lawyer rather than pay to make it go away, that says a lot.
There have been no claims that either of Thomas’ children, 11 and 13, were involved in music sharing, says AP.
However, it’s now standard operating procedure for the RIAA first target parent or parents, ultimately turning on the children.
“Thomas is at risk for a judgment of more than $1.2 million,” says the RIAA, looking for damages set under federal law, of $750 to $30,000 for each alleged copyright violation.
The RIAA launched its bizarre sue ‘em all marking scheme in September 2003 and the Big 4 and their reality conversion specialists such as the RIAA’s Cary Sherman, who’s expected to give evidence, claim the campaign is working.
However, from day one the numbers of file sharers have consistently risen and according to AP, quoting an unnamed source, “the number of households that have downloaded music with file-sharing programs has risen from 6.9 million in April 2003 to 7.8 million in March 2007, according to industry tracking”
Music industry P2P tracking specialist Big Champagne has been reporting the same kind of statistics since 2003.
“I think by most any metric you choose it’s [the sue 'em all campaign] been a failure,” AP has Fred von Lohmann, the senior intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, stating.
Meanwhile, “Toder plans to start with the basics – making them prove they own the songs at all,” says the story, also pointing out that On Monday, US district judge Michael J. Davis threw out 784 pages of documents produced by the record companies to show they owned a sample of the songs.
Also See:
Associated Press – Privacy: Terra Not Incognita, October 2, 2007
frightened into paying – More RIAA file sharing claptrap, August 26, 2006
threw out 784 pages – First RIAA trial starts tomorrow, October 1, 2007
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October 2nd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Gotta give it to you —— you frequently piss me off but you do good work
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:33 am
LETS ANALIZE THE NUMBERS:
125,000 TIMES THE REALISTIC DAMAGES
“Thomas is at risk for a judgment of more than $1.2 million,” says the RIAA, looking for damages set under federal law, of $750 to $30,000 for each alleged copyright violation.”
1. The maximum damages under federal law, per infringement is $150,000, not $30,000. The $150,000 applies when the infringement is intentional. So, if the $30,000 is a ridiculous figure, the $150,000 is far more ridiculous. It is so ridiculous, the $150,000 figure, that RIAA lawyers avoid mentioning it, so as not to expose the law to further scorn. No matter what, though, the law is ridiculous and should be scorned, along with the legislators that passed it without reading or understanding it.
2. From above, we can see that the maximimum damages is undereported by a factor if five, so as to avoid ridicule of the lawand the legal system. That being so, the figure of “more than $1.2 million” is more proper “more than $1.2 million” times 5, or $6 million.
3. The average American probably buys less than 5 CDs per year, or 15 in a three year period (older damages are prescribed and do not count). Assuming a profit of 5 dollars per CD to a record company a person that decides to copy CDs in lieu of buying them will have caused a $45 loss (this is the realistic 3 year damage, give or take a few dollars) to the various record companies that whould have benefited from the purchase of the 15 or so CD.
4. The “more than $1.2 million” is then 25,000 times the realistic damage of $45. But the more proper “more than $6 million is 125,000 times the actual damages of $45.
5. This takes us to the question, why are the possible damages for file sharing so draconian? Its quite simple. When the law was passed, the legislators were thininking only of commercial piracy. That is illegal copying by thief book publishers and thief record companies.
6. Here is a possible scenario under the current law. A 12 year old kid who has no money to buy a single CD may illegally and almost instantly copy a 4GB DVD or memory stick with 20,000 mp3 songs worth a (minimum) damage claim of $30 million dollars (20,00 songs x $750 damage x 2 ( the minimum damage of $750 is multiplied by two if the infringement copying was intentional, and it always is). The $30 million damages would then be an infinite number of times over the realistic damages as the 12 year old kid would not have purchased any CD in any event.
BTW, it is rummored that CDs and DVS, with thousands of mp3 song files are in cisculation and being copied over and over again. Just ask a music collector.
No wonder the music industry is destroying the customer base and the credibility of legislators and the judicial system. You may call this SELF DESTRUCTION THROUGH LAWYERS.