Major RIAA upset looms in Jammie Thomas case
Ap2pnet news view | RIAA News:- On the heels of a court win for RIAA victim Tanya Andersen, it looks like the Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music’s (US) enforcer is about to receive another major slap in the face.
Short for Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in a vain attempt to have Andersen, a single mother who lives on a medical disability pension, railroaded as a “massive illegal distributor” of copyrighted corporate music.
RIAA nemesis Andersen fought it and the Big 4 to a standstill, “forcing it to drop its spurious file sharing case against her, and now an Oregon court has awarded her close to $108,000 in fees and costs,” p2pnet posted in May, going on:
“The amount, the highest ever, also signals what is in effect a default victory for other lawyers representing RIAA victims. It means they now know they’ll be able to proceed with counterclaims bolstered by the knowledge they’ll be paid their work.”
Now the RIAA is looking another disaster squarely in the face.
District Court judge Michael Davis seems set to declare the only case the RIAA has ever won in in all its years of trying to sue American men, women and children, a mistrial.
Minnesota mother Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay the Big 4 $222,000 for sharing allegedly sharing 24 copyrighted songs.
But Davis, who presided over the case, has since admitted he may have have committed a significant error.
Says Wired »»»
“Certainly, I have sent a signal to both sides of where I’m headed,” U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said during a 70-minute hearing in which lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America and defendant Jammie Thomas sparred over whether a jury verdict against Thomas should be overturned.
At issue is whether the RIAA needs to prove that copyrighted music offered by a defendant on a peer-to-peer network was actually downloaded by anyone. During Thomas’ trial last October, Davis, on the RIAA’s recommendation, instructed … the jury that no such proof was necessary; if Thomas had the music in her Kazaa shared folder, where it could be downloaded, she could be found liable “regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.”
But in May, long after Thomas had lost the trial and was dinged $222,000, Davis developed second thoughts. He wrote in an order that he may have committed a “manifest error” with that instruction. “I think I surprised everyone,” Davis said at the outset of the Monday’s hearing. As the hearing wrapped up, there was little evidence that the RIAA’s lawyer had changed the judge’s mind.
Stay tuned, and click here for p2pnet’s Jammie Thomas digest.
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p2pnet – Tanya Andersen awarded $108,000, May 7, 2008
a mistrial – Jammie Thomas judge cops to ‘manifest error’, May 15, 2008
significant error – D-For-Decision-Day for RIAA, Jammie Thomas, August 2, 2008
Wired – Judge Hints at Mistrial in RIAA v. Jammie Thomas, August 4, 2008
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August 4th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
If a drug dealer is caught with drugs on him, he is nailed for “making available”, right?
If a gun trafficker is caught with illegal guns on him, he is nailed for “making available” also.
So what’s the difference with music & movies then? The same intent is still there with shared folders full of content available to all and sundry over the internet. Why the hell can’t Jammie also be nailed for “making available”??!
Seems eminently sensible to me.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Your analogies don’t hold water. Better questions might be:
If I am caught with a bottle of liquor on me, does that automatically mean that I was going to give it to an underage drinker ?
or
If I have gun on me does that automatically mean I was going to shoot somebody?
or
If I leave a pack of cigarettes on a cafeteria table does that automatically mean I meant for some kids to find them and smoke them ?
or
If I accidentally leave my keys in my car does that automatically mean that I meant for someone to steal it ?
As far as I know, it’s not illegal to have songs on your computer.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Think about it said…
“If a drug dealer is caught with drugs on him, he is nailed for “making available”, right?
If a gun trafficker is caught with illegal guns on him, he is nailed for “making available” also.
So what’s the difference with music & movies then? The same intent is still there with shared folders full of content available to all and sundry over the internet. Why the hell can’t Jammie also be nailed for “making available”??!”
This is such a childish comment, I really debated to comment on it or not, but what the heck- it is amazing on how some people are so out of touch with reality-
The for mentioned post fails to understand that it is actually legal to have music and movies on your PC. These can be placed on the PC from the following legal sources- purchases over the net, recordings of programs from television with a video capture card, etc…
Sure it may not have been the wisest of moves for her to place them into a folder that was marked as a shared folder by a P2P application, considering many applications automatically share folders under “My Documents”, and many people do not know the difference between a shared folder and a non-shared folder, the mistake can easily be understood.
As stated above, the assumption that her files were illegal is exactly what is wrong with this entire case.
Just my two cents
August 4th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Just, I think you’ve misunderstood what I’ve said. I never said “the files were illegal to have on her computer”! I said they were being shared with the whole world, which is illegal. Hence the comparison with the equivalent acts with drugs and guns.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Tai said
I said they were being shared with the whole world, which is illegal.
According to whom?
To the RIAA lawyers or theri illegal investigators MediaSentry?
According to court records only a handfull of songs were “shared” aka. copies were made by those illegal investigators.
Nowhere has the plaintiffs offered any prove that “they were being shared with the whole world”
Oh, you either troll, incompetent RIAA lawyer or guy that has simply no idea about US copyrightlaw: NOWHERE did you said what you claimed to have said in your first post!
And for what sake did you claim now in response to Jmtc that you hence brought the drug analogy?
Are you nuts or what?
Drugs are fairly illegal, no matter if you have them in your pocket where noone can see them other then the cop that does a strip search or if you have them lying on a table with a sign “drugs to share”
You guys had times when you were better in blurring the facts!
Go home, idiot!
August 5th, 2008 at 12:01 am
A_F: I was just trying to clarify this making available point, which has actually been done quite nicely by some of the decent posters above.
My question was clear and I didn’t change anything, unlike what you claim.
It’s you that’s the idiot. Fuck off you sad cretinous pustule of a human being.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:08 am
The first comment sounds like trolling possibly, especially given the subject matter of this website and what it stands for. I’ll bite nevertheless.
I walk around with several controlled substances in my pocket all the time. Does that mean I should be automatically labeled a “drug dealer”? Should I be thrown in jail without any proof at all that I’ve actually sold drugs?
I go out in public with several weapons on or near me at all the times. Does that mean I should be automatically labeled a “gun trafficker”? Should I be thrown in jail without any proof at all that I’ve actually sold weapons?
You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, or so the saying goes. Misunderstandings happen all the time. It is very easy to misinterpret a great deal about a person and their intentions when you know absolutely nothing about them. It’s even easier to label someone simply because you feel entitled to your own self righteous opinion, or worse because you’re an antisocial misanthrope. Labels are imminently useful for demonizing a person or group of persons you do not like. Labels are even comforting for some folks, but the fact always remains that they are the easy way out. Proving someone is a drug dealer or a gun trafficker is much harder, and thank goodness opinions are not admissible as evidence.
What you see and what the reality is are quite often two different things, and this is why most free thinking rational people believe in the importance of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is actually guilty of what they are being accused of. Some folks actually do live in countries where accusation and suspicion are grounds enough for throwing someone in jail for life. Perhaps the original poster lives in just such a country. It would explain why ideas involving the presentation of evidence in a trial by jury of peers seem foreign to them. Corrupt dictatorships and the entertainment industry are very similar in that regard. It all comes down to absolute control, and as we all know control equals power. I’m sure the entertainment industry would love to forgo a trial, which only gets in the way of what they ultimately seek, and simply toss anyone they wanted in jail. What a fun world to live in that would be!
Not everyone is a computer geek. Most computer users are like my parents, completely clueless. I get the impression Tanya Anderson falls into this category. People are often, sometimes unwittingly, downloading and installing all kinds of garbage they probably shouldn’t be, often with an incomplete understanding of how the program works and everything it does. Convoluted laws governing ideas such as copyright aren’t exactly clear to everybody out there either, and is one of the reasons for the big investment we’ve seen in educational advertising by the entertainment industry. Laws also differ from country to country, making things even more confusing. My point is that it is pretty easy to create a shared folder without any intention of breaking the law. This is why it is so important to prove any intentional wrong doing. We can’t very well call ourselves civilized if we continually throw people in jail simply because we suspect them of something. The vast majority of the population would be incarcerated if that is how things were run.
If tossing people in jail with little to no proof of intentional wrong doing still “seems eminently sensible” to you, please find the highest bridge you can and jump from it. Preferably before you’ve had a chance to breed, ok? Thanks! 8-p
August 5th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Think about it: You are comparing two separate worlds here. 1) Guns are illegal without a permit for sale and a license to carry, drugs are illegal period. 2) Those songs could be 100% legal but just placed in the shared folder. I know my mother couldn’t tell apart the shared folder from the non shared folder and if a program recommended that she share the songs I know she would. That doesn’t make her “a massive distributor”, it just makes her computer illiterate.
And please people try to keep it civil in here even though we are on the internet.
August 5th, 2008 at 5:49 am
“Just, I think you’ve misunderstood what I’ve said. I never said “the files were illegal to have on her computer”! I said they were being shared with the whole world, which is illegal. Hence the comparison with the equivalent acts with drugs and guns.”
I don’t want to insult Jammie Thomas, I’ve exchanged messages with her on her forum and she seems like a nice person, but when it comes to computers, the average user today has a ‘computer IQ’ that usually registers in the single digits.
Don’t believe me? Use the desktop prefs to flip the screen upside down (available on most modern graphics cards). Probably 90% of the users today will have no clue how to change it back. Want to have even more fun? Rename the Desktop and Start Menu directories to something else, so that both appear blank. They’ll end up taking it to a repair place to have it fixed.
I’ve never used Kazaa, buut it’s my understanding that by default, it shares pretty much everything on your system. It is completely possible that someone could install it, not knowing that it will share things that they don’t want to share. It’s also possible that someone could install a file sharing program for purposes of downloading music (a copyright violation, but nobody has ever been sued for DOWNLOADING) and be completely unaware of the fact that it will automatically share what’s being downloaded. It’s also completely possible that one of her kids installed the software, using the account’s email address as the username, without her knowing anything about it.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:19 am
@Rekrul: indeed, that all sounds very reasonable and I just wanted clarification on the making available argument – and I’ve had some very well made replies.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if someone installed something on her PC and she knew nothing about it, especially if she was clueless about PCs. The whole conviction sounds bent, anyway. Looks like the judge wasn’t paid off, after all, thankfully, just hoodwinked by the MAFIAA into nailing her.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Jammie’s gonna win this, so great for her and others in her predicament. It’s a shame that the MAFIAA are gonna change the laws to suit them again using various compliant sock puppets in their pay. Bastards.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Here here – I hope we go down in flames!!
August 5th, 2008 at 8:18 am
@ RIAA repp
That would be “hear hear”.
Thought you would want to know.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Proof is key to any trial. Let’s see the proof. That’s pretty basic. These bastards are trying to rewrite the laws of the USA.
They know that they would never have a chance if they actually had to PROVE that some exchange took place.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:26 am
@Prove it! Jeez, Big Media corruption is getting ever more blatant and obvious, isn’t it? It really stinks from every pore now.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:58 am
“If a drug dealer is caught with drugs on him, he is nailed for “making available”, right?
If a gun trafficker is caught with illegal guns on him, he is nailed for “making available” also.”
WRONG. and WRONG. They are nailed for illegal possesion not for distribution.
You got F!