Did Jammie share 1,700 songs?
p2pnet news view | RIAA:- Jammie Thomas-Rasset, currently the most famous of the vicious persecution of Big 4 record label customers by the Big 4, has been there twice before.
Now she wants to go there for a third time.
With their curiously named Recording Industry Association of America as a front, Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US, but run by a Canadian), are claiming they’re being forced to educate music lovers by suing them.
‘Educate’ means ‘coerce’ because having watched the corporate music tide go out — way out — when Napster showed people another way to get their music fixes, the Big 4 labels are now trying desperately to get it to flow backwards by gaining control of how digital files are distributed online.
Jammie is an example of just how far Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music are willing to go, further smearing their already badly besmirched reputations, and alienating millions of actual and potential customers in the process.
She’s already been in front of a civil jury on two occasions, both times for allegedly having shared ['distributed' in legacy holder parlance] 24 copyrighted files on the Internet.
The second time around, a misguided jury decided each of 24 tunes cited was worth $80,000 for a total of $1.92 million.
How they figured Jamie, a very ordinary mother of four, could ever hope to come up with anything like that kind of money is beyond comprehension. But that’s what the jury decided and predictably, she and her lawyers want judge Michael Davis to, “either throw out the award, lower it to the statutory minimum or grant a new trial,” as Mike Masnick writes in TechDirt.
He goes on, “What’s odd, however,” is the note at the very bottom of an Associated Press article, “concerning the filing that the RIAA made to the court,” to wit »»»
In other court filings … attorneys for the recording industry want Davis to bar Thomas-Rasset from downloading music, sharing music files and distributing songs to the public. Attorney Timothy Reynolds wrote that Thomas-Rasset distributed more than 1,700 songs to millions of others through the file-sharing system Kazaa. Those users, in turn, are likely to distribute the recordings even further, Reynolds wrote.
Let’s see. At $80,000 per song, that would come to …
Mike goes on »»»
The RIAA keeps insisting that it just wants to settle the case, but if that’s true, it seems weird to then attack Thomas in court again, but that’s what the filing seems to do. It suggests that Thomas (despite this whole process) must still be sharing songs and that the court needs to issue an injunction barring her from doing so. While we’ve said that there appears to be ample evidence that Thomas used file sharing programs (and that she shouldn’t have let this case go to trial), it would be quite surprising if anyone had any evidence that she was still doing this. As far as I know, the RIAA has not presented any such evidence at all. Demanding an injunction, then, seems quite strange.
On top of that, the RIAA appears to falsely claim (or the AP reporter misquoted the RIAA) that Thomas “distributed more than 1,700 songs to millions of others through the file-sharing system Kazaa.” That may be true, but it certainly was not shown in court at all. The RIAA only named 24 songs she was charged with sharing, and then did not present any evidence that she actually shared any of them with anyone other than the RIAA’s own investigators.
The claim that she “distributed more than 1,700 songs to millions of others” was not proven at all, and in fact this entire new trial was because the judge originally made the mistake of assuming “making available” meant distribution. It does not. For the RIAA to misstate this point is really quite odd.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
TechDirt – As Jammie Thomas Seeks New Trial, RIAA Claims (Incorrectly) That She Distributed 1,700 Songs To Millions, July 7, 2009
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July 14th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I nominate ” Jammie Thomas-Rasset, currently the most famous of the vicious persecution of Big 4 record label customers by the Big 4, has been there twice before.” as the most incomprehensible sentence ever.
Or maybe I’m just slow.
Anyway, great article. Just thought the first sentence was a little funny.
July 14th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I can’t figure out how they come up with 80 grand a song.
Music is free these days … if you want it for free.
If the potential downloaders don’t get it from Jammie, they would just get it somewhere else for free.
There are 5-too-many zeroes on the end of that figure.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Is the 1700 songs that they are now referencing a way to “spin” the $1.92millon into appearing credible to the press/readers etc ?
July 14th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Did anyone ever prove that all of those songs were downloaded 100% from her? Because the way I understand it (and i could easily be wrong), those p2p programs download the file in pieces from whoever has the piece that is needed next.
And do they realize how long it would take 1 person, let alone millions, to download 1700 songs from her? Her computer would have to be online, uploading at her internet connection’s max capacity, 24/7 for months if not years to accomplish that. The math just doesn’t make sense.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
“Did anyone ever prove that all of those songs were downloaded 100% from her? Because the way I understand it (and i could easily be wrong), those p2p programs download the file in pieces from whoever has the piece that is needed next.”
I can’t answer that, but…
It would be almost trivially easy for a programmer to modify a copy of any file sharing program to add an option that would only download from a single IP address. All they would have to do is enter the address they want and have the program reject downloads from any other source. Of course this wouldn’t magically make them instantly download only from that one IP address, but it would ensure that they didn’t get any parts from any other source.
You could even do it using IPFilter.dat, just make it block every IP address except the one you want.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:53 am
I followed the trial quite closely, and they didn’t show that *any* tracks were downloaded by anyone except by the mafiaa.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:00 am
A few days ago I found one recordable dvd disk on the street.
Back home i found out the dvd had 1700 mp3 songs. Many, of about 50 I played are great songs I had never heard before.
The questions are:
If Iam trapped red handed with the DVD, while trying to find the DVD owner…
- Should i stop hearing more songs? Is each listening a crime?
- Can RIAA get $136,000,000 ($80,000 x 1700) after being hanged by a Jammie Thomas-Rasset type jury?
- Can I be charged with possession of stolen goods?
- Will I get a discount for the public domain songs in the DVD?
- How do I find out which are the public domain songs so I know which songs I can copy to my hard diskd and which ones I cannot copy?
- Should i play it safe and hand over the DVD to the RIAA and confess?
- I am at risk of being detected by Lucky and Flo?
- Can I wind up in the list of terrorists?
- Should I sell my house so that it cannot be foreclosed for paying legal and whatever sentence is given me?
- Where can I borrow about the $100,000 needed to pay my defense lawyer?
- Would it be advisable to simply pack up and move up to Canada?
- Is Canada a safe from RIAA country?
- If Canada is not a safe from RIAA country, which one is?
September 4th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Is there no moral in earning money this way? Is money worth ruining other people’s lives? Is money important enough to incriminate virtually every person with access to the Internet?
Where can we download her playlist?