Single Mom Loses Music Dowload Trial, Ordered to Pay $220,000

Nice work. So they try to extort 2 or 3 grand and, if you fight back, this is the result.

For what it's worth, I thought she was a less than stellar example to have fought the suit.

RMX

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(AP) The recording industry won a key fight Thursday against illegal music downloading when a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online and levied $222,000 in damages against her.

Jurors ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.

Thomas and her attorney, Brian Toder, declined comment as they left the courthouse. Jurors also left without commenting.

"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK," said Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies.

In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, six record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn't have a Kazaa account.

Record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.

We think we're in for a long haul in terms of establishing that music has value, that music is property, and that property has to be respected.
Cathy Sherman, RIAA President

The RIAA says the lawsuits have mitigated illegal sharing, even though music file-sharing is rising overall. The group says the number of households that have used file-sharing programs to download music has risen from 6.9 million monthly in April 2003, before the lawsuits began, to 7.8 million in March 2007.

During the three-day trial, record companies presented evidence they said showed the copyrighted songs were offered by a Kazaa user under the name "tereastarr." Their witnesses, including officials from an Internet provider and a security firm, testified that the Internet address used by "tereastarr" belonged to Thomas.

Toder had argued at closing that record companies never proved that "Jammie Thomas, a human being, got on her keyboard and sent out these things."

"We don't know what happened," Toder told jurors. "All we know is that Jammie Thomas didn't do this."

Gabriel called that defense "misdirection, red herrings, smoke and mirrors."

He told jurors a verdict against Thomas would send a message to other illegal downloaders.

"I only ask that you consider that the need for deterrence here is great," he said.

Copyright law sets a damage range of $750 to $30,000 per infringement, or up to $150,000 if the violation was "willful." Jurors ruled that Thomas' infringement was willful, but awarded damages in a middle range.

Before the verdict, an official with an industry trade group said he was surprised it had taken so long for one of the industry's lawsuits against individual downloaders to come to trial.

Illegal downloads have "become business as usual, nobody really thinks about it," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, which coordinates the lawsuits. "This case has put it back in the news. Win or lose, people will understand that we are out there trying to protect our rights."

Thomas' testimony was complicated by the fact that she had replaced her computer's hard drive after the sharing was alleged to have taken place - and later than she said in a deposition before trial.

The hard drive in question was not presented at trial by either party, though Thomas used her new one to show the jury how fast it copies songs from CDs. That was an effort to counter an industry witness's assertion that the songs on the old drive got their too fast to have come from CDs she owned - and therefore must have been downloaded illegally.

Record companies said Thomas was sent an instant message in February 2005, warning her that she was violating copyright law. Her hard drive was replaced the following month, not in 2004, as she said in the deposition.

The record companies involved in the lawsuit are Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.

 

If there was ever a campaign by an industry to totally annihilate whatever goodwill is left in the eyes of the public, the recording industry would be the hands-down winner. Whoever came up with the idea that an industry on the verge of irrelevance (not to mention universally hated) should sue its own customers to regain its lost glory should be given a serious ass whooping.

The recording industry is like a cancer...a mindless entity that will eventually kill its host and - inevitably - its own self. Never s*** where you eat.

RMX

 

Jerry,

There's lots to read at the link below. I made my money in the music industry for over a decade. No matter how they want to portray themselves, the RIAA is not a friend of the artist. No way. No how.

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/

RMX

 

To read how they extort their settlements, go here:

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-riaa-litigation-process-works.html

RMX

 

Not really.

Well, what you have is an industry that is losing almost complete control of its distribution methods to the Internet. The Internet is something they cannot and will not ever be able to control and they know it. Think back ten years where you didn't have much choice in the matter. CDs cost $18.99 and you listened to whatever the industry wanted you to listen to on the radio and MTV. That's changing...you can broadcast music from your bedroom now, put 10,000 songs on a machine the size of a cigarette pack and not have to pay into the system anymore. This is seriously oversimplified, but you get the idea.

Do you really think the artists "stolen from" will see a dime from these lawsuits? I mean, really, what's this about? The RIAA comes off as this "friend" of the artist...this is really a joke.

Just imagine, the way it works now is if the RIAA even suspects you're doing anything wrong, it will send you a demand letter asking for $3500 or risk being sued in court. It doesn't matter if you even did anything wrong, the reality is you'll get this demand for payment or risk being sued. If you decide to fight like this woman did, you risk being handed a verdict like the one we saw today. What happens if your neighbor is using your wi-fi without your knowledge and downloads a bunch of music? Don't laugh, it happens. How about if someone used your computer without your knowledge? They've filed 26,000 lawsuits now, most of them predicated on suspicion of illegal file sharing. People settle with the RIAA to avoid racking up large legal fees. This verdict today will embolden the RIAA and scare even more people into making settlement payments whether they did anything wrong or not.

These are the same people who will come and SUE you if you sing "Happy Birthday" in your restaurant/bar and not pay licensing fees to do so. If you don't believe me, look it up. The RIAA is merely an obsolete mouthpiece for the corporate cabal known as the major recording labels. The RIAA gets a cut of every blank CD made - did you know that?

No, I don't think this woman should face any significant financial penalty...maybe she should be made to pay for the value of the albums she ripped of. That's it in my opinion. Those songs would have been stolen from somewhere else.

RMX

 

The scariest part of all of this is the RIAA does not have to prove she was sharing the songs nor do they have to prove she was behind the keyboard when any downloading took place.

WTF?

RMX

 

I think almost all blank cds are tagged for either/or these days. I'm looking at a spindle of CDs I bought from Best Buy that say "52x 80 min music / 700 mb data".

RMX

 

@ Bill

You have intimate experience with this subject, but I'll offer up my own personal experience. I probably should take some extra time to formulate this post, but I need to be on my way to my office.

I made a very respectable living producing and performing for a long time. Longer than most. I ran an indie (still do, I guess) and was very successful doing so. Our model was very simple: produce decent music and get the word out. This was accomplished, for me, with the help of the early Napster by giving tracks away for free and some help from contacts I had in the radio business. I didn't need a huge company to put me under contract and "guide" my career. We pressed our own records, CDs and manufactured our own cassettes. We paid for package design and found our own distributors (sometimes through good old begging and salemanship). The music was produced with mostly computer equipment - something pretty much accomplished in a spare bedroom thanks to technology. I can get 95% of the quality of a $2m studio on my own these days, and so can everyone else. I toured pretty much all the time and made six figures for probably 8 of those 10 years. I got a lot of work from outside labels, including production credit and a paycheck on a #1 Billboard Dance Single back in 2002 + three other Top 20 production credits. I had a lot of fun doing this and have gone on to greener pastures in commercial real estate, a personal choice. I still play the occasional gig if the money's right, but I like being home now on weekends. Never once in my career did I need the help or assistance of the RIAA. I gave songs away as a measure of goodwill to fans...I would never, ever think of suing them. My label now sells its old songs online through Beatport and that generates a couple thousand dollars a month in income. Sure people are probably trading these tracks - go ahead. Lots of people will do the right thing and, if they hear or download something they like, they will go out and buy the rest of the album. I'm living proof this happens. You cannot write laws that will reflect this part human nature. Most people will do the right thing.

In the old days of the closed system the RIAA wants back, I would never had been able to build a label as successful as I did. As time marches on, I believe a lot of artists will see there is a lot of opportunity outside of the traditional recording industry. What I see with these lawsuits is an old, out of step entity trying to stay in control of something that's slipping away, particularly their antiquated distribution model. My guess is none of their business models ever anticipated this type of competition. As an artist, I see the RIAA as a group of people who won't play fair and try to tilt the playing field with lawsuits and tactics to extort money from music lovers. This is also reflected in the heavy handed tactics the industry uses on internet broadcasters. Where people like me see it as free publicity, they see it as encroachment and unwanted competition. Most artists I know hate the RIAA and what they're doing to fans. I cannot imagine the logic here.

The music people hear brings people to shows. Most of us realize artists make their money from touring. I did. If I have to lose out on $60 in sales through illegal downloads to make $3500 in a 2 hr booking appearance, so be it. Again, I am proof this happens.

There is the letter of the law and there is presumably everything else. If I photocopy that book you're talking about and give it to a friend, if it opens their eyes to that author and they go out and buy the rest of that author's published works, isn't that a net gain? Sometimes you give a little to get a lot back. How do you write that into law? I don't believe the RIAA is championing copyright law, yes that's the argument, but it's definitely broader and more self-serving than that.

I'd like to know exactly how much of this money is going to the artists who were so terribly "harmed" by this woman. I doubt the artists in question will see any of it.

Gotta run.

RMX