Jury Mulled $3.6 Million Download Award

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If you think that the $220,000 award last week against that lady from Minnesota was insanely high, get this…the jurors were even considering going even higher than that. How high? How about $3.6 million for 24 songs. Wow.

"A few said we could go up to 150 (thousand), and then other people said, 'No, that's way too high,'" she said. "We just all discussed it and gave our views and came up with an agreeable amount." "You go too low, it's not going to stop the illegal downloading of music," she said. "People are going to think, 'I could do this, I could go through federal court and get off cheap.'"
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is it just me or did that juror just admit that they did not fine her based on the merits of her case but instead to "send a message" to other downloaders (as a deterrent).

That's like saying "we gave this kid life in prison to prevent other little bastards from shoplifting".
 
if they think 220,000 is cheap, they can go kiss a dick. wtf is wrong with this country? dammit... :mad:
 
Had I been on that jury, it would have been hung.

I certainly would not have been the judge's lemming regardless of his instructions and I would have awarded no more than $.99 per song as that is what you could buy them for.

That is f*cking ridiculous.
 
It sounds as though they were specifically told that they were setting a precedent and that anything less than an in-debt-for-the-rest-of-your-life award would be promoting piracy and terrorism. I don't know what the legality of ruling in a case based off of setting precedent is but I was pretty sure cases were supposed to be judged by individual merit, not by setting precedent.
 
I wonder how much of these award monies are going out to the artists themselves. I bet exactly none.
 
Steve said:
is it just me or did that juror just admit that they did not fine her based on the merits of her case but instead to "send a message" to other downloaders (as a deterrent).

That's like saying "we gave this kid life in prison to prevent other little bastards from shoplifting".
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Seriously, that's fucked up.
 
Hopefully the new Radiohead pricing strategy will kick the RIAA in the nuts.
 
It's going to be ironic if downloading only INCREASES because of the outcome of this trial.
 
Sounds like to me the RIAA paid off the Jurors.... either that or the RIAA blackmailed them as they may also have been downloaders.


I can't see or even comprehend how ANYONE can believe that paying $3.4 million dollars for 24 songs is justified.... thats more than all the albums in a massive music store plus possibly the store itself.
 
I have the feeling that if she has a good lawyer...this will be appealed and over turned in the next case.
 
Azhar said:
I wonder how much of these award monies are going out to the artists themselves. I bet exactly none.
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gotta pay those laywers first. if they get even a cent for every dollar i'd be surprised.
 
Yes this is being appealed, the amount will be overturned.

She is dead bang guilty, there was no actual defense. Beyond dumb as to doing the things needed to get nailed 100%.... beyond stupid.

However, the proper penalty would have been the statutory minimum.... she was sued for and found guilty of "statutory" violations, the RIAA sought no actual damages.

So the minimum as a matter of law the jury could award is... $750 x 24. That or maybe as much as $1000 x 24, under the reasonable assumption that as many as 1,000 downloads of the songs she made available might have occured. 1,000 x $.99 for each of 24 songs.

The judge should have directed an award of $24,000 as a matter of justice, but is likely of a philisophical bent that feels throwing the book at people is the way to affect public behavior.... there is a word for it, but I dont wanna get banned.

The appeals court will find the jury instructions contained error, and the award amount is unjust, and the ultimate result will be closer to the $24K mark.
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
Yes this is being appealed, the amount will be overturned.

She is dead bang guilty, there was no actual defense. Beyond dumb as to doing the things needed to get nailed 100%.... beyond stupid.

However, the proper penalty would have been the statutory minimum.... she was sued for and found guilty of "statutory" violations, the RIAA sought no actual damages.

So the minimum as a matter of law the jury could award is... $750 x 24. That or maybe as much as $1000 x 24, under the reasonable assumption that as many as 1,000 downloads of the songs she made available might have occured. 1,000 x $.99 for each of 24 songs.

The judge should have directed an award of $24,000 as a matter of justice, but is likely of a philisophical bent that feels throwing the book at people is the way to affect public behavior.... there is a word for it, but I dont wanna get banned.

The appeals court will find the jury instructions contained error, and the award amount is unjust, and the ultimate result will be closer to the $24K mark.
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Here's the problem though, the RIAA didn't prove that she was guilty. They need to show without resonable doubt that the songs were shared and had actually been transmitting to other parties. The RIAA is pretty much doing the same thing as the DirecTV. Only until now has the courts put a stop to this nonsense. I suspect that the courts will be doing the same thing to the RIAA as they did to DirecTV. At some point folks are just going to get tired of their crap.
 
Steve said:
is it just me or did that juror just admit that they did not fine her based on the merits of her case but instead to "send a message" to other downloaders (as a deterrent).

That's like saying "we gave this kid life in prison to prevent other little bastards from shoplifting".
Click to expand...

Well if you really look at our justice system, that's pretty much all that's doled out these days.. It's all about percieved deterrents of future lawbreakers, not justice for the act they are currently making judgement on. It happens both on the judge and jury level.

The most extreme I can think of is with child pornography/molestation cases. There are cases where defendants got up to 1200 years for posession of child porn, and other cases where defendants recieved just a few years for creating it. In the 1200 year case the judge wanted to "make an example" and "create a deterrent".. Might have made more sense the other way around, but that's just an extreme example of how bizarre the effects of "deterrent" judgements really look in the scheme of things.

The trend is going towards just that though.. I have always said with the way things are going, in 100 years they will be executing jaywalkers right on the spot, because the "deterrent" viewpoint is so overwhelming to the system, one has to wonder if there are limits to it, and what the people who think that way really thinking they can achieve with it.

Apparently there are a great deal of people who think if we can make the penalties for all crimes stiff enough, that we would magically transform into a crime-free Utopia. Instead it's just a first class express ticket to entropy. There will be a breaking point where the severity of the penalty for crimes winds up nullifying all deterrent and causes an explosion of the most severe and heinous crimes imaginable.

Damn I kinda went off on a tangent there.. Just trying to point out, it's not anything new to me. :(
 
"People are going to think, 'I could do this, I could go through federal court and get off cheap.'" [If fines were not in the MILLIONS]

Real people with their own agendas do not think nor speak like this, this is RIAA speak. Do not be fooled. Download freely. Sharing is caring. Support Musicians not Executives.

If you like a track, give the artist some money, he will make more music. Do not give any money to people who do nothing for you.

I repeat do not give any money to people who do nothing for you.

/unless they are hungry and alone and you can't cook
//she could have stabbed an RIAA executive and gotten a lesser punishment
 
Sounds like grounds for a mistrial. They are not instructed to set precedent to prevent crime.
 
One juror who "held out for hours" pushing for the minimum fine per song ($150) was the most forgiving.

But if you look at it from the jurors' perspective, how would you like to be (badly) lied to and assumed to be stupid enough to believe it? IMO, if she was just honest about it she would have gotten off a lot easier by a sympathetic jury. Even a "punishing" $1000 fine per song is a lot cheaper than almost $10K per song.

Her actions aren't very surprising though. She did some pretty stupid stuff to get where she is now.
 
I don't get this. From what I've read, they never established that she was actually sharing songs, just that they traced it to her IP address, then sued her as being responsible for that IP address. Something is seriously wrong if that's all the case is based on.

I read that the hard drive they inspected had no filesharing stuff on it, and they accused her of withholding evidence. She claimed that someone was spoofing her IP, and there's probably a number of other explanations. Were these even explored during the case?

Did she admit to -- or was proven to be -- using that file sharing software, sharing those songs, etc?

I don't get it.... either I'm missing a ton of info or the lawyers, judge and jury were all complete monkeys.
 
When on Jury Duty I had to convince the other jurors to not award the person unlimited money, because thats what they were going to do.
 
If I were that lady I would just move to another country and drop off the radar. No way in HELL I would work the rest of my life paying my wages to the RIAA. I would rather kill myself.
 
ianken said:
soulman901 said:
They need to show without resonable doubt that the songs were shared and had actually been transmitting to other parties.
No, they do not. This was a civil proceeding. Not a criminal one. The burden of proof is much lower in cases like this.
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A preponderance of the evidence is needed in a civil case. Not beyond reasonable doubt.

The RIAA would dare risk bringing criminal charges against anyone, they wouldn't win.
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venm11 said:
I don't get this. From what I've read, they never established that she was actually sharing songs, just that they traced it to her IP address, then sued her as being responsible for that IP address. Something is seriously wrong if that's all the case is based on.

I read that the hard drive they inspected had no filesharing stuff on it, and they accused her of withholding evidence. She claimed that someone was spoofing her IP, and there's probably a number of other explanations. Were these even explored during the case?

Did she admit to -- or was proven to be -- using that file sharing software, sharing those songs, etc?

I don't get it.... either I'm missing a ton of info or the lawyers, judge and jury were all complete monkeys.
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A breakdown of the case:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/riaa-first-judgement.ars?bub

She was totally guilty and totally nailed, the only real issue is the stupidly high penalty.
 
Oh and the small legal question of *exactly* what she was guilty of.

She was using Kazaa to download music without license, of this there is no doubt, but as the article explains, exactly what laws were being broken, and to what extent is not really clear, mostly due to the law not being up to date with the technology.

She has strong grounds for appeal, but only on technicalities, not whether she broke the law or not :p
 
Damn reading up on Ars , she really should have just settled. This was definetly the worst case to pick a fight with the RIAA.
 
She probably figured that since the majority wants to see RIAA demolished, she would easily win.

Too bad it doesn't quite work that way. The jury can't very well say "well yes we saw the evidence and it's 200% obvious she did it, but RIAA is ebil and we vote in her favor"
 
the thing is i can't believe somebody actually wanted the maximum fine for this lady. They prosecutors picked a crooked and biased jury to actually deal with this lady. I know she is guilty of her actions but come one who the hell is able to afford 224,000 especially a lady who only makes 36G's a year.
 
meanmodda[H];1031527352 said:
Damn reading up on Ars , she really should have just settled. This was definetly the worst case to pick a fight with the RIAA.
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Makes me wonder if this was cooked up behind the scenes to fail to set legal precedent for the RIAA to help them with future cases? Scary thought!
 
I think there are a lot of mistaken people over this whole issue.

Downloading music that you don't own a license for is illegal, uploading/distributing sharing music without a license to do so is illegal. I fully support that position.

The RIAA is totally and morally correct in hunting and wishing to see penalized people who do either of those things. Those people are pirates, and there is no legitimate defense for doing either, other than that you want free stuff.

Where the "RIAA is evil" kicks in, is in the dirty, underhand way they go about tracking the pirates, mainly the famous "John Doe" lawsuits where they pick people more or less at random, based on extremely shaky, sometimes non-existent, evidence and use their wealth to bulldoze, bully and intimidate the matter through the civil courts;

"Not guilty? Well how about you settle with us anyway, it'll save you a lot of trouble because you'll go bankrupt and have your life fucked up long before the jury actually rules and the matter gets resolved"

That's basically extortion, and those cases are the ones that need to be fought, but the RIAA drops or settles those safely.

SO those cases, and the whole, Hiring-hackers-to-break-into-peoples-pcs-to-find(plant?)-evidence thing is what the RIAA is in the wrong over.

Sure the penalties are crazy high and disproportionate, but a part of me still says: "Don't do the crime if you can't pay the fine".
 
Having an illegal immigrant work for you is also against the law. They pay 10k per person tops. And congress has been trying to make it Ok, so how jacked up is this in comparison?
 
For the math challenged this amount is worth having 22 illegals work for you.
If they got the maximum its like having 360 illegals working for you.
 
slacker6 said:
Hopefully the new Radiohead pricing strategy will kick the RIAA in the nuts.
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It will likely do little but screw things up even more !


mitcity22 said:
I have the feeling that if she has a good lawyer...this will be appealed and over turned in the next case.
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She had a horrible laywer ! Where the fuk was the EFF and its lawyers to help this lady !!??


soulman901 said:
Here's the problem though, the RIAA didn't prove that she was guilty. They need to show without resonable doubt that the songs were shared and had actually been transmitting to other parties. The RIAA is pretty much doing the same thing as the DirecTV. Only until now has the courts put a stop to this nonsense. I suspect that the courts will be doing the same thing to the RIAA as they did to DirecTV. At some point folks are just going to get tired of their crap.
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In another words,there is no burden of prrof,not if this 'trial' was any indication at all !!!


I know,but it apparently does not matter !! :eek:

ianken said:
soulman901 said:
They need to show without resonable doubt that the songs were shared and had actually been transmitting to other parties.
No, they do not. This was a civil proceeding. Not a criminal one. The burden of proof is much lower in cases like this.
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Yes,in other words there is none at all in civil cases in the US if this is any indication.
The juror that was qouted on DT should be shot and pissed on,period !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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wtburnette said:
Makes me wonder if this was cooked up behind the scenes to fail to set legal precedent for the RIAA to help them with future cases? Scary thought!
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The pessimist in me would not be overly shocked,to find out that this is the case here...
:mad:
 
purple_haze said:
the thing is i can't believe somebody actually wanted the maximum fine for this lady. They prosecutors picked a crooked and biased jury to actually deal with this lady. I know she is guilty of her actions but come one who the hell is able to afford 224,000 especially a lady who only makes 36G's a year.
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And she is a single mom of two young kids. :(
 
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