Supreme Court Eyeing RIAA ‘Innocent Infringer’ Case

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I will not comment on this story because you know my position on the RIAA. I’ll leave the comments to you guys. :D

The case pending before the justices concerns a federal appeals court’s February decision ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 — $750 a track — for file-sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader. The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400 — or $200 per song. That’s an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright act.
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What a waste of time... An appeal to the AMOUNT of the fine as opposed to the absurdity of the fine as a whole gets us nowhere. $200 per song is still ridiculous, even if she wins the appeal.
 
The whole circus act is ridiculous.
You almost want to feel sorry for these poor people having to do through all that, but it is just SOOO hard to when you read they were downloading from Limewire. I mean really........??? Limewire???

I am just waiting for 1 person to claim they have owned all the CDs of the music they are being accused of stealing, but lost or broke the disk and didn't want to have to pay again for something they technically already purchased. +1 if they have empty CD cases to back them up!!

That would make me lol.
 
There needs to be a difference in the law and penalties between commercial-grade copyright infringement (selling pirated DVD, CD, SW, etc. en masse) and personal-grade (filesharing occasionally).
 
Aquila76 said:
There needs to be a difference in the law and penalties between commercial-grade copyright infringement (selling pirated DVD, CD, SW, etc. en masse) and personal-grade (filesharing occasionally).
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There is already, if I'm not mistaken. The FBI warning you see at the start of movies applies to illegally selling the material and is accompanied by a $250,000 and/or jail time. The personal grade filesharing is whats being attacked with all of the MPAA/RIAA cases.

Then there's the other random court cases initiated by the owners of the movies being pirated, i.e. the producer of "Hurt Locker" who sued 2,000 people.
 
Nibathy said:
The whole circus act is ridiculous.
You almost want to feel sorry for these poor people having to do through all that, but it is just SOOO hard to when you read they were downloading from Limewire. I mean really........??? Limewire???

I am just waiting for 1 person to claim they have owned all the CDs of the music they are being accused of stealing, but lost or broke the disk and didn't want to have to pay again for something they technically already purchased. +1 if they have empty CD cases to back them up!!

That would make me lol.
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I'm sure the penalties are for her UPLOADING the files she was sharing. Sueing someone for downloading is hard to do anything about because you must prove intent, as your comment suggests (what if you owned the CDs?), but uploading or sharing the files shows your intent to allow others to download the songs from you openly without any proof they owned some sort of right to the music. I'm surprised they even force the RIAA to show that music was actually uploaded from you rather than just shared, but maybe they didn't have to prove it -- I haven't read the particulars of this case.
 
Aquila76 said:
There needs to be a difference in the law and penalties between commercial-grade copyright infringement (selling pirated DVD, CD, SW, etc. en masse) and personal-grade (filesharing occasionally).
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There is. The statute gives a minimum fine. It can be greater, especially if they can prove actual damages.

Which they cannot for the same reasons no one has ever been sued for downloading.
 
legal extortion FTW. limewire, the way I have seen it used in the past, was more like a radio service. hundreds of versions of each song available for download as crappy ripped mp3s. They should get 27 bucks. The only people deserving of massive penalties are the ones that ripped and uploaded the songs originally. Everyone else just downloaded whatever was commonly available for everyone else. eh, I find crap like this to be so annoying.
 
One word.............Retarded.

Shes a university student, leave her alone. jezz..
 
And, I should add, if you leave LimeWire open for any extended period of time you're dumb anyways. Never seen a program have a gigantic memory hole for 5+ years and it not get fixed :rolleyes:
 
Sucks for her, but she shouldn't have downloaded crap. I don't buy innocent offender, Im sure she downloaded them because she didn't want to buy them (losing all innocence). If that didn't cross her mind at all then I guess she could plead innocent by metal retardation.

I'm not a fan of the riaa/mpaa but I would rather see them win than people get away with theft.
 
Read the thread, she is getting sued for UPloading, not downloading. Sharing is on by default in Limewire so that is why she was found to be an "Innocent" infringer

But, by definition, anyone innocently infringing cannot be found guilty of infringing! Innocent means Case CLOSED!

You cannot fine someone for running a program that does illegal things without your knowledge! If you had a virus/trojan would you be guilty of its botnets' DDoS attacks?
 
P10-17000 said:
Read the thread, she is getting sued for UPloading, not downloading. Sharing is on by default in Limewire so that is why she was found to be an "Innocent" infringer

But, by definition, anyone innocently infringing cannot be found guilty of infringing! Innocent means Case CLOSED!

You cannot fine someone for running a program that does illegal things without your knowledge! If you had a virus/trojan would you be guilty of its botnets' DDoS attacks?
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"Without knowledge" is BS> The function of limewire is clear AND it's in the EULA.
 
I'm curious:

How would you feel is the fines were more reasonable? Assume: $5 per song/movie/infraction, but they sued many more people (100x the volume)?

I don't think people would fight that fine. It'd be an annoying deterrent if they go after enough people, but it'd be somewhat fair and I'd say that, in severity, the penalty would be tantamount to the crime, eh?
 
Archmage said:
I'm curious:

How would you feel is the fines were more reasonable? Assume: $5 per song/movie/infraction, but they sued many more people (100x the volume)?

I don't think people would fight that fine. It'd be an annoying deterrent if they go after enough people, but it'd be somewhat fair and I'd say that, in severity, the penalty would be tantamount to the crime, eh?
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Would you include attorney's fees in that damage award? i.e. $5/song + attorney's fees?
 
the sad part is all the RIAA/MPAA have done over the years is give us a very strong "stick it to the man" feeling towards them. all because they didn't want to embrace a new technology - specifically mp3. sadly, i'm one of them.

i'm near 28 now. i've seen some good bands come and go - tea party, nirvana, smashing pumpkins, our lady peace is still around but a little too different from what they were to me, and after all this all i can think of is this:

if you want to pump out the justin bieber crap, FINE DO IT! but what about the rest of the bands trying to make their way?? north american music is so concentrated on the mainstream, they have completely forgotten about some of the other good stuff out there.

and then they wonder why people start to pirate music.....and then they wonder why we get pissed off when they sue....and the cycle continues....

its sad really. if they ran things a little bit differently, we'd have no need for this crap.
 
And the surest way to prove that you are a retard is to, yet again, make the all too common mistake of calling copyright infringement "theft". Durh? :rolleyes:
 
Modred189 said:
Would you include attorney's fees in that damage award? i.e. $5/song + attorney's fees?
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F#@k the attorney's fees :D

You don't need attorney's fees for something so small, imagine you get a parking ticket for $25 + $500 in "attorney's fees".
 
Modred189 said:
Would you include attorney's fees in that damage award? i.e. $5/song + attorney's fees?
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See that's the thing, $5 per song doesn't pay attorney fees if you just pay the blackma.. er fee request, and much like trying to fight a speeding ticket you'll get slapped with court costs and of course attorney fees..
 
And my inquiry has NOTHING to do with the fact that I am studying to be an IP attorney.:cool:
 
All copyrights should be redone. In the old days there were barely any copyrights that were enforced. People improved upon other peoples ideas and created even better things. Now if you do that u would be sued. Copyrights have been holding us back these days.
 
Conker said:
All copyrights should be redone. In the old days there were barely any copyrights that were enforced. People improved upon other peoples ideas and created even better things. Now if you do that u would be sued. Copyrights have been holding us back these days.
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You can thank Disney for that.
 
RIAA reminds me of some law from other part of the world where they chop off a person's hand for stealing.

I really wished we could see the day where all the members of RIAA goes bankrupt.
 
Jayemji said:
You can thank Disney for that.
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Yeah, good rule of thumb with IP is that if it's older than Mickey Mouse, it's public domain. If it's the same age or younger than Mickey Mouse, it's still copyrighted.
 
Conker said:
All copyrights should be redone. In the old days there were barely any copyrights that were enforced. People improved upon other peoples ideas and created even better things. Now if you do that u would be sued. Copyrights have been holding us back these days.
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This made me laugh... exactly what OLD DAYS are you talking about? Copyright law has roots with the printing press!
 
defuseme2k said:
I'm sure the penalties are for her UPLOADING the files she was sharing. Sueing someone for downloading is hard to do anything about because you must prove intent, as your comment suggests (what if you owned the CDs?), but uploading or sharing the files shows your intent to allow others to download the songs from you openly without any proof they owned some sort of right to the music. I'm surprised they even force the RIAA to show that music was actually uploaded from you rather than just shared, but maybe they didn't have to prove it -- I haven't read the particulars of this case.
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Unfortunately, there are very few hosted, download only places anymore. So if the average user wanted a digital version, or replacement, chances are they use some form of Peer to peer download. The nature of a peer to peer download is that you are uploading at the same time you are downloading, inadvertantly distributing copies.

Obviously, if a person uploaded content, they have next to no defense for "innocent infringer", since upload would be a conscious action as opposed to sharing inadvertantly.
 
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