Music "Pirate" Hit With $1.92 Million Judgment

$80,000 per song

Quote :

A replay of the nation’s only file-sharing case to go to trial has ended with the same result, finding a Minnesota woman to have violated music copyrights and ordering her to pay hefty damages to the recording industry.
A federal jury ruled Thursday that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and awarded recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song.
Thomas-Rasset’s second trial actually turned out worse for her. When a different federal jury heard her case in 2007, it hit Thomas-Rasset with a $222,000 judgment.

And the reason this went back to trial? The judge felt the original $222,000 judgment was too excessive and his original jury instructions didn't protect the defendant enough.

Quote :

Camara said he and his client hadn’t decided whether to appeal or pursue the Recording Industry Association of
America’s settlement overtures. Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, said the industry remains willing to settle but she refused to name a figure.

Well, assuming that they get an absolutely insane apellate panel that upholds the judgment...she's really no choice but to take whatever settlement the RIAA offers. Not to mention now they have an even bigger club to smack others around with.

This is really just appalling. How do they find these people in the first place anyway? It seems completely over the top to do something like this just for a song that usually costs a dollar or two.

Also, I just wonder how many of the people in the jury have pirated music as well, hmmm.

I was bitching about this in the chatbox yesterday. This is disgusting. They're targeting other people and making them settle for about $3500 each.

Fuck record companies.

That is just excessive. What they're trying to do is make an example of her to stop other people from downloading music...not that it'll work. It would be infinitely more fair to make her pay the market price for each downloaded song.

This is just another case of the big corporations having too much power.

Why has no one counterfiled against them for obviously breaking the Truman antitrust act? That would be my first thought, really.

Wow, that is ridiculous. This sort of thing must be where they're getting the "illegal downloading costs eleventy quadrillion dollars A SECOND" crap from.

Another thing: we're not stealing from muscicians. They only make real money on music when their albums go gold and platinum and so on. And from live concerts. They only get a couple of pence for each song sold. Most of the money goes to the shop, then the publishers.

Bamshalam wrote:

Why has no one counterfiled against them for obviously breaking the Truman antitrust act? That would be my first thought, really.

Well, the argument would be that since there are numerous independent record companies (some that are part of the RIAA, and some that aren't) it doesn't qualify under the Sherman Act as either a "trust" or a "monopoly".

Seems to me the RIAA is making more money from suing these unfortunate basts than it is from music.

Spotts1701 wrote:

Bamshalam wrote:

Why has no one counterfiled against them for obviously breaking the Truman antitrust act? That would be my first thought, really.

Well, the argument would be that since there are numerous independent record companies (some that are part of the RIAA, and some that aren't) it doesn't qualify under the Sherman Act as either a "trust" or a "monopoly".

They definitely qualify as an oligopoly though which, to the best of my understanding, is just as illegal.

Bamshalam wrote:

Spotts1701 wrote:

Bamshalam wrote:

Why has no one counterfiled against them for obviously breaking the Truman antitrust act? That would be my first thought, really.

Well, the argument would be that since there are numerous independent record companies (some that are part of the RIAA, and some that aren't) it doesn't qualify under the Sherman Act as either a "trust" or a "monopoly".

They definitely qualify as an oligopoly though which, to the best of my understanding, is just as illegal.

Nope - we have plenty of oligopolies in the U.S.:

- MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch control over 80% of the beer industry
- Boeing and Airbus are the only two companies in the passenger jet business
- NBC Universal, ABC/Disney, CBS Corp, News Corp, and Time Warner have almost a total oligopoly over television broadcasting
- Chevron, BP, Shell and Exxon/Mobil control most of the gasoline market

It's slimy as all get-out, but not illegal.

Spotts1701 wrote:

Bamshalam wrote:

Spotts1701 wrote:

Bamshalam wrote:

Why has no one counterfiled against them for obviously breaking the Truman antitrust act? That would be my first thought, really.

Well, the argument would be that since there are numerous independent record companies (some that are part of the RIAA, and some that aren't) it doesn't qualify under the Sherman Act as either a "trust" or a "monopoly".

They definitely qualify as an oligopoly though which, to the best of my understanding, is just as illegal.

Nope - we have plenty of oligopolies in the U.S.:

- MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch control over 80% of the beer industry
- Boeing and Airbus are the only two companies in the passenger jet business
- NBC Universal, ABC/Disney, CBS Corp, News Corp, and Time Warner have almost a total oligopoly over television broadcasting
- Chevron, BP, Shell and Exxon/Mobil control most of the gasoline market

It's slimy as all get-out, but not illegal.

Insofar as broadcast media go, (ESPECIALLY with radio,) most of those companies are breaking the Clayton antitrust act by their continued acquisition of smaller companies to squash competition. I'm sure there's more, but that stood out to me the most after skimming through some articles.

Yeah...so long as they're engaging in deals with oneanother to keep others out, they're breaking antitrust laws. The only hard/time consuming part is trying to prove it. And just because we have the oligopolies doesn't mean they're legal, it just means they haven't been checked in on yet.

Actually, media monopolies are legal: Congress exempted them from the Clayton Act back in 1996 with the Telecommunications Act (which eliminated most media ownership rules entirely).

Spotts1701 wrote:

Actually, media monopolies are legal: Congress exempted them from the Clayton Act back in 1996 with the Telecommunications Act (which eliminated most media ownership rules entirely).

Fucking goddammit.