Damages in Thomas-Rasset File-Sharing Case Back to $222,000

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The law can be stupid sometimes.
A fine should only be as large as one can afford to pay back.

Seriously.. Who the fuuu ruins somebody's life for reasons of sharing someone's work.
If someone distributed one of my songs and I lost $100,000 who cares. I would still be sitting on millions.

It's not like I would be poor, and if I had to take action I would fine according to their income (50k a year income, I would fine possibly 5-10k to give them a nasty slap).
1.9M is NOT a reasonable amount.
 
This evil woman got what she deserves. In fact she and her family deserved to fry. Think of all the good deeds the RIAA have done and could have done with the money they missed due to this most vile deed of her sharing 24 songs. Now they will never be able finance feeding the starving children in Urk or discover a cure for the ingrown toenail. Why, they barely make enough money to feed their starving management. Even their lawers are forced to sell their grannies into white slavery. And all because this woman shared 24 files on the internet.
 
According to the article, it sounds as if she was offered a $5k settlement and declined. At some point it is cheaper to settle than continue paying a lawyer to appeal.
 
[citation][nom]joytech22[/nom]The law can be stupid sometimes.A fine should only be as large as one can afford to pay back.Seriously.. Who the fuuu ruins somebody's life for reasons of sharing someone's work.If someone distributed one of my songs and I lost $100,000 who cares. I would still be sitting on millions.It's not like I would be poor, and if I had to take action I would fine according to their income (50k a year income, I would fine possibly 5-10k to give them a nasty slap).1.9M is NOT a reasonable amount.[/citation]

the punishment is worse than murdering another person... got to love how laws work.
 
How the fuck is this case still ongoing?

Copyright infringement cases should just be settled by making the person pay for the stuff he or she pirated. You wouldn't sue somebody for millions if they took a CD from a music store; don't do that shit to people who downloaded it.
 
Oh, let the lawyers have some fun.
When they attorneys for both sides are finally out of appeals and PR opportunities she will file for bankruptcy and have everything discharged.

Fudge the RIAA ! They are just trying to protect an outdated business model.
It is time to come up with a system that give a fair share to the artists instead of some fat cats in the studios !
 
Seriously how can they justify $222,000 for 24 files? I thought the fine had to be in proportion to damages?
24 files (say music) would be worth maybe $0.99 each, call it $25 for 24 files. It would mean over 8880 people would have had to have downloaded the file from her to justify this money. Can they prove that? If they could surely these other people would be in the dock too?
This type of law encourages people to hate RIAA and take up piracy just to get at them!
 
[citation][nom]gruffmeister[/nom]Seriously how can they justify $222,000 for 24 files? I thought the fine had to be in proportion to damages?24 files (say music) would be worth maybe $0.99 each, call it $25 for 24 files. It would mean over 8880 people would have had to have downloaded the file from her to justify this money. Can they prove that? If they could surely these other people would be in the dock too?This type of law encourages people to hate RIAA and take up piracy just to get at them![/citation]
There's much more in the world than just RIAA and Hollywood content and that's why they declared war to every means of learning it. They want their audience tied to them through ignorance and threats.

Congressman should keep their eyes open for turning people into sheep was never the ideal of the founders of the USA.
 
The bastards are stuck in the past with their business model and try to send a strong message to all who pirate music, this is what this trial is all about for them. I for one haven't bought a single piece of music from an Riaa label for years because its easy to see some lawyer firms earn more money than some of the musicians who made the music in the first place. I hope musicians start to cut the fat corrupted fingers out of the equation and instead use the future models to distribute music through the internet!

If Riaa labels think their goods is at such a high premium that sharing a few songs proportionally should ruin a persons life - Screw them!
 
[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]Oh, let the lawyers have some fun.When they attorneys for both sides are finally out of appeals and PR opportunities she will file for bankruptcy and have everything discharged.Fudge the RIAA ! They are just trying to protect an outdated business model.It is time to come up with a system that give a fair share to the artists instead of some fat cats in the studios ![/citation]


Wiping out a 34 year old woman's entire life savings, which is not so easy to make up at 34.
 
@joytech22. Based on dealing with as many people over many years as I have; forgive me if I don’t believe you are as altruistic as you attribute to yourself.

The fine does sound unreasonable but perhaps I don’t know all the facts.
 
Its dangerous being a US citizen. Between the dangers of debt penalties and lawsuits and the millions of criminal charges which might be levied against you in that country, it just isn't a great country to belong to. Better to emigrate like I did.... less taxes too.
 
First of all, I am not defending the RIAA and the damages they are claiming. However, just for the sake of fair argument/debate, I want to point out something many seem to be missing. She is not being fined for downloading/stealing 24 songs.. she is being fined for UPLOADING 24 songs. So I guess their argument is that she facilitated the illegal download of thousands of copies of those 24 songs. So, it's not the same as stealing just one or two CD's.. more like stealing a whole store of CDs to illegally sell on the street corner.
That said, still.. 222,000 is waaaayyy too much, let alone 1.5 Million!! That judge deserves to be fired for thinking that 1.5 Million was even remotely fair.
 
I think gruffmeister might be on to something. I'm not a lawyer, but I wonder whether it is legal for two people to be charged with the same crime? If not, then what happens when some other person who settled with the RIAA has been found to have downloaded the music that this woman shared? Were there two crimes committed in that case, or just the one? And if just the one, then is it legal to try this woman for committing a crime for which another person has already been effectively convicted (by settlement)? I wonder.

The punishment in this woman's case, $222,000, is obtuse; if you assume that she has enough free time in her life to earn an additional $8,880 per year (~20 hrs / wk at $8), then the punishment is roughly equivalent to about 25 years' worth of slave labor (albeit with reasonable working conditions). That's a pretty harsh punishment.

Regardless, I don't condone piracy. Publishing someone else's work - whether for personal gain or for free - is wrong. If I spent a year working on something to try to earn money to survive, and someone else took that work and stripped the value out of it, that would cause real physical harm.
 
[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]Oh, let the lawyers have some fun.When they attorneys for both sides are finally out of appeals and PR opportunities she will file for bankruptcy and have everything discharged.Fudge the RIAA ! They are just trying to protect an outdated business model.It is time to come up with a system that give a fair share to the artists instead of some fat cats in the studios ![/citation]
I agree, except the fat cats aren't in the studios. Engineers in virtually all studios are hardly getting by. The fat cats are in the record labels.
 
[citation][nom]techcurious[/nom]First of all, I am not defending the RIAA and the damages they are claiming. However, just for the sake of fair argument/debate, I want to point out something many seem to be missing. She is not being fined for downloading/stealing 24 songs.. she is being fined for UPLOADING 24 songs. So I guess their argument is that she facilitated the illegal download of thousands of copies of those 24 songs. So, it's not the same as stealing just one or two CD's.. more like stealing a whole store of CDs to illegally sell on the street corner.That said, still.. 222,000 is waaaayyy too much, let alone 1.5 Million!! That judge deserves to be fired for thinking that 1.5 Million was even remotely fair.[/citation]
Did she actually sell them? If not, are they "estimating" how much "damage" she caused? Does that even sound reasonable? If someone throws a basketball into a flower bed, then the $ amount can be determined based on fair market value, although it may be an "estimate" due to fluctuating prices. It seems absurd to come up with an amount to fine an individual using "what could have happened" as the basis--unless you are trying to "get someone back" or "teach them a lesson." Also, the amount of sales lost is not the damage; at most it would be the amount of profit lost. (At some point, and it seems a far cry from $220K, it becomes "cruel and unusual punishment," and isn't "getting someone back" cruelty?) The whole thing seems like a perversion of justice.
 
[citation][nom]igot1forya[/nom]She can always move to Canada/Mexico and call it a day.[/citation]

Easier said than done. Immigration hurdles.

And Mexico? I don't think the drug wars have winded down yet.
 
[citation][nom]LukeCWM[/nom]I agree, except the fat cats aren't in the studios. Engineers in virtually all studios are hardly getting by. The fat cats are in the record labels.[/citation]

"Studio" as in the company, not the physical studio of course.
It is never the people who do the actual work who make the big money.

Take Domino's, McDonalds, Ford.... Millions of worker Bees doing the work and a few Queen bees cashing in big time. Of course, that is the concept of capitalism 🙂
 
Invoke the magna carta (Ill look up article when off phone) it`s an inconstitutional amount as a (para-phrased) freeman must be fined or punished for a small offence a small amount, and for a major offence an amount that is not so big as to destroy his livelihood.

Furthermore, object to the RIAA agents as thirdparty speakers of hearsay. Ask the `RIAA` to swear an oath and take the stand to be cross-examined as to the nature of these damages. Wear some shades, as them snake oil salesmen (lawyers) will turn red, white, and blue.
 
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