The cost of free file-sharing
The Associated Press reports that the jury in Capitol v Thomas (formerly Virgin v Thomas) found Jammie Thomas liable today for willfully infringing 24 copyrighted songs and assessed damages of $9,250 per track -- well above the $750 minimum, but nowhere near the $150,000 maximum, either. The grand total is a stunning $222,000.
That may be the kind of deterrent message the RIAA was hoping for, even if many observers will interpret it the courtroom equivalent of pounding a fly with a sledgehammer. More important, though, the stage is set for an appeals court to scrutinize one of the foundations of the RIAA's lawsuit campaign, namely, that having a bunch of songs in a folder that's shared across the Internet violates a copyright holder's right to limit distribution of his or her works.
Ars Technica's Eric Bangeman, who attended the trial in Duluth, reported that
U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis initially planned to instruct the
jury that merely making a song available for copying through a
peer-to-peer network did not violate copyrights. Instead, Davis planned
to say, a song has to be transfered. But Richard Gabriel, the RIAA's
lead attorney in the case, persuaded Davis to give exactly the opposite
instruction, leaving the jury a relatively easy path to take to a
verdict against Thomas. That instruction could form the basis of an
appeal, providing more clarity on an issue that's the subject of some dispute. One potential problem with the instruction, according to one copyright lawyer I consulted, is that it would impose liability even on those who could prove that no songs were ever copied from their shared folders. In other words, it turns "making available" into "distributing" even in the absence of any distributions.
Jay Flemma, an attorney who specializes in the music industry, said he was "horrified" by the per-song damages (which, by my calculations, equate to 13,214 lost iTunes sales per song). And he worried that the verdict would reinforce the major labels' inclination to do business the way they want to do it, rather than embracing the Internet and new distribution models. "I don't think that they're going to abort the things that they're doing," Flemma said. "It'll just take a lot longer. We should have had these advances years ago, and they've been dragging their feet." If that's the result, then today's verdict truly will be a lose-lose outcome.
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Ridiculous the industry is trying to make an example out of people. They're muscling individuals who do not have money into settling out of court for a few thousand dollars. If this is left unchecked the industry can go after a huge number of potential offenders. The music industry needs to advertise and send a message to teach people of the potential harm they are doing to artists and themselves. Get clean is the message. Do you believe the music industry should go after the distributors or the users of file sharing? -----> http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=648
Posted by: PollM | October 06, 2007 at 02:07 PM
The RIAA, and MPAA are out of control. They have completely lost sight of what they are supposed to be, a representative of the companies they represent, and in so doing, they should be helping those companies find ways to reverse their misfortunes by helping them to find NEW business models, and ways to monetize what is already going on.
I thank God, every day that I live in Canada, a country that won't allow big business to bully, threaten, sue us little people if we decide to send a song to our friends.
Posted by: malocite | February 22, 2008 at 06:09 AM