Jammie Thomas has been fighting the RIAA in court since 2006 over 24 songs she illegally downloaded via Kazaa. A third verdict in the case handed down today awards record companies $US1.5 million in damages, or $US62,500 per song.
Jammie Thomas has been fighting the RIAA in court since 2006 over 24 songs she illegally downloaded via Kazaa. A third verdict in the case handed down today awards record companies $US1.5 million in damages, or $US62,500 per song.
Leo W'ski
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 3:32 PM…and a child porn offender has to pay $500 and has a 2 year suspended sentence….justice is served!
Dave
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 3:33 PMThat does make iTunes look pretty attractive too me.
Frank
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 4:46 PMthings like this only make me more determined to NOT pay for music (unless i think that it is deserved)
This is the same with everything that i do – if i dont think that it deserves my money i wont give it – i am more then happy to pay for things that are good, infact i am more then happy to pay a premimum for good things, but why the hell would i want to pay for something that is not good?
Would you buy a car without test driving it?
Would you buy a house?
what about almost anything else in your life?
the answer is and should be no. This is the same with music, Movies, TV shows etc – ill try before i buy, if i like the series then i will buy it, otherwise i wont.
It. Is. Simple.
Nathan
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 3:43 PMIt. Is. Simple – you’re a cheap arse.
Claiming that everything must be tested before being paid for is a fallacy. Do you test your yoghurt and fruit at the supermarket before you buy it? And a house? Really? Show me where the “test house” is so I can try it out! (Display houses are always nothing like the base model we all end up buying; and briefly walking through a display does not = testing).
The fact of the matter is that singles released on radio AND sites like youtube, pandora, Last.FM and myspace allow you to “preview” music for free and LEGALLY. And let’s not forget that music stores have allowed you to ask to listen to a CD in store at one of their listening stations for over a decade now.
I agree with most that the record companies sorely need to move with the times, but I find your “excuse” to be a pathetic cover up for you wanting free music.
Nathan
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 3:46 PMEDIT – Of course, none of this is to say I agree with this woman’s fine of 1.5 million. I think Leo W’ski summed it up perfectly.
samt114
Sunday, November 7, 2010 at 1:35 PMI agree to a certain extent, I can’t justify spending money on music for the sole reason that many record companies make enough. If I liked a particular indie group however I would be more than happy to spend some money on an album.
As for the article, It’s just a headline and doesn’t give nearly enough information for me to develop an opinion.
Ben Dy
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 3:33 PM$62k per song is absolutely ridiculous.
Corteks
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 4:37 PMUmmmm wut?
She downloaded 24 songs and has to pay up $1.5billion? Considering that the only criminals here are RIAA, that’s just plain evil.
Seriously how can they possibly justify that? Isn’t there someone that’s part of this process that at some point stops everyone and goes “Fair enough she downloaded a few songs, but you guys are just being freakin’ ridiculous about it.” They could at least make the fine an amount someone could realistically pay, but instead I guess they’d rather completely bankrupt this woman. Why? I guess they must be pure evil, like actually sadistically evil. I mean there’s no other logical explanation for it, $62k per song cannot be rationally justified no matter how many long and complex words you use. It’s astronomically ridiculous.
:/
deev
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 7:09 PMUmmm, that’s million, not billion. Reading your m’s as b’s? Mite be!
Stainz
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 7:46 PMI agree completely. There is no way in the world that anyone has incurred $1.25 million in damages from a single woman downloading 24 songs. At most $30-$40, which to corporations like that is chump change. No rational person can justify $62K for A SONG. Many artists would agree, many only make money from touring and get very little from album sales anyway. Rambling here… It would be fair enough if they made her (or anyone in the same situation) pay the iTunes (or other online store) equivalent for the songs, but ruining her life for such a thing is ridiculous
Goraxium
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 6:54 PMIt’s times like these my ever expanding wall of music CDs becomes slightly easier to justify. I just wish they didn’t cost so much.
James
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 7:39 PMThe logic I assume is that she then allowed many other potential downloaders to copy the song from her on the filesharing site. So instead of suing each person who stole the music for the amount they would have paid to buy it, they sue one person for all the potential people downstream. If they did it the former way, by suing everyone, it would not be economically viable for the RIAA.
What gives me the sh*ts about all this is that if the RIAA and MIAA had spent even a fraction of the money and effort a few years back on creating an iTunes site that was easy and affordable – then creating another for movies and having anything available online for paid download – people would pay for music and video instead of stealing it.
james whatsit
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 8:40 PMwhere the F*** did they pull 1.5million from, the bastards. i hope for the poor woman’s sake that you can default and declare bankruptcy on fines. the ABSOLUTE maximum the fines should be is what she would have paid in a store for each of those songs at the time she pirated them plus the anti piracy thingos court fees (which is still pretty mean and will probably be up to $30000).
does the pirate party grant financial refugee status from anti piracy fines? i hope so
Daniel Weaver-Koenigs
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 9:45 PMMost I could see as reasonable would be $30 per song, charge a whole CD’s value per song.
Only in America could this be appealed for four fucking years and still have such a stupid result.
JayC
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 10:22 PMIf she had a PayPal account I’d donate.
Richard Siu
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 3:43 AMF** that I am never paying for a song again on itunes, there is no way in hell that is justified..
Frank
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 9:10 AMLet’s create an international day where we (along with the help of others such as TPB) download as many illegal songs as possible to stick it to the RIAA and make a statement that we will not be treates like this.
America is fucked up
Kensai
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 10:01 AMif you make international protest day like that, it’ll just be a field day for RIAA to copy down some IPs.
guerrilla warfare dictates never let all your assets be in one place at any one time
Michael
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 11:29 AMwe could hide the IP by using proxies, poisoning DNS caches with redirects to other proxies (so that we are using a 2 step re-direct bounce for our request, which uTorrent supports) Also we could align this with the upcomming Anon attacks and combine it with a public demonstration (in America + UK and AU) talking about the injustice of this case + the many others like this and flavor the demonstration with the topic of net identify.
It is easy enough to use a DDOS attack combined with a zero day hack on a government server to gain control and use it an a anon proxy, which would mean that the torrents are going through:
PC –> Proxy (in country) –> Proxy (Overthrown Government server) –> Proxy (in another country) –> Torrent file locations.
having this string would make it very hard to find who is downloading the files, plus it would be a double attack on the government (in AU this is very important)
note i am just thinking aloud here
Michael Brine
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 9:56 AMwhat it comes down to is the value of each song is determined by the actuall cost of the song, the potential loss of income to the record company and artist plus the lawyering costs they incurred to persue her.
these industries have some of the dumbest people on the planet working for them
Steve
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 1:37 PMWow shit. 24 songs back in the stone age of Kazaa. $1.5 million. Fuck me.
I hope Lars Ulrich enjoys that Gulfstream.