“Rest assured that I will now download one song for every dollar she has to pay before the year is out. I will be burning them to CDs and handing them out where ever I go. Fuck the RIAA.” says Love to Download in the comments of Wired online.
That’s $9250USD per track of 24 that single mother of two Jammie Thomas has to pay to the RIAA who sued her for downloading and distributing music on the KaZaa network, a grand total of $222,000. The complete story is in this feed on Wired’s Threat Level.
The verdict, coming after two days of testimony and about five hours of deliberations, was a mixed victory for the RIAA, which has brought more than 20,000 lawsuits in the last four years as part of its zero-tolerance policy against pirating. The outcome is likely to embolden the RIAA, which began targeting individuals in lawsuits after concluding the legal system could not keep pace with the ever growing number of file-sharing sites and services.
“This is what can happen if you don’t settle,” RIAA attorney Richard Gabriel told reporters outside the courthouse. “I think we have sent a message we are willing to go to trial.”
According to BigChampagne, an online measuring service, the number of peer-to-peer users unlawfully trading goods has nearly tripled since 2003, when the RIAA began legal onslaught targeting individuals.
At the time, BigChampagne says, there were about 3.8 million file sharers trading over the internet at a given moment. Now, the group has measured a record 9 million users trading at the same time. Roughly 70 percent of trading involves digital music, according to BigChampagne.
The case, however, did set legal precedents favoring the industry.
In proving liability, the industry did not have to demonstrate that the defendant’s computer had a file-sharing program installed at the time that they inspected her hard drive. And the RIAA did not have to show that the defendant was at the keyboard when RIAA investigators accessed Thomas’ share folder.
Also, the judge in the case ruled that jurors may find copyright infringement liability against somebody solely for sharing files on the internet. The RIAA did not have to prove that others downloaded the files. That was a big bone of contention that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis settled in favor of the industry.
Thomas, 30, maintained that she was not the Kazaa user “Tereastarr,” whose files were detected by RIAA’s investigators. Her attorney speculated to jurors that she could have been the victim of a spoof, cracker, zombie, drone and other attacks.
The jury found her liable after receiving evidence her internet protocol address and cable modem identifier were used to share some 1,700 files. The hard drive linked to Kazaa on Feb. 21, 2005 — the evening in question — did not become evidence in the case.
The RIAA are a consortium of recording corporations whose overpriced music in the 1990s lead to the development of the MP3 and file sharing as a competitive measure. Now they blame their consumers for their inability to adapt to new market forces whose was accelerated by their own greed. They include the following: Virgin Records, Capitol Records, Sony BMG, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. Records and UMG Recordings.
Don’t buy music from them anymore, as this is shameful behaviour.
