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> How were those punitive as opposed to not? Should they have not sued at all and just let the infringers continue? In Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC, th

by lurk2 2y ago

> How were those punitive as opposed to not? Should they have not sued at all and just let the infringers continue? In Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC, they tried to sue for more money than existed on earth. I'm not saying they didn't have a case against individual cases of infringement, but it was quite clear what they were doing while they were doing it. The goal was always to intimidate would-be pirates with high-profile cases about grandmas and teenagers losing the family house because they downloaded an MP3 off Kazaa. The damages the RIAA sought from these people were completely disproportionate to the actual financial losses they demonstrated, to the point of being unconscionable. It's notable that they eventually abandoned this strategy by the end of the 2000s as public opinion began turning against them. Weird Al wrote a song about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGM8PT1eAvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGM8PT1eAvY

freejazz 2y ago
There's pretty much no way any court ever gives any copyright holder the maximum amount allowed under statutory damages, which is only trebled to the possibility of $150k when the infringement was willful. I love Weird Al, but I don't go to him for legal advice or analysis!
- lurk2 2y ago
  Maybe the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York will convince you where Weird Al could not: > Defendants face a potential award of over a billion dollars in statutory damages alone. If Plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, Defendants’ damages could reach into the trillions. See Dkt Entry No. 461 (“Thousands (or even millions) of uploads and downloads occurred across disparate users.”) 3 As Defendants note, Plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is “more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877.”
  - freejazz 2y ago
    I'm not sure how this is actually a response to my comment. I'm an IP litigator, asserting max statutory damages is something every attorney does at the outset otherwise they'd be waiving that recovery. It's really not the big deal you make it out to be, and nothing in your quote supports that either. Do you think a court is actually going to award more money than the entire world? No. So what are you going on about, really?
    - lurk2 2y ago
      > asserting max statutory damages is something every attorney does at the outset otherwise they'd be waiving that recovery Meaning that they could not have asked for a lower amount without waiving their rights to all statutory damages? What it sounds like you're saying is that this was just a fluke of the lawyers who drafted the brief abiding by an industry standard that ended up producing an odd result. This seems incredibly unlikely.
      - freejazz 2y ago
        It seems incredibly unlikely on what basis? Your complete lack of legal expertise and any insight into legal practice? If you draft a complaint in federal court saying you were owed $30,000, you don't get to later change that to a higher amount without amending. I'm not sure why you think it's a fluke, it's a basic practice of legal drafting. Look at any federal complaint and it's going to be written with language like "in an amount no less than..."
        lurk2 2y ago
        > It seems incredibly unlikely on what basis? Your complete lack of legal expertise and any insight into legal practice? I worked in the industry for several years, though not in litigation. I've been nothing but courteous to you despite your posts being shallow and dismissive. Review the site guidelines; you are breaking several of them. > If you draft a complaint in federal court saying you were owed $30,000, you don't get to later change that to a higher amount without amending. They weren't asking for $30,000. They were asking for more money than has ever existed. Your contention is that this came about from an industry standard practice of multiplying the statutory maximum by the number of infringements. You already stated yourself that a court was never going to award these damages because it would be impossible to pay them, so the idea that they were leaving money on the table by revising down from the the statutory maximum is nonsensical. You would then ask why they would bother to revise this figure; it's no big deal, right? Industry standard. Maybe the big shots do things differently but I've seen a lot of money get left on the table to avoid bad press, which is why I find it hard to believe there was no one in the loop here who would have had the capacity to suggest that this was a bad idea. My contention is that this didn't happen, because the whole point of these lawsuits was not to recoup damages but to curtail piracy via a chilling effect. > The RIAA's settlement amounts are typically in the neighborhood of $3,000-$4,000 for those who settle once they receive a letter from the music industry. On the other side of the balance sheet is the amount of money paid to SafeNet (formerly MediaSentry) to conduct its investigations, and the cash spent on the RIAA's legal team and on local counsel to help with the various cases. As Pariser admitted under oath today, the entire campaign is a money pit. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/10/music-industry-exec-p2p-litigation-is-a-money-pit/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/10/music-industry-e...

by lurk2 2y ago

freejazz 2y ago

There's pretty much no way any court ever gives any copyright holder the maximum amount allowed under statutory damages, which is only trebled to the possibility of $150k when the infringement was willful. I love Weird Al, but I don't go to him for legal advice or analysis!

lurk2 2y ago
Maybe the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York will convince you where Weird Al could not: > Defendants face a potential award of over a billion dollars in statutory damages alone. If Plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, Defendants’ damages could reach into the trillions. See Dkt Entry No. 461 (“Thousands (or even millions) of uploads and downloads occurred across disparate users.”) 3 As Defendants note, Plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is “more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877.”
- freejazz 2y ago
  I'm not sure how this is actually a response to my comment. I'm an IP litigator, asserting max statutory damages is something every attorney does at the outset otherwise they'd be waiving that recovery. It's really not the big deal you make it out to be, and nothing in your quote supports that either. Do you think a court is actually going to award more money than the entire world? No. So what are you going on about, really?
  - lurk2 2y ago
    > asserting max statutory damages is something every attorney does at the outset otherwise they'd be waiving that recovery Meaning that they could not have asked for a lower amount without waiving their rights to all statutory damages? What it sounds like you're saying is that this was just a fluke of the lawyers who drafted the brief abiding by an industry standard that ended up producing an odd result. This seems incredibly unlikely.
    - freejazz 2y ago
      It seems incredibly unlikely on what basis? Your complete lack of legal expertise and any insight into legal practice? If you draft a complaint in federal court saying you were owed $30,000, you don't get to later change that to a higher amount without amending. I'm not sure why you think it's a fluke, it's a basic practice of legal drafting. Look at any federal complaint and it's going to be written with language like "in an amount no less than..."
      - lurk2 2y ago
        > It seems incredibly unlikely on what basis? Your complete lack of legal expertise and any insight into legal practice? I worked in the industry for several years, though not in litigation. I've been nothing but courteous to you despite your posts being shallow and dismissive. Review the site guidelines; you are breaking several of them. > If you draft a complaint in federal court saying you were owed $30,000, you don't get to later change that to a higher amount without amending. They weren't asking for $30,000. They were asking for more money than has ever existed. Your contention is that this came about from an industry standard practice of multiplying the statutory maximum by the number of infringements. You already stated yourself that a court was never going to award these damages because it would be impossible to pay them, so the idea that they were leaving money on the table by revising down from the the statutory maximum is nonsensical. You would then ask why they would bother to revise this figure; it's no big deal, right? Industry standard. Maybe the big shots do things differently but I've seen a lot of money get left on the table to avoid bad press, which is why I find it hard to believe there was no one in the loop here who would have had the capacity to suggest that this was a bad idea. My contention is that this didn't happen, because the whole point of these lawsuits was not to recoup damages but to curtail piracy via a chilling effect. > The RIAA's settlement amounts are typically in the neighborhood of $3,000-$4,000 for those who settle once they receive a letter from the music industry. On the other side of the balance sheet is the amount of money paid to SafeNet (formerly MediaSentry) to conduct its investigations, and the cash spent on the RIAA's legal team and on local counsel to help with the various cases. As Pariser admitted under oath today, the entire campaign is a money pit. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/10/music-industry-exec-p2p-litigation-is-a-money-pit/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/10/music-industry-e...