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I feel this whole issue needs to be explained more clearly. It isn't that these people downloaded the songs that are getting them in trouble. It is the fact t

I feel this whole issue needs to be explained more clearly. It isn't that these people downloaded the songs that are getting them in trouble. It is the fact that they allowed other people to download them from their shared libraries. If you could get in trouble for downloading illegally, then this person's argument makes sense, but he is comparing apples to oranges!

christopherolah 17y ago
Fortunately, we live in a legal system where one needs to _prove_ how much damage was done. The RIAA did not, according the the article, demonstrate anything beyond the value of the song, $0.99.
- michael_dorfman 17y ago
  So, you're arguing that the fine should be $0.99 times the number of people who downloaded each song this person shared, times some kind of multiplier for punitive damanges?
  - joshfinnie 17y ago
    Well it should be even lower than $0.99. I would be shocked if Apple is making zero profit for their iTunes store. They are probably charged something like $0.75 a song per person. This should make for a good baseline for these cases.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    That would be something that would probably be palatable to a lot of people. It is based in fact, not in some arbitrary figure pulled out of the air.
MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
I'm the author of the article. Let me clarify (this is hinted at with the asterisk footnote at the bottom of the post) what happened here: the record company elected, under the copyright statute, not to prove any actual damages and instead use "statutory damages." At that point, they didn't need to prove anything at all other than "infringement," which would include his own use of the music and of his making them available to others, regardless of how much infringement there really was. That's part of what's so preposterous about our copyright regime: it permits copyright holders to elect, at their discretion, to pursue an amorphous claim with fantastically huge damages that doesn't require they prove much. It's like if a slip and fall plaintiff could elect "statutory damages" of millions of dollars if they proved nothing more than that the defendant spilled something on the floor. Such would be swiftly declared unconstitutional.
- seertaak 17y ago
  > At that point, they didn't need to prove anything at all other than "infringement," which would include his own use of the music and of his making them available to others, regardless of how much infringement there really was. Your logic is wrong. While it is true that all the plaintiffs needed was unauthorized reproduction, that doesn't mean that finding additional infringements won't cause a jury to award higher statutory damages: indeed, the jury is specifically instructed to take into account the nature of the infringements.
  - MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
    See my response to you below. You're confusing multiple issues. For purposes of my discussion about the constitutionally-permissible compensatory-to-punitive ratio, the sole question is what actual damages were proven. At trial, the defendants only proved $0.99 actual damages for each song. Your argument about other unproven damages has already been rejected by the 'Philip Morris' Supreme Court case, which explicitly said jurors could only consider, when deciding on punitive damages, actual damages proven in court. (In that case, the jurors had considered damage to other smokers in the state who weren't plaintiffs in the actual case.)
    - seertaak 17y ago
      > At trial, the defendants only proved $0.99 actual damages for each song. I suspect you mean the plaintiffs. In any case, it really doesn't matter; the damages in this case are not separable into punitive and compensatory parts. You can argue that this is unconstitional, but you can't argue that that damages awarded are unconstitutional on the basis of your or the defendant's estimate of the compensatory damages, seeing as those aren't what the jury used in their determination of damages. So your $0.99 "actual damages" is a red herring. Had there been more of an onus on the record companies to provide more evidence of actual damages, they would almost surely have been able to provide at least rough estimates, using studies that were cited in the expert testimony of Stanley Liebowitz. There was however, no onus to do so, so it was reasonable for the plaintiffs not to go in greater detail here. > Your argument about other unproven damages What argument about "unproven damages"? I have not used that language, please don't put words in my mouth. It's fine for you to quote me; please don't misparaphrase me.

christopherolah 17y ago

Fortunately, we live in a legal system where one needs to _prove_ how much damage was done. The RIAA did not, according the the article, demonstrate anything beyond the value of the song, $0.99.

michael_dorfman 17y ago
So, you're arguing that the fine should be $0.99 times the number of people who downloaded each song this person shared, times some kind of multiplier for punitive damanges?
- joshfinnie 17y ago
  Well it should be even lower than $0.99. I would be shocked if Apple is making zero profit for their iTunes store. They are probably charged something like $0.75 a song per person. This should make for a good baseline for these cases.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  That would be something that would probably be palatable to a lot of people. It is based in fact, not in some arbitrary figure pulled out of the air.

MaxwellKennerly 17y ago

I'm the author of the article. Let me clarify (this is hinted at with the asterisk footnote at the bottom of the post) what happened here: the record company elected, under the copyright statute, not to prove any actual damages and instead use "statutory damages." At that point, they didn't need to prove anything at all other than "infringement," which would include his own use of the music and of his making them available to others, regardless of how much infringement there really was. That's part of what's so preposterous about our copyright regime: it permits copyright holders to elect, at their discretion, to pursue an amorphous claim with fantastically huge damages that doesn't require they prove much. It's like if a slip and fall plaintiff could elect "statutory damages" of millions of dollars if they proved nothing more than that the defendant spilled something on the floor. Such would be swiftly declared unconstitutional.

seertaak 17y ago
> At that point, they didn't need to prove anything at all other than "infringement," which would include his own use of the music and of his making them available to others, regardless of how much infringement there really was. Your logic is wrong. While it is true that all the plaintiffs needed was unauthorized reproduction, that doesn't mean that finding additional infringements won't cause a jury to award higher statutory damages: indeed, the jury is specifically instructed to take into account the nature of the infringements.
- MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
  See my response to you below. You're confusing multiple issues. For purposes of my discussion about the constitutionally-permissible compensatory-to-punitive ratio, the sole question is what actual damages were proven. At trial, the defendants only proved $0.99 actual damages for each song. Your argument about other unproven damages has already been rejected by the 'Philip Morris' Supreme Court case, which explicitly said jurors could only consider, when deciding on punitive damages, actual damages proven in court. (In that case, the jurors had considered damage to other smokers in the state who weren't plaintiffs in the actual case.)
  - seertaak 17y ago
    > At trial, the defendants only proved $0.99 actual damages for each song. I suspect you mean the plaintiffs. In any case, it really doesn't matter; the damages in this case are not separable into punitive and compensatory parts. You can argue that this is unconstitional, but you can't argue that that damages awarded are unconstitutional on the basis of your or the defendant's estimate of the compensatory damages, seeing as those aren't what the jury used in their determination of damages. So your $0.99 "actual damages" is a red herring. Had there been more of an onus on the record companies to provide more evidence of actual damages, they would almost surely have been able to provide at least rough estimates, using studies that were cited in the expert testimony of Stanley Liebowitz. There was however, no onus to do so, so it was reasonable for the plaintiffs not to go in greater detail here. > Your argument about other unproven damages What argument about "unproven damages"? I have not used that language, please don't put words in my mouth. It's fine for you to quote me; please don't misparaphrase me.