Government Sides With RIAA in Thomas Case

[techguy378]

[citation][nom]griffed88[/nom]You're joking right?[/citation]

This seems to be the government's attitude, not mine. Seriously, a $1.92 million dollar fine? That is just insane for such a minor crime. The next thing you know people will be getting slapped with $50,000 fines for jaywalking and $500,000 fines for driving 6 mph over the speed limit.

 

[Guest]

WOW, where the hell is the freedom, why the hell dont you revolt in USA? Is this what you want? Goverment dictating you the will of few billionairs? Now I know why they banned assault rifles and will go even farther. Do something, protect your country from new age imperialists! It will be too late soon.

 

[Vermil]

[citation][nom]redgarl[/nom]I cannot believe that such judge, who are there to represent the law for common folks, are doing the exact contrary. I am sorry, but if I was the judge, I would have asked Jammie to pay 1$ per song downloaded and 100$ for the infraction... 1.92 Billlion $... now we know that the system is worthless.Obama should check this joke that we call justice and tell the RIAA to change their tactics or to face the penalty to refund every defendants ever sued by them.[/citation]
She was originally presented with a cease and desist order. She, not RIAA, decided to take it to court. She lost and at that time she could cut her costs at $220,000. But oh no, then she lost the retrial again. As she would of course since theft is still theft and thieving is illegal, no matter the amount of legal wrangling. Somebody has to pay for the legal costs in a matter like this. What are you suggesting? That taxpayers should pay for the extravaganzes of every moron that takes up time and resources with their proceedings on selfevident issues? And it's 1.92 million genius, not "billion".
I must admit I have very little sympathy for thieves. And I also understand that there are plenty of them commenting in this thread, who'd gone far down the road of justifying their own thefts and in the process of that have twisted their reality. But it really is that simple: Are you a thief or not? I'm not, so I don't do file sharing and I don't accept or use pirated material. The fact that it's easy, risks are low and "everybody does it" has nothing to do with it. Neither has the actions of the music industry.
This verdict is just and right. Just because an entire generation has grown up to become IP thieves and thinks theft should be legal because it would make their own selfish lives so much more convenient, for a short while, we can't let an entire economy die.

 

[Guest]

I love drm and all this lobbying for anti piracy laws, it's now harder than ever to get legal music on my devices!

Spotify broadcasts so much ads now its utterly useless, and Last.fm have not only started charging for their radio, they also banned all other players than their own (Can't listen on my mobile now)

F*cking idiots, now I HAVE to download songs to have anything to listen to, and no, I'm not paying 3 bucks for a single song.

 

[Vermil]

[citation][nom]nachowarrior[/nom]...Now to touch on the sheer extrapolation of such things.Steal a CD from your local store, that store no longer has said item to sell. Production value is lost, etc etc. 15-22 dollars worth of damage done. Download a song electronically, no production value, nobody has lost any tangible object, so technically the company has not lost anything. NOW, if you can PROVE that the person in question would have paid for said product rather than downloading it, you have a case. But you cannot. 1.92 million dollars is likely in excess of what that company would have EVER made on that particular set of songs no matter if it were on the top 100 for the next 50 years.[/citation]

You don't have a point. If you're not prepared to pay the asked price you have no right to use the material. Just leave it. That's the core of I.P. rights. Download a song electronically, without paying the asking price, and the song loses it's value. So the "company" have lost something. Everything, actually. It's so comfy to call it "company" isn't it? Instead of working peoples livehood and pensions. How many days of your life have you worked?
Oh, and btw, how the RIAA and music industry behaves or tries to sell their stuff has nothing to do with this. It's their IP. If you don't want to do business with them on their terms you have the right to leave it alone.
And 1.92 million is in total damages. I believe that includes the cost of these ridiculous and unnecessary legal processes that she has chosen to plague RIAA with.

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]Long John Silver[/nom]wow...big surprise there.imagine...the US government supporting billion dollar corporations in anything that they want to do.people...stop being stupid with your pirating. if you are on a P2P you will be tracked. there are other safer ways of getting your downloads.[/citation]

Sure, you can track me all they want.
However, uploading and downloading are both completely legal in Canada, even with copyrighted material. It's the use of such unlicensed product that is ilegal (and that jas to be proven).

 

[neiroatopelcc]

I wonder if the biased judge from tpb's trial is now working for the american system?

 

[Vermil]

As for RIAA, I think it's in place to point out that they've had their silk gloves on from the start in this case. As in chosing to sue for only 24 songs rather than the about 3000 that had been downloaded and redistributed. Even now they have gone public on the record that they have no real intentions to collect 1.92 million from Thomas. What matters is that they're in the right. And that is entirely the point of DOJ as well, I believe.
It's so quick and easy to steal IP. Massive amounts of it. It's so expensive and time consuming to protect IP. If all that an IP thief could look at, in terms of consequences, was an occasional slap on the wrist and have to pay a few dollars for the stolen property, and the wronged party would still have to spend years and many millions to prove their case in court, every time... Why would that be justice? It's not.
How have so many twisted their morals, their concepts of what's right and wrong, their reality, so far as some posts in this thread indicate? Because it's so easy for you to steal and you want to?

The true outrage in this case is Thomas judgement and her legal council! The ones that will in the end rip her off, extort most money from her and ruin her life, could very well be her own lawyers.
And why? Why do they insist on pursuing this lost case? Is Thomas and her lawyer lost in the distorted moral fantasy where they will become the "champions" that made it legal to steal and redistribute other people's property? Just because they think it's ok and "everybody does it"?

 

[bunz_of_steel]

Wespac69 You are sooooo right!! I thot I was the only one to notice the DOJ has at least 3 to 5 lawyers from the RIAA. They were nominated or chosen by Barka Hussien Obama -- that's our President guys. Said to admit but US has been bought and paid for like a 2$ho. This don't deter me, in fact it enrages me and everybody I know to do it more over and over!!

 

[bunz_of_steel]

Krap spelled his name wrong! 🙁

 

[smleth]

http://sites.google.com/site/musicnmovieblackout/home

 

[smleth]

Think this is wrong go here

http://sites.google.com/site/musicnmovieblackout/home

 

[smleth]

It's won't copy in the link

sites.google.com/site/musicnmovieblackout

Not sure why

 

[techguy378]

[citation][nom]Vermil[/nom]She was originally presented with a cease and desist order. She, not RIAA, decided to take it to court. She lost and at that time she could cut her costs at $220,000. But oh no, then she lost the retrial again. As she would of course since theft is still theft and thieving is illegal, no matter the amount of legal wrangling. Somebody has to pay for the legal costs in a matter like this. What are you suggesting? That taxpayers should pay for the extravaganzes of every moron that takes up time and resources with their proceedings on selfevident issues? And it's 1.92 million genius, not "billion".I must admit I have very little sympathy for thieves. And I also understand that there are plenty of them commenting in this thread, who'd gone far down the road of justifying their own thefts and in the process of that have twisted their reality. But it really is that simple: Are you a thief or not? I'm not, so I don't do file sharing and I don't accept or use pirated material. The fact that it's easy, risks are low and "everybody does it" has nothing to do with it. Neither has the actions of the music industry.This verdict is just and right. Just because an entire generation has grown up to become IP thieves and thinks theft should be legal because it would make their own selfish lives so much more convenient, for a short while, we can't let an entire economy die.[/citation]

Maybe while the government is at it they should throw Ms. Thomas in jail for life. This verdict is not right. It doesn't matter when people pay for music they've downloaded as long as they pay for it at some point. There is absolutely no reason to charge more than $1.29 per song in this case(as far as I know this is the highest that services like iTunes charge). If a song is available at retail then people have every right to obtain the song in any way they choose as long as they pay for it at some point in the future after they obtain the song.

 

[nachowarrior]

[citation][nom]Vermil[/nom]You don't have a point. If you're not prepared to pay the asked price you have no right to use the material. Just leave it. That's the core of I.P. rights. Download a song electronically, without paying the asking price, and the song loses it's value. So the "company" have lost something. Everything, actually. It's so comfy to call it "company" isn't it? Instead of working peoples livehood and pensions. How many days of your life have you worked?Oh, and btw, how the RIAA and music industry behaves or tries to sell their stuff has nothing to do with this. It's their IP. If you don't want to do business with them on their terms you have the right to leave it alone.And 1.92 million is in total damages. I believe that includes the cost of these ridiculous and unnecessary legal processes that she has chosen to plague RIAA with.[/citation]

that's just the problem stated in my response, the "winnings" from these cases go basically right into the pockets of the ceo's. The artists don't get paid for "losses" the employees don't see any difference in their pay. The only thing that changes is the capital for the company or the bank accounts of the owning parties or "higher ups". There are several articles floating around that explain this point as well. Now if the compensation was realistic and all parties involved with the creation/production of said music benefited then there would not be an issue. But alas, that's not the case. The case is, 2 million dollars against a woman that probably won't make that much in her lifetime. It's abuse of our legal system. It's like the rebellion against the empire. It's like you holding a handgun against the entire US army. It is in no way fair. And if you check some of the facts from these cases you'd also see that the cases are VERY biased in favor of the RIAA. It's just not right to deny ANYONE a FAIR trial. And if you think for one second you can deny that then I hope you fall victim to an unfair trial, it might change your mind.

If you want some numbers, just head over to this link http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_worldwide
Lets take ac/dc's back in black
50 million copies sold.
assuming 20 dollars/copy you're looking at 1,000,000,000 dollars total.
divide 1billion by 2 million and you get .2% roughly
multiply 50 million by the .2% and you get 100,000
100,000 = the number of times she would have had to upload the second highest selling album of all time for the "losses" to make any sense whatsoever. "losses" = damages claimed by plaintiff.
Now take the size of said album of 38.2 megs and multiply that by 100,000 to get the total data size she would have had to upload for that dollar amount to make any sense whatsoever.

you're looking at 3,820,000megs.
at one of the faster upload speeds i've encountered in the US you're looking at a realistic 1meg/sec upload. You're looking at maxing out constantly doing nothing but serving files for 1061 hours. That's 44 straight days of serving at max capacity.

100,000 people supposedly would have had to download an entire TOP SELLING ALBUM for this to even be considered legitimate. This represents 3 1/3% of the entire population of the united states. This means that 3 1/3% of THE ENTIRE NATION connected to her computer over the claimed time period. It just doesn't make sense. Go ahead and scoff, but start up Utorrent and share a popular file, something legal, but popular, and see if there are 100,000 unique ip's that touch your machine over the next 44 days. There won't be. Let alone any IP address that gets THE ENTIRE file from your machine.

anyway. the math is all there i apologize for any mistakes, but the numbers get more ridiculous the lower you go down the "top sellers" chart. This is all assuming she shared the second most popular album of all time and is here only to show how wild the claims by the RIAA indeed are.

another number you can throw in there is the 2007 statistics from the us census bureau, 62% of people using broadband. That takes down the 3million us citizens to 1,860,000 people available to access the content turning the 3 1/3% into 5.4% of the internet connected part of our nation touched her pc.

Either way you cut it it's just outrageous.

 

[nachowarrior]

[citation][nom]Vermil[/nom] ...and the wronged party would still have to spend years and many millions to prove their case in court, every time... Why would that be justice?...[/citation]

It's a little thing we call "innocent until proven guilty" and many times these cases still provide no actual proof.

 

[nachowarrior]

[citation][nom]Vermil[/nom]...If you're not prepared to pay the asked price you have no right to use the material. Just leave it. That's the core of I.P. rights...[/citation]

so you're telling me you have never eaten an off brand oreo or drank a "dr. bob" or a "cola"?

It's the EXACT SAME THING. Only difference is, it's legal to rip off recipes. Flat out lie to everyone here and tell me a recipe isn't "IP" or intellectual property since you're too lazy to type it out. I hope you choke on your coco dyno bites. 😛

 

[Vermil]

[citation][nom]nachowarrior[/nom]..the US government is in place to serve the citizens of the united states. not the few elite people that run companies. Given the sheer number of thieves the law should favor the thieves...

(like local “government” in the south used to favor lynch mobs who burned afro americans alive?)

..the fact that they are just twisting arms and are flat out greedy... if these companies had an acceptable business structure they would not suffer, their lack of innovation and flexibility is their own fault...
...how democracy and freedom works, not "hey big brother (the government) come bail me out and help me decimate the free raping by the THIEVES THAT STEAL THE FRUITS OF MY LABOR" … Organizations such as the riaa, and the mpaa need to focus on making their services more attractive...
... only people that should be compensated IF ANY are those that created the content to begin with, and for their 10cents/copy, shared even 2000 times only comes out to 200 bucks...
...these lawsuits only benefit the record company...
..."winnings" from these cases go basically right into the pockets of the ceo's... thing that changes is the capital for the company or the bank accounts of the owning parties or "higher ups"...
...bla bla...
[/citation]
I fixed some of the quotes for you (yea, I know, terribly clever and original). This is all just the usual irrelevant, confused and ridiculous anti-business ramblings and noise you hear all the time from the pirate sect. You happen to be mostly wrong in your assertions. There are, for instance, no “winnings” in case like this. However I'm not the least interested in debating with you everything in the universe on wild tangents forever. All of these ramblings are irrelevant. As I said in the first place: You have no point! And you still haven't.
I happen to not like the music industry. But it doesn't matter. They're in the right. I also happen to like the movie and software industry and they're suffering even worse.

I also find your concepts of “bias” and “fair” outrageous. If you're looking for a “fair” fight you should go visit a sporting event. Law is an attempt to apply fairness. Fairness to all, even those you don't happen to like. In how law then treats the victim and the criminal, there is none of your implied “fairness” - as in allowing the thief to keep half his loot, or sentencing the victim as well to sit half the prison time. Similarly, there is no “bias” in a clear cut case, there is just simplicity of judgment. If you hold a handgun against the US army – why should it be fair? An army is not built in order to provide someone with a “fair” fight. It's purpose is to protect a nation's politics.

Law also serves the purpose to discourage harmful behavior, not to forget. You basically says, straight out, that a thief after first denying to give back his loot, then being proven guilty in two costly trials over two years, should just be allowed to walk away after paying 10 cents? You actually contend exactly that! A good example, I think, of how far the piracy sect have distorted their reality by sitting together and lying the same lies over and over again to each other. An unlocked door doesn't mean it “should” be legal for you to walk in and carry away everything you want. The ease of electronically copying something doesn't change right and wrong. Ease of stealing something is not something new (super market etc) and doesn't require that laws should be put out of effect.

Now the one issue I might, if I try, see somewhat your way: Is this harsh on ms Thomas? She made her own bed, but: Yes. But I also think DOJ explained well why it has to be. I can only hope RIAA have mercy on Thomas. If they don't, I guess I can say what I think about RIAA.

 

[Vermil]

[citation][nom]nachowarrior[/nom]so you're telling me you have never eaten an off brand oreo or drank a "dr. bob" or a "cola"?It's the EXACT SAME THING. Only difference is, it's legal to rip off recipes. Flat out lie to everyone here and tell me a recipe isn't "IP" or intellectual property since you're too lazy to type it out. I hope you choke on your coco dyno bites. 😛[/citation]
That is an as ridiculous contention I've seen. No, of course they are NOT the ”exact same thing”! How can you even say a thing like that? Those things you mention can possibly be compared to Nirvana (the rock band) when they copied the structures of Pixies (the rock band) songs. And it's legal and it should be legal. Law is practical and it's purpose is to protect people and people's freedom. It would be a bad thing to allow exclusive rights to things like ideas. (Unfortunately it has happened lately with software patents and that is a problem that needs to get sorted). It's completely different from stealing a recorded song, movie, book, image or software. Those are artistic creations and law should and does protect the creator's rights to them.

And I'm not the liar here. You're wrong. A cooking recipe is NOT regarded as IP by law. Not by itself, as a list of ingredients. Nor should it be, for a whole pile of very good reasons. Many connected with what I touched above. People shouldn't be awarded exclusive rights for any trivial thing, to the detriment of everybody else. A borderline has to be drawn somewhere. So you can't get artistic copyright on a sentence, general plot or a limited sequence of notes. There are also practical issues. How does anybody prove he/she is the origin of the recipe? Can't be done for two reasons. There's no 'patent' office for recipes. And all cooking is derivative by nature. And these two things brings us to two further circumstances. There's no value in cooking recipes and individual persons simply should not be recognized to have any 'natural' exclusive right to a culture that has been evolving and commonly inherited since stone age.

What seem to have you (and many others) confused in this matter (“cola” etc) is that various law to various extents recognize rights to, and rights to protect “trade secrets”. And trade secrets are usually considered as a type of IP. And a recipe CAN be a trade secret, as it is in the case of Coca Cola since an industry and big business is built on it. What law says in this matter is basically that it's unlawful for an employee to release, sell, or build a business himself on trade secret knowledge he has learned as an employee. But you don't get “artistic copyright”, “patent” or any proprietary rights on a recipe. A trade secret is a different matter and is regulated by different law.
In the case of Pepsi Cola, and others, they didn't “steal” any recipe. They simply made a sugared, fizzy soft drink, similarly (not identically) flavored with phosphoric acid and cola. Law can't stop them from doing that, and shouldn't. Regardless if you happen think that amounts to a “rip off” while thinking stealing recorded songs and movies is okay.

 

[Guest]

So...for the few people supporting this. I guess you never plan to drink Alcohol? I mean the only reason it was ever made legal again was becuase everyone ignored the laws. Jury Nullification FTW

Also, why the fuck can't I type a 3 line comment without waisting time registering?