Jury penalises music file-sharer

[ShiningForce]

A court in the US has ordered a woman to pay $222,000 (£109,000) in damages for illegally file-sharing music.

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 32, from Minnesota, to pay for offering to share 24 specific songs online - a cost of $9,250 per song.

Record companies said she had illegally shared a total of 1,702 songs.

Ms Thomas, who denied the charges, was the first person accused of illegal file-sharing who decided to fight the case in court.

Each year, millions of households illegally share music files, and the music industry takes it as a serious threat to its revenue.

About 26,000 lawsuits have been filed against alleged file-sharers, but most defendants settle privately by paying damages amounting to a few thousand dollars.

Industry defiant

However, contesting the charge and losing will cost Jammie Thomas almost a quarter of a million dollars.

Kazaa screen
Thomas denied using Kazaa to share copyrighted material

Her lawyer, Brian Toder, told the Associated Press that Ms Thomas was reduced to tears by the verdict.

"This is a girl that lives from pay cheque to pay cheque, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her pay cheque garnished for the rest of her life," he said.

The US record industry said investigators located an individual with the screen name "tereastarr@KaZaA", using the Kazaa file-sharing software program.

"This individual was downloading copyrighted sounds recordings from other users of the Kazaa network, and was distributing copyrighted sound recordings stored on her computer to other Kazaa users," the plaintiffs said.


A spokesman for the record companies said he hoped people would understand the verdict.

Richard Gabriel, a lawyer for the music companies, said the verdict was important.

"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not okay," he told AP.


Our message is: we don't want to litigate - don't leave yourself exposed to litigation
John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries

He said no decision had yet been made about what the record companies would do, if anything, to pursue collecting the money from Ms Thomas.

John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries, which represents record labels, said they were "reluctant litigators".

"We do everything possible to persuade people not to leave themselves exposed to litigation. We educate, we warn, we even try and settle before a case gets to court."

He said he hoped the fine would prove a deterrent to others.

"Our message is: we don't want to litigate - don't leave yourself exposed to litigation," he added.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7029229.stm



Did she have it coming? Is it really stealing? Is the music industry ran by money grabbing ****s who should be hunted down and set aflame? Discuss.

[Detomah]

Originally Posted by ShiningForce

Did she have it coming? Is it really stealing? Is the music industry ran by money grabbing ****s who should be hunted down and set aflame? Discuss.

She used Kazaa, when everyone knows Kazaa is full of traps, so in that aspect, yes she had it coming for not being more careful.

However at the same time, yes it really is stealing, it's no different than going into a shop and stealing a loaf of bread, it's just that mp3 files aren't a physical object, so most people tend to forget that what they are doing is illegal.

As I said in a post I made yesterday though, the media industries need to stop being money grabbing ******s and bring the prices of their products down to realistic levels if they want to stop people from taking alternate measures to get the products they want, because most people would happily pay for original products, but most wont at their currently stupid prices.

I don't think hunting them down and burning them would help, that would probably result in a harsher sentence than that of piracy alone. But I definately think something needs doing, because these corporate giants monopolise these industries and are protected by multi-billion dollar corporations and the best legal teams in the world. Microsoft has been steadily ripped apart by governments for holding a monopoly on their chosen products, surely the same thing should be happening to Sony, Warner and the likes.

[Ratio]

In reference to the above:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe...rends.honesty/

It makes for an interesting read, i pay for a paper in the train station, but thats 50p

[Sash]

TF Source (Woman fined £100,000 for illegal file sharing)

I agree with Det. If they didn't make things so outrageously expensive when It's costing peanuts to produce then people wouldn't use things like Kazaa.

[emma roids]

aye, if they wasn't greedy buggers then folks wouldn't do it.

i cant remember the last time i bought a cd or a dvd for that matter

[Mankind]

It's not quite stealing in the same way as stealing a CD.

Steal a CD, the music shop/band has lost something they could have sold to someone else for £15 or whatever.

Download it, and if you weren't going to buy it anyway, it's not stealing from anyone.

Having said that, she broke the law and got caught. I'd be incredibly ****ed off if it happened to me, but it would be my fault and I would deserve it.

[Fallen-Angel]

Originally Posted by Mankind

It's not quite stealing in the same way as stealing a CD.

Steal a CD, the music shop/band has lost something they could have sold to someone else for £15 or whatever.

Download it, and if you weren't going to buy it anyway, it's not stealing from anyone.

Having said that, she broke the law and got caught. I'd be incredibly ****ed off if it happened to me, but it would be my fault and I would deserve it.

I agree. As much as i download, i do realise that i shouldn't do, so i don't do it nearly as much as i did when i was twelve and i discovered limewire. Times change as you grow up and start actually making money. But i think a part of it is understanding HOW to actually acquire said materials.

[ShiningForce]

Originally Posted by Detomah

However at the same time, yes it really is stealing, it's no different than going into a shop and stealing a loaf of bread, it's just that mp3 files aren't a physical object, so most people tend to forget that what they are doing is illegal.

the music industry has done well to corellate the words 'steal' and 'copy'. If i copy a song nobody loses the song, it's still there to be listened to. If i steal a car then it's gone and the origonal owner is minus one car.


the thing that ****ed me off so much was that they charged her 9 grand a song. if they had charged her the cost of the CDs plus a bit more, fair enough, but thats just outragous. and to do it to a single mother doesn't exactly help their image of being evil money grabbing *******s. this is far more severe than the punishment for a real crime, even if they did want to make an example of her.

time and time again people usually link in a table of CD sales over the past 8 or so years. despite whining that downloadings killing their industry, more songs are being sold each year than there were previously.

[draganess]

Originally Posted by Ratio

In reference to the above:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe...rends.honesty/

It makes for an interesting read, i pay for a paper in the train station, but thats 50p

I saw this on the news, Radiohead is out of contract so not tide to any legalitys. They are releasing a box set of something or other later in the year and thats going to be around £40, (so GMTV said)

Prince has been giving away his albums free with the news paper, the record companies didnt like that either.

At the moment I dont download stuff from the net, I much prefer to by the 'real' stuff from shops. I have however been looking at the ones you sign up for and pay monthly, but then agian I think I would still go out and buy the cd!

[Puratech]

Theres so many grey points in these arguements really.

A lot of the media removed from youtube is removed for "copyright", but often the record companys just use that to remove things they dont want others uploading. For example prince had put a song on YT, and had all other uploads of it removed, which was apparently down to artists keeping control of what they release etc and how its released.

Downloading music is ofcourse stealing, but its kind of different. As Mankind says if i walk into HMV and steal a stack of CDs, theyve lost the physical objects which they could sell for X amount of money, if i download a song off Kazaa the only impact to the record company is that same potential lost sale. The price of the media packaging you have/havent stolen is pretty much irrelevant, which is why i find it hard to see how they classify things the same. If say ive downloaded 5,000 songs its not because ive conciously stolen each of those songs and that otherwise id have gone to the record shop and bought all 5,000 singles. How they could claim the same amount of lost revenue is insane.

Equally, a lot of people with broadband download all the big movies as they come out, but saying its all lost revenue seems retarded, as people will obviously take a lot more for free than they would if they had to pay for it. I know a lot of people who go to the cinema to watch the movies they wanted to see on the big screen, and illegally download those they wouldnt have bought anyway.

Probably the biggest problem with this is that theres so many people doing it, the estimated number of songs downloaded illegally was in the billions per... i cant even remember if it was monthly or annually. Randomly targetting any one of these people and giving them a rediculous fine just seems stupid, i dont think itll deter anyone because people are willing to play the odds, but at the same time its insane that as a society were allowing people to have their lives potentially ruined by making a little mistake.

That woman would have got a much much lesser punishment had she actually gone into HMV and stolen a few cds a day, which is the point that surely highlights how out of line the punishment is.

Also the attack on the people should be refocused to the companies. Kazaa whether or not people use it for legal mp3s has a huge number of illegal songs on it, and it is clearly its major usage, intended or otherwise. It should be closed down imo, and the governments involved should be given the support to get around the holes in laws the programs/sites grip onto. The same is true of torrent sites, staying alive on the technicality that they only provide a system, and dont actually host anything illegal, nor do they even run the trackers a lot of the time. Theres plenty more places, but piracy has become so mainstream now.

Anyways, all my problem with it is that this woman and her children are going to suffer because shes downloaded some music off the internet. I know the numbers dont make it right and that it is stealing, but i think this lottery of punishment is totally out of line, with any sense of fairness in execution of the law, especially when real stealing would have probably got a lesser punishment, and certainly a more reasonable one.

They do need to do something with the prices though, i havent bought a CD since about 2001, and if every illegal source of music was stopped, it wouldnt affect me, i still wouldnt be buying albums.

STEAL MUSIC AND WE'LL F*** UP YOUR LIFE BIATCHES!