Guest Hiten. Posted October 8, 2007 Share Posted October 8, 2007 CHICAGO: In the first US trial to challenge the illegal downloading of music on the Internet, a single mother from Minnesota was ordered to pay more than $220,000 for sharing 24 songs online. Jammie Thomas, 30, was the first among more than 26,000 people sued by the world's most powerful recording companies to refuse a settlement after being slapped with a lawsuit by the Recording Industry of America and six major music labels. She turned down an offer to pay a few thousands dollars in fines and instead took the case to court. Unlike some who insist on the right to share files over the Internet, Thomas says she was wrongfully targeted by SafeNet, a contractor employed by the recording industry to patrol the Internet for copyrighted material. Her lawyer said earlier this week that she had racked up some $60,000 in legal fees because she refused to be bullied. And while Thomas insisted that she had never downloaded or uploaded music, her lawyer tried to convince jurors there was no way to prove who had uploaded songs on the Kazaa file sharing network. A jury took just five hours to decide that evidence provided by the music labels showed otherwise and found Thomas guilty of copyright infringement, court records showed. Thomas, an employee of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, an Indian tribe, was ordered to pay a $9,250 fine for each of 24 shared songs cited in the case, including Godsmack's “Spiral,†Destiny's Child's “Bills, Bills, Bills†and Sara McLachlan's “Building a Mystery.†It could have been a lot worse. Had the record companies sued her for all 1,702 songs found in the online folder the fine could have run in millions. “This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not ok,†Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Gabriel said jurors had not explained how they had come up with a fine of $9,250 per song out of sentencing guidelines which range from $750 to $150,000. Thomas and her lawyer declined to comment as they exited the courthouse, the paper said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gorah_pindu Posted October 8, 2007 Share Posted October 8, 2007 Yeah, this was injustice at its finest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prateik Posted October 8, 2007 Share Posted October 8, 2007 injustice ? its illegal .. most of them get away with it .. unlucky , but not unjust . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gorah_pindu Posted October 8, 2007 Share Posted October 8, 2007 injustice ? its illegal .. most of them get away with it .. unlucky , but not unjust . No - it is unjust. To ruin someone's life and her kid's lives for comitting a blue collar offense. A rapist gets off lighter. Its a case of corporate interests being upheld before individual justice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prateik Posted October 8, 2007 Share Posted October 8, 2007 a rapist gets prison time or the death pen .. this is a fine .. comparing the two :S downloading 1700+ songs illegally , that too in america .. its different in india , but doing it in america , where they have anti-piracy dept. that actuallly works , is a lot different .. She turned down an offer to pay a few thousands dollars in fines and instead took the case to court. she couldve avoided the 220k fine .. her decision .. corporate's get sued for millions for little things , noone calls that unjust .. its unlucky that she was caught .. but not unjust .. all this considering she actually did download them illegally .. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gorah_pindu Posted October 8, 2007 Share Posted October 8, 2007 1). She was only found guilty because a hick jury dont know **** about computers really. 2). Many people agree the copyright law in America is out of controll. http://www.news.com/the-iconoclast/8301-13578_3-9792175-38.html As someone said on another forum: its just completley insane. speaking as someone who does actually litigate with regards to copyright infringements i never do it against private individuals, only companies who make money out of my work. im a big believer in the creative commons non commercial use license which i think should be adopted widely. even then in the british legal system the punishment has to fit the crime, they can only be sued for the damages directly related to them not paying - ie, the licensing cost. there isnt even a way of getting extra money because its commercial copyright infringement by a company rather than some individual doing it privately. in the uk the law seems to treat both as the same with damages... which is wrong. there is actually lobbying by the NUJ to change this but here big companies are fighting against it, they want to be able to keep ripping off the little guy without having to pay any more than theyd have paid anyway had they been honest. i think everyone agrees copyright law is completely unfair but thankfully here its not as stupid as it is in the usa with regards to damages. what does bother me is its not actually legal for me to even rip a cd i bought to my own mp3 player (although if someone sued me for it theyd get zero damages as the harm to them would be roughly zilch). i might add im actually suing a hollywood studio for about 2200 cases of copyright infringement. the work they nicked is hundreds of times more valuable than an mp3, they then also removed watermarks from it and licensed it to other people but ill be rather surprised if i get damages anywhere near 9000 time the value, thatd be over 15 billion dollars! my guess is i'll get diddly squat compared to the level of damages here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zap_Brannigan Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 A Rapist gets only a few months in Jail,with parole and time off for good behavior. There is no death penalty for that. She has to pay 220,000$. Even for most of us with a good job, we would take 6~10 years to pay off that kinda amount. So yeah, a few months in a slammer doesn't sound as bad as 10 years of your life. The law is screwed up. If you get caught publicly urinating (which happens a lot in India)in US and a person below 16 is somewhere in the vicinity, you are branded as a sex perv and you go into the website forever. Same can happen when a guy turns 18 and has a underage gf(even though the day before he turned 18 it was ok). US laws are inconsistent at best. Back to topic, what she did was illegal. She knew that. We all know that. But she should have paid the fine they gave her before she went to court. I don't know what made her think that she can get away with a crime. Now she has setup a donation fund and expects "us" to help her. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaurav Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 Details of how she got nailed :omg_smile: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/riaa-first-judgement.ars If I was in her situation I would have paid the fine. As a nobody you don't fk with big business and that also in the land of big business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zap_Brannigan Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 I read that and her myspace blog thro' that link. She basically refuses to acknowledge that she used kazza, outrightly lying to garner sympathy (she also mentions shes a single mom at every opportunity she gets) and money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gorah_pindu Posted October 9, 2007 Share Posted October 9, 2007 Yeh well there is no real way of proving she did knowingly share stuff on Kazaa, its just that the American copyright law is so out of control, that actual proof for the damages is no longer needed, and her lawyer was a cheap ass talking to a bunch of hicks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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