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Sony Demands 150K Per Song From Customer.

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Sony lawyer: $150K damages per song "certainly" appropriate
By Nate Anderson | Last updated June 15, 2009 10:10 PM CT
The Jammie Thomas-Rasset retrial swung into high gear this afternoon as one of Sony Music Entertainment's top lawyers said that $150,000 per song certainly seemed appropriate to him. Thomas again insisted, though, that she didn't infringe any copyrights, and her lawyer called her one of the music industry's "best customers."

How much cash do the record labels deserve for Jammie Thomas-Rasset's alleged copyright infringement? Defense lawyer Kiwi Camara pressed Sony Entertainment's Gary Leak on that point today, trying to force him to pick a number. Leak refused to be baited. It was "impossible to determine harm" in this case, he said, which is why the labels want statutory damages that can range from $750 to $150,000 per song.

Camara pressed again. "A message should be sent," Leak said. But Camara wanted numbers; what, in Leak's view, did Thomas-Rasset owe Sony?

"You can't tell the jury a number?" he asked aggressively. No, said Leak, it's up to them to decide; the law allows these damages, and we are asking only what's allowed under the law. The jury must pick the award.

Camara wouldn't give it up. He asked if, by Leak's logic, even the maximum $150,000 per song damage award would therefore be an appropriate amount.

Leak at last gave in. "Certainly!" he said in apparent exasperation, milliseconds before an objection from recording industry lawyers put an end to that line of questioning.

Bulldog on defense

Camara showed himself to be an aggressive litigator today as the trial kicked off in earnest—perhaps too aggressive. Leak was the day's first witness, and before his testimony was over, Camara had been reproved twice by Judge Michael Davis.

He had a habit of asking rapid-fire questions or mounting objections before a witness of the opposing lawyer had finished speaking, and Davis quickly put a stop to that. "You cannot interrupt opposing counsel," he warned early on, turning the slow burn of his eyes on Camara. Minutes later, a second warning about talking over witnesses—"let's get this straight so we don't have any problems later on," said Davis.

Camara did give a strident opening statement in which he proclaimed Thomas-Rasset's complete innocence of the charges. "They have no evidence that Ms. Thomas did it," he said, pinning his hopes on the fact that the evidence only identifies a particular cable modem and not a particular user.

Thomas-Rasset has 200 CDs that she purchased, Camara said. "Ms. Thomas buys music, she doesn't steal it... She's one of the recording industry's best customers!"

As for the hard drive that was swapped out of her computer just a month after her alleged infringement was detected, Camara says that his client never received the notices about an investigation and replaced her hard drive for a simple reason: her 10-year old son got frustrated playing a game, hit the machine, and its hard drive broke. She took it to Best Buy and they replaced the drive. Situation clarified!

The recording industry case

But it's not, not completely, and the RIAA certainly doesn't buy it. For one thing, Thomas-Rasset was notified twice, first by instant message through KaZaA and once by FedEx package from her ISP, Charter. (She claims that she never saw either notice.)

There's also the little matter of the tereastarr@KaZaA username that investigators MediaSentry discovered. Thomas-Rasset turns out to have used the "tereastarr" username for her Charter e-mail address and a host of other online accounts; if she never used KaZaA to download or distribute music, then why did her computer have a KaZaA install with her preferred username? And that hard drive swap-out... the timing is suspicious.

Tim Reynolds, the recording industry's chief litigator in the case, made these points during his own opening statement. "The infringement in this case was substantial—massive," he told the juror, pointing out that the tereastarr@KaZaA share folder contained more than 1,700 songs.

This, he said, is not "sharing like we teach our children."

The recording industry's case unfolded in expected fashion. MediaSentry presented its evidence of having caught the tereastarr@KaZaA user sharing files; the company downloaded complete copies of 11 songs from that user and grabbed the metadata on nearly 2,000 more.

Seeking to head off the argument that these were all just CD rips, MediaSentry's Chris Connelly pointed to metadata in numerous songs that suggested the material had itself been downloaded from the Internet. "Bleeding Edge Ripping Crew," said one. "Uploaded by 0ff$3+," said another.

A Charter representative helped connect the dots, explaining how the ISP could connect the IP address logged by MediaSentry to a particular user account—in this case, to Jammie Thomas-Rasset.

The evidence appears to be quite strong, though Camara is of course right that it cannot prove in some absolute sense that it was Thomas-Rasset behind the keyboard back in 2005. That may not matter; the standard of judgment is more lenient in civil cases, and this defense failed the first time around.

Did the jury follow everything being said? With hours of testimony about MAC addresses, IP addresses, KaZaA, instant messages, share folders, MP3s, metadata, and more, the evidence might well have been difficult to take in. Jurors took notes, of course, but several testified that they could not use computers without assistance, while most others appeared to be casual computer users at best.

Still, the recording industry did a fine job of connecting the threads, always coming back to the link between the IP address, Jammie Thomas-Rasset's cable modem, and her "tereastarr" username.

A repeat in the making?

Perhaps the biggest moment of the day went totally unnoticed by jurors. During Leak's testimony, the recording industry legal team moved to enter Sony's eight copyright registrations into evidence. Camara and his team have tried to question these, hoping to undercut the entire trial, but the RIAA managed to produce certified copies of the documents this morning and the judge ultimately accepted them into evidence.

Once that happened, Camara's big gambles failed to pay out: MediaSentry's evidence was in, the copyright registrations were in, and his proposed fair use defense was out. The case now looks like it will play out last it did last time, with Thomas-Rasset taking the stand to declare that she didn't do it.

And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day. Stay tuned for more reports from Minneapolis Tuesday, when Jammie Thomas is expected to take the stand.

Sony is certainly the perfect storm of greed and stupidity in recent years, doing everything in its power to alienate the consumer base in virtually everything, on the other hand it is dishonest and lazy to download music you can legitimately get elsewhere (including legal downloads for I-Pods).

Yet I'm rather glad that the counterproductive, unwieldly IP laws that have now were not in effect during William Shakespeare’s day, otherwise he would’ve hired thugs to shakedown audience members leaving the Globe Threatre for notepads. :rolleyes:
 
how many songs are on an album usually? Like 10? just divide the amount of songs she had in her folder by 10 and then times it by the average price of a cd. Simple. A hundred and fifty grand is taking the piss
 
Who is actually stupid enough to get busted for filesharing? When you use a service that advertises your IP and is known to have feds watching it, you're asking for trouble. Though most of my music is ripped from legit CDs (mostly because most idiots who upload stuff don't know how to make good rips and don't bother uploading FLACs, just horrible MP3s), I've done a bit of downloading in the past. with no consequence. Just stick to private trackers, or even better, private, secure, password protected webservers run by generous friends with large playlists and fast upstream :lol:
 
If you ask me, putting aside the issues of the morality of pirating media and the morality of these big corporations and their system of paying the artist for their work, I think a simple question needs to be asked: Will charging this one person $150,000 a song really cause others to stop pirating media?

Sony's lawyer, Leak, is intent on sending a message with that amount. Okay, so let's say that message is sent? I personally think anyone who would see this story and be scared enough to stop ripping, uploading, and/or downloading media has stopped already. Since the first supeonas and lawsuits, I have to think that most people made their decision well over five years ago to stop or continue. Those that continued back then feeling, "There's no way they can catch everyone, therefore, they won't catch me," will continue to feel that way even if the judge approves $1 million per song.
 
Either way Sony is doing nothing to repair its heavily tarnished image (it is now overtaking Microsoft in perceived nastiness) by wasting court time and money going after a slighty dim housewife doing what hundreds of thousands of other people are doing, as dishonest as it is. However did VCR recording kill the cinema? When the Internet is being beamed into our Borg implants, we will still have paper books around.

Copyright is a usesful tool for consolidation and protection, but it has been horribly abused by narrow corporate interests when over 70 per cent of music is out of print. And don't get me started about music royalties keeping TV shows in limbo. Copyright needs to be seriously reformed because it is causing the opposite intended effect, making consumers more impatient and distrusting, downloading stuff instead.
 
Yeah I have TV shows on my computer that aren't shown and have no DVD, in my eye that means no copyright.

If you are a Godzilla fan you need to download a few things illegal because they were never released in the USA.

Also I would be more in favor of fines (Like $100 per song, or $500 tops) if ALL the money went to the artist, it is their music after all.
 
Yeah I have TV shows on my computer that aren't shown and have no DVD, in my eye that means no copyright.

Yikes. I hope you don't get caught. That's still infringement.

If you are a Godzilla fan you need to download a few things illegal because they were never released in the USA.

I do notice that piracy is "tolerated" by Japanese media companies unless and until the work is licensed internationally. Then, they tend to crack down on it.

Also I would be more in favor of fines (Like $100 per song, or $500 tops) if ALL the money went to the artist, it is their music after all.

Well, that'll never happen. The artists don't even own their music anyway. They're considered "works for hire" now. It's bullshit. But that's how it is now.
 

That's absolutely ridiculous. Oh, I believe it, don't get me wrong. It's ridiculous that it's all out of print and so darned hard to find. And then we get these idiots at Sony and others claiming a single song is with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars? What the fuck ever.

It sounds to me like there needs to be a revolution in this country, against the media giants. When artists such as coldplay offer their music for free on their websites, it sends a big giant "middle finger" to the recording industry. And these artists know their fans will still buy their cds and come to their concerts. So it's a win-win for them and their fans.
 
What IS really stupid is that it even went to a big nasty court case "Oh woes is us! Some lady didn't pay us about $50 bucks to buy our music on cd so we're going to sue her for $150,000 a SONG and then she'll know our wrath!"

I am getting so tempted to just stop buying any artist that records on Sony/BMG. Like they're '*really* doing this in the best interest of the artist. BULL SHIT!

I think we need to publically riot and take down the RIAA and the MPAA. They've abused their power for far far too long! I'd gladly pay the actual artist a lion's share of the money and buy physical cds more, IF THEY ACTUALLY GOT MORE OF THE MONEY. Not the fuckin label.

This case needs to be a watershed moment in this country for us to RISE UP!
 
The artists don't even own their music anyway. They're considered "works for hire" now. It's bullshit. But that's how it is now.

Source?

Here you go!

Some sneaky rewording of copyright law in 1999 made this happen. The full effects won't be felt for many years, but it basically means someone who goes to a record label now will be unable to recapture their rights in the future--the labels owns the work, permanently.
 
The artists don't even own their music anyway. They're considered "works for hire" now. It's bullshit. But that's how it is now.

Source?

Here you go!

Some sneaky rewording of copyright law in 1999 made this happen. The full effects won't be felt for many years, but it basically means someone who goes to a record label now will be unable to recapture their rights in the future--the labels owns the work, permanently.

Oh - you mean "music" as in the actual recordings, not the songs themselves (the copyright there would be with the music publisher, and any band with a half-decent lawyer or manager should be able to retain their interest in that). I didn't realize that change in the law had slipped in to prevent reversion of copyright on master recordings, and the sad part is most of the people effected won't have the ability to fight it.
 
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