First US trial over illegal music downloads opens

[Gan]

In the first US trial to challenge fines levied by music companies for sharing copyrighted music online, a single mother from Minnesota has gone to court to prove she did nothing wrong.


Jammie Thomas is 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 seven major music labels.

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.

"I did not download or upload any music, period," Thomas, 30, said outside the federal courthouse in Duluth, where a 12-member jury was empanelled Tuesday.

Instead of paying a few thousand dollars to settle the suit, Thomas will spend upwards of 60,000 dollars in attorney's fees because she refuses to be bullied, her lawyer said.

"No one can prove which computer actually did this," defense attorney Brian Toder said in his opening statement.

He argued that someone else could have easily hijacked her Internet address in order to upload songs on the Kazaa file sharing network.

But industry lawyers said there is clear evidence that Thomas, an employee of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, a native American Indian tribe, shared more than 1,700 songs with potentially millions of computer users (http://get.lingospot.com/f?url=http%3A//search.breitbart.com/q%3Fs%3D).

"Piracy is a tremendous problem affecting the music industry (http://get.lingospot.com/f?url=http%3A//search.breitbart.com/q%3Fs%3D)," said the first witness, Jennifer Pariser, head of litigation and anti-piracy for Sony BMG Music Entertainment (http://get.lingospot.com/f?url=http%3A//search.breitbart.com/q%3Fs%3D), the second-largest record company in the world.

"It has caused billions of dollars in harm in the past four or five years."
Rather than pursue Thomas for all 1,072 songs in the public folder found on Kazaa, she is being sued for sharing just 25 songs by Virgin Records (http://get.lingospot.com/f?url=http%3A//search.breitbart.com/q%3Fs%3D), Capitol Records (http://get.lingospot.com/f?url=http%3A//search.breitbart.com/q%3Fs%3D), Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records (http://get.lingospot.com/f?url=http%3A//search.breitbart.com/q%3Fs%3D), Interscope Records (http://get.lingospot.com/f?url=http%3A//search.breitbart.com/q%3Fs%3D), Warner Brothers Records and UMG Recordings Inc.

But her liability for allegedly sharing Godsmack's "Spiral," Destiny's Child's "Bills, Bills, Bills," Sara McLachlan's "Building a Mystery" and others could be as high as 150,000 dollars a song if the jury finds "willful" copyright infringement.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071003101059.8fl2j1bu&show_article=1
__________________________________________

This will be interesting to follow.

[TheEschaton]

Why do you have a thumbs-up icon on this one? Are you against file sharing?

[Artha]

Are you against file sharing?
Are you for it? Because that's illegal, and from what I hear, doing mostly harmless but somehow illegal things makes you want to kill people.

[fallenSaint]

zomg the music industry is loosing billions? Wheres the charity fund raiser so I can donate!

[Gan]

Why do you have a thumbs-up icon on this one? Are you against file sharing?

I'm for file sharing.

If you can record the music off the radio, then I dont see why you cant record it off the internet.

[Gan]

Another good article going into a little more depth of the case.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2584831.ece

[Tsa`ah]

I look at it like this ...

If the recording industry hadn't gouged it's customers for decades, offered up some good music, stepped in when a band was recording maybe 2 good songs and stuffing the rest of the album with crap because partying was better than working ... well I'd be inclined to ask why people were "stealing".

Getting it up the ass as a teen has forced me to be a bit more shrewd before I sink up to 20 dollars on a CD that may or may not be full of shitty music and contains, at most, 2 songs I actually want to hear.

I won't buy a CD until I've heard every track on it.

In any case, I have boxes full of cassettes, CDs, and even a box full of vinyl ... I'll copy any song contained in those boxes to my heart's content.

[Bobmuhthol]

<<If you can record the music off the radio, then I dont see why you cant record it off the internet.>>

No one has banned recording internet streams.

[Gan]

<<If you can record the music off the radio, then I dont see why you cant record it off the internet.>>

No one has banned recording internet streams.

Correct, its the sharing thats illegal. However, if the media can be obtained for free through streaming or over the radio waves, then why do they care if people share music that was free to begin with?

Personally I think its a case of greed. And its going to backfire more than it already has.

[Sean of the Thread]

You guys should know better than to fuck with the RIAA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGSbRv_WVFs

[Blazing247]

A coworker and I were talking about exactly this recently. I guess he knew someone who had been contacted by the Harry Fox agency/RIAA and was told if he didn't settle out of court, they would ruin his life in so many words. I was wondering why, to this date, nobody had called their bluff so I'm pretty excited to see how this case turns out.

The DMCA screwed all of us pretty hard (thanks Bill), but the law is so convoluted that's it pretty much a clusterfuck that rapes consumer and rewards the industry. If I paid for a CD, and lost it, or it was stolen, or scratched, or burnt in a fire, why should I not be able to get that CD again without paying for it? Music isn't a tangible art form, even if the format it's recorded on is. If you were to get taken to court, how would you prove such a thing? Would it matter?

Whatever happened to art and music for the masses? I guess that just sounds better in theory.

[Clove]

I look at it like this ...

If the recording industry hadn't gouged it's customers for decades, offered up some good music, stepped in when a band was recording maybe 2 good songs and stuffing the rest of the album with crap because partying was better than working ... well I'd be inclined to ask why people were "stealing".

Getting it up the ass as a teen has forced me to be a bit more shrewd before I sink up to 20 dollars on a CD that may or may not be full of shitty music and contains, at most, 2 songs I actually want to hear.

I won't buy a CD until I've heard every track on it.

In any case, I have boxes full of cassettes, CDs, and even a box full of vinyl ... I'll copy any song contained in those boxes to my heart's content.

A couple years ago I received a check for approx. 15 dollars as a result of a class action suit against recording labels and distributors who were found guilty of price-fixing CD's.

The labels had almost omnipotent control over the music industry for decades; and they abused it. Now that the industry is shifting and artists can more easily create music and market it directly to their fans, the big labels are fighting with everything they have to preserve as much power as they can for as long they can.

In my opinion times are changing and the labels are on the losing side. I don't anticipate anyone weeping for their loss.

[Gan]

(AP) The recording industry won a key fight Thursday against illegal music downloading when a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online and levied $222,000 in damages against her.

Jurors ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.

Thomas and her attorney, Brian Toder, declined comment as they left the courthouse. Jurors also left without commenting.

"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK," said Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies.

In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, six record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn't have a Kazaa account.

more...


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/04/national/main3330186.shtml

[Clove]

This article has a little more depth.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071004-verdict-is-in.html

[Celephais]

Very very very bad news... damn... now they can just turn up the heat on the witchhunts that result in settlements. It would be particuarly scary if this was the result of someone taking control of her computer, but I really doubt anyone took control of her computer inorder to share songs on Kazaa...

[Apotheosis]

I have mixed feelings on the results of the case:


1. I do not like major labels and the crap music they inflict on the masses. I have never liked them.

2. Downloading/sharing music is illegal, unless you own an original copy.

3. Services such as Itunes exist so people can buy individual songs. No excuse for file sharing.

Copyright law exists to protect artists and their work. It's been abused by major executives to retain control of material someone else created in the first place.

The market's just correcting itself. And thanks to digital technology, musicians who have their shit together can do well without the support of mass marketing & major labels.

[Stanley Burrell]

I think every time the recording industry pushes one of these frivolous suits, people around the universe who have computers and the internet should be obliged to essentially leaving their torrents open for days straight in protest.

[Drew]

I was shocked, I just didn't think a jury would convict on this. If someone stole your car, used it to rob someone and then returned it to your house would you be convicted because you didn't have a strong enough security system on the car?

[Gan]

Very very very bad news... damn... now they can just turn up the heat on the witchhunts that result in settlements. It would be particuarly scary if this was the result of someone taking control of her computer, but I really doubt anyone took control of her computer inorder to share songs on Kazaa...

I see the next round of settlement offers being substantially higher than $1,000 per offer as the initial round was. Especially with this case as precedent.