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Primus at Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, 1030 15th Street, Suite 100, Sacramento, CA on Sep 14
Menomena at Showbox at the Market, 1426 First Avenue, Seattle, WA on Sep 10
Ratatat at Riviera Night Club, 4746 North Racine Avenue, Chicago, IL on Sep 10
The Black Keys at Verizon Wireless Music Center, 12880 East 146th Street, Noblesville, IN on Sep 03
Defendant to RIAA: $675,000?! How ‘Bout a Jackson?
[Via Ars Technica]
The crusade to wrangle the RIAA’s preposterous file-sharing dough-grabs down to some semblance of actual damages continues. Joel Tenenbaum, the second defendant to take the RIAA to trial after Jammie Rasset-Thomas, has insisted via his lawyers that the $675,000 ruling against him is absurd, given that the only measurable damages he’s caused amounts to roughly $21 (which is how much the record companies would have profited had he purchased the 30 songs in question from iTunes).
Tenenbaum’s lawyer, Charles Nesson, as it happens, is a current associate and former professor of one Kiwi Camara, who has been defending Jammie Thomas in her similar but considerably more publicized trials. Aside from sharing notes on their respective cases, the two legal eagles are also gearing up for a class-action lawsuit against the RIAA, to recoup the disgraceful amount of money bilked out of thousands of other accused file-sharers by way of fear, intimidation, and quick-n-dirty out-of-court settlements. In the meantime, while Judge Nancy Gertner did issue a directed verdict of “guilty” in Tenenbaum’s case, she also had some tough words for the RIAA’s tactics, clearly sympathetic to the victims (the would-be plaintiffs in a class-action suit against the RIAA).
“As I said, it does not make sense, however, to fight them alone,” Gertner has stated. “It simply doesn’t make sense to fight them as an individual, per se, and to some degree you run the risk that the longer you litigate without really having a basis to do so, the longer you fight without having a basis to do so, the plaintiff’s legal fees go up and up. I can’t say this is a situation that is a good situation or a fair situation. It is, however, the situation.”
Judge Gertner was actually the one to connect Tenenbaum to Nesson for his defense. Tenenbaum wound up admitting his guilt while on the stand, even admitting that he had initially lied about his file-sharing in the earliest phases of accusation. That’s all over with now, though. All that’s left is for the judge to decide what’s fair to fine the young music-lover, and with the judge in the Jammie Thomas trial having ordered in that case that the fine be commensurate with actual damages, it’s likely that Tenenbaum won’t have to pay the full $675k the RIAA has audaciously demanded. There’s presently no date set for the judge’s response, so how ’bout we bide our time with another little ditty that pretty well sums up the situation? Below is a thoroughly awesome live clip of Ministry (with gratuitous audience shots) performing a song from their 1989 masterpiece A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste. This particular song was quite the anthem for me as a young lad, and couldn’t possibly be more apropos for Jammie and Joel today.
Related Posts
- File-Sharer’s Lawyer Also Now Guilty of File-Sharing
- Judge Slashes File-Sharing Damage Award by 90%, Notes Double Standard in Jury Awards
- Judge Orders RIAA to Pay for Failed Settlement Talks With Jammie Thomas-Rasset
- Update: Jammie Thomas V. RIAA… Trial #3. It’s on!
- Moral Victory: RIAA’s Legal Fees Stretch Far Beyond Recovered Cash
3 Comments
Howard Wyman, your bias is showing. The RIAA made no “preposterous dough grabs” nor did they “audaciously demand $675K.” Both of those statements are outright fabrications.
If you followed the trials and studied the jury’s responses to the evidence and testimony, you’d know that the lawyers for the RIAA made not even a suggestion of scale or size in award, instead literally leaving the matter “in the hands of the jury”. In both cases it was the sequestered jury under present statutory damages law that came up with these figures by themselves with no coaching from either side of the aisle. Either you don’t know this and are reporting on something you don’t actually know about, or you do know this and are openly creating misinformation for your pirate fanbois.
Either way, bad reporting is worse than none at all.
My bias is certainly clear; I’m no fan of the RIAA, it’s true. You’re also right that the RIAA didn’t come up with the number, and I concede that the wording of the post could perhaps be too easily misconstrued as implying such. I admit it could be clearer on that point. The RIAA certainly is demanding that he pay something, though, and they were certainly quite pleased with the ruling. They’re not saying “oh no, that’s too much,” and I haven’t heard anything about them offering to donate the sum to charity. In fact it remains unclear exactly how much of any ruling ends up in the hands of artists, or how many of these artists even support the lawsuits. Seems to me like a deep-pocketed industry association just wants to keep its pockets deep.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that The Hatch-Leahy-Schumer Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is what raised that range of statutory damages permitted by law to what it is today. From ’95-’00, those three co-sponsoring lawmakers received a combined total of over $679K in campaign contributions from the movie/music/tv sector. Out of all the politicians the recorded music/music production industry gave money to in 1998, Leahy and Schumer were the 2nd and 3rd top recipients, respectively. In ’98/’99, Hilary Rosen, then CEO of the RIAA, personally donated a total of $7850 as an individual to these three nifty chaps. Of course politicians get lots of money from lots of people with varying agendas, but ya gotta admit the RIAA sure scored a good few major legal victories around the turn of the century. It may be up to the jury to decide where within the given range the fines fall, but it’s not like the RIAA has had nothing to do with setting those terms.
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[...] subsequently monetize. You can reference the death of the newspaper as a classic example or the heavy-handedlegal tactics that the RIAA has resorted to in an attempt to salvage what is left of their [...]