Stop me if you've heard this one, but: Illegally downloading music files is probably not a good idea. And if you don't believe me, there's a 32-year-old Minnesota mom who might convince you otherwise.
Last week, a second jury convicted Jammie Thomas-Rasset of using her Kazaa account to illegally download 24 songs. The actual number of songs she allegedly snagged is roughly around 1,700, but she got sued for just these 24 little ditties.
[ Brush up on the Jammie Thomas/RIAA case -- through the eyes of Cringely -- in the earlier post "Lawyers, guns, and the RIAA" | Stay up to date on Robert X. Cringely's musings and observations with InfoWorld's Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]
The first jury found her guilty and assessed a fine of $222,000, or roughly $9K per tune. Jury No. 2 decided jury No. 1 simply didn't appreciate Vanessa Williams or Journey enough, and upped the ante to nearly $2 million, making those songs worth $80,000 a pop.
I admit, "Don't Stop Believing" does sound better if you haven't heard it for a while, but is it $71,000 better? That's kind of hard to swallow. Reactions from the blogosphere ranged from "insane" to "friggin' insane" to words I am not allowed to repeat here because there might be children present.
First, let us stipulate for the record that the defendant is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She's more like a spoon, or maybe a plastic spork.
Judging by what I've read of her defense (Ars Technica has served up a lovely summary of the case), Thomas-Rasset's attorneys didn't deny music files were downloaded to her computer. They simply tried to claim the ex-boyfriend did it, or maybe the ex-husband, or maybe gremlins snuck into her house in the middle of the night and logged on to Kazaa using the same online handle she's used for 15 years.
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Although many reports, including RXC's say it was a fine, it was not, but a civil judgment, albeit for _wilfull_ infringement. That means knowing the material belonged to someone else and not just downloading but copying it, i.e., handing a copy to someone else.
It was, however, not a jury finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but that more likely than not defendant wronged the plaintiff. her screwy story probably did as someone said PO the jury.
The judge may well decide the evidence does not support willfulness and thus lower the damages to $30K per song as the statute says, or enter an order that says to plaintiff "Take this lower amount X or we will have a retrial" (a "remittitur").
So it is not over. I don't think plaintiff cares about the money or will make more than a token effort to collect it (jail, BTW, is not available to do the collecting). They wanted to frighten downloaders. They did.
Keeping a log of what files users download may seem like a practical idea, but how do you ID individual computer users? Computer IDs and IP Addresses do not identify individuals.
And even if downloads themselves could be traced and logged, how about uploads? What kind of fingerprinting would be possible, that the exact origin of each fileshare could be identified and logged? This is a very different game from compiling aggregate userdata, as Google now does.
Since the "crime" was making "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls available for download, wouldn't it be a suitable punishment to be made to her listen to it as many times as it can be proven that it was downloaded from her account?
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