Thread: Excessive RIAA Fines

I did a search, and didn't see anything about this yet, so I figured I'd start up the discussion. Feel free to merge this if it exists though.


Recently, I've been seeing some things online and in the news, where the RIAA is taking people to court, and winning excessive amounts of money for what amounts to the stealing of less than $50.

The 2 most known cases right now, are Jammie Thomas (fined $1.92m) and Joel Tenenbaum (fined $675,000) have really gotten me annoyed and angry at the recording industries, who are infact bragging that they won such large amounts. In the case of Joel Tenenbaum, the RIAA even admitted that the artists themselves won't see ANY of that money.

To me, the RIAA are the real criminals here. Taking far excessive amounts of money than should be awarded. When we consider that these songs can be purchased for $0.99 on itunes, it really makes me wonder how any sane person can turn around and fine someone $22k and $80k per song. No matter how you look at it, these fines are too excessive.

Because of these types of cases, Millions of File Sharers only get a strengthened resolve to do exactly the oppposite of what the RIAA is hoping for. They will continue to share media. The RIAA is hoping to "Send a Message", and the are. They are sending the message that all they care about is money. They are greedy corporate ass clowns, who will willingly subject someone to a lifetime of debt to try and stop something that will never stop.

I hope I'm not the only one here who sees such a problem with this. I'm not saying that these people should get off perfectly free. But they should not be subjected to such fines. $5/song is more reasonable, and is 5x the cost of iTunes. That would amount to a fine of about $150 for 30 songs.

The Jurors in these cases are to blame just as much however. How they can subject these people to this kind of debt just astounds me. I really don't think there is anyone out there besides the RIAA and Jurors who believe the fines to be "Reasonable".

Right now, both people in the above cases plan to appeal the rulings, and I hope they win. The RIAA should be the ones being sued here for excessive damages.

This is a good example as to why you should always vote your conscious while you are on a jury. The people on it, were probably caught up by the high priced lawyers, who told them that was fair.

There is no way that is reasonable.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...0-per-song.ars

Plaintiffs built their case with forensic evidence collected by MediaSentry, which showed that he was sharing over 800 songs from his computer on August 10, 2004. A subsequent examination of his computer showed that Tenenbaum had used a variety of different peer-to-peer programs, from Napster to KaZaA to AudioGalaxy to iMesh, to obtain music for free, starting in 1999. And he continued to infringe, even after his father warned him in 2002 that he would get sued, even after he received a harshly-worded letter from the plaintiffs’ law firm in 2005, even after he was sued in 2007, and all the way through part of 2008.

They should find something more interesting to do, like market CD's worth purchasing!

And Dr. J, what are you doing here... I thought Zoda kidnapped you!