The I-Pod: That Little Crack-like Pez Dispenser of Music, and Problems
I love music. It's an integral part of my life. Sometimes, I think music has saved me on numerous occasions where few things are able to let me let the stress in life out. You'd think that for someone who loves music like me, I'd own an I-Pod. Hell No....
For starters, you can bankrupt yourslef filling that little thing up with music that you might be tired of in a month or so. Secondly, I'm against having to pay 99 cents just to listen to music. There are plenty of legal ways to get music for free. Thirdly, the industry has cracked down hard on offenders who are illegally sharing or downloading music without paying. Ask Jammie Thomas-Rasset of Brainerd, Minnesota......
You see, the Recording Industry Association of America has busted and sued over 30,000 people for illegal sharing over the past four years, but Thomas-Rasset is the only one who has gone to trial - and she probably wishes she had settled. RIAA usually settles for between $3000-5000, but Thomas-Rasset refused to settle. She eventually went to trial and lost, where she was ordered to pay $222,000 for 24 traceable infractions (RIAA said she had more like 1700). However, the judge in that case decided that he had given the jury incorrect instructions, so Thomas-Rasset had one last chance to settle......
Nope, she still went to trial, and she lost - bigtime. The jury found her guilty of not only illegal sharing on Kazaa, but also of willful infringement, and they slapped her with a judgement of $1.92 MILLION !!!! Whoops.... P-Luv, you're the lawyer here - what the hell was her attorney thinking here? The $80K per violation charge actually was less than she could have been hit with (the max is $150k per violation).
Now, Mrs. Thomas-Rasset has said that she will not pay the judgement, for obvious reasons - like , she doesn't quite have that kind of cash sitting around currently!! RIAA has said that they would still be glad to settle with her, despite the judgement. Of course, that $3-5k has gone up a bit , thanks to some hefty legal costs... Thomas-Rasset hasn't indicated if she will go that route, because she still hasn't admitted that it was her. She indicated that it may have been her ex-husband or one of her kids, despite RIAA's tracing the username to the same name she used on her e-mail and her MySpace account. Parents, this is not a good example to send to your kids.....
As for loading my computer up with tunes, no thanks. I'll keep listening to Pandora, like I'm doing as I write this.....
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1 comment:
Not sure what they were thinking, but clients don't always listen to you. I had a slander client once who turned down a generous settlement offer as we were getting ready to try the case. When I pointed out to her that there was a 100% chance we were going to lose, since her witnesses did not show up (and hence we could not prove an essential element of the cause of action: publication), she still wanted to proceed to trial.
We lost and she was strangely happy. She had gotten her day in court, which is what she wanted. And she thought I was incredibly smart because I had accurately predicted the result.
As for the RIAA, I actually worked on several of their SC lawsuits in law school. My old boss taught entertainment law, they contacted him and Joe wanted to handle them because he thought they'd be interesting. Coincidentally, I stopped using Limewire-type stuff then. They were targetting people with a shitload of songs though, much more than the average person would have.
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