Disagrees with Judge Nancy Gertner’s ruling that the $675,000 fine is “unconstitutionally excessive” and formally appeals the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
As expected the RIAA has formally appealed Judge Nancy Gertner’s recent decision to lower a jury’s award from $675,000 to $67,500 in statutory damages against accused file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum for illegally sharing 30 songs online.
“This copyright case raises the question of whether the Constitution’s Due Process Clause is violated by a jury’s award of $675,000 in statutory damages against an individual who reaped no pecuniary reward from his infringement and whose individual infringing acts caused the plaintiffs minimal harm,” she wrote in her ruling. “I hold that it is.”
The RIAA immediately decried the ruling and vowed to appeal.
“The court has substituted its judgment for that of 10 jurors as well as Congress,” it said. “For nearly a week, a federal jury carefully considered the issues involved in this case, including the profound harm suffered by the music community precisely because of the activity that the defendant admitted engaging in.”
A few days ago it made the decision a formal one by submitting a notice of appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
It’s sadly more of the same from the RIAA and its ill-advised “sue-em-all” strategy which years ago it said was abandoning in favor of targeting ISPs instead. It claims that suing people like Tenenbaum is merely part of an effort to clear out a backlog of lawsuits that existed prior to its decision to abandon the effort altogether.
A few weeks ago it was revealed that in 2008 the RIAA spent nearly $17 million on litigation to recover a mere $391,000. The year prior to that, 2007, was no better with more than $21 million spent and $515,929 recovered. For 2006 the numbers were just as bad with more than $22.6 million spent and $455,000 recovered.
With the RIAA claiming that it’s suffering dramatic economic losses you’d think it would drop the case against Tenenbaum and realize that whether it’s $675,000 or $67,500 it’s still a lot of money for an unemployed student to come up with.
But, then again you’d have to assume there’s any rational people left in the RIAA “brain trust.”
Stay tuned.
just asking if RIAA keep insisting that infringment is like stealing or shoplifting then why the actual shoplifters have fairer and lighter penalties. Teens and underage even lighter.
for 3006?
I don’t think RIAA is going to be around 996 years from now.
This doesn’t come as a surprise to me. From my perspective, this could completely derail their litigation campaign if it isn’t a 6 figure number. The precedent being set would guarantee litigation would be a money losing prospect. It would basically be a legal money hole where the entity would be throwing money into it without any hope of getting it back.
If the RIAA fails to get the fines back up to the unconstitutional original level (hey, the judge’s words, not mine!) they have two options – lobby the government or go to the fallback plan of a three strikes law in the US. Either way you slice it, the unconstitutional ruling is a massive blow to the litigation machine and could even sink it for good (that is now currently a possibility)
Will the RIAA even get those fines in the end? That could be a side-issue at this point that will come up somewhere along the line, but not right now.
How could they know the figures for the year 3006 already?