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RIAA hits paydirt: wins first music-sharing jury trial
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The Recording Industry of America today won its first jury trial against an individual accused of illegally downloading music.
A federal jury fined Jammie Thomas, 30, of Minnesota $220,000 in damages to the six record labels suing her for copyright violation. Thomas will pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs the prosecution focused on for the case. The RIAA alleges she shared over 1,702 songs in all over the Kazaa peer-to-peer network. Read more about the case here.
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Attorney for the record companies, Richard Gabriel, spoke with reporters outside of the courthouse after the verdict. He said the RIAA will continue to aggressively pursue those it suspects of copyright violations.
“This is what can happen if you don’t settle,” Gabriel said.
The gloating has started. You pay us your bribe on time and we will not beat you some more.
So now it is clear, well, pending appeal, of course. “Making available” is now piracy. So I have to keep all my CDs locked in a safe to which I only have access? And fuck me should my mp3 player with legal non-DRM files on be left around where someone could perhaps, should they wish, copy them. There’s only one answer: don’t download any music, and don’t buy any more CD’s until these parasitic middlemen are gone. Music will survive.
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What makes me angry is that none of the “musicians who hate the RIAA” are handing over checks to these poor people. Whats 200k to Bono or Radiohead or NIN or Led Zeppelin or McCartney/Ringo? Or all these new money rap/hiphop acts?
These fuckers who got rich of the fat of the land should be paying all these families for the recklessness of their labels until everyone settles down. At the end of the day the labels would be fall apart if all the big acts left it. They wont. They like the money and the easy living.
The first rich musician to write out the checks for these fines to these families will be remembered as a hero forever. Considering they usually settle for 5k and they only do a dozen or so a month, its not a lot of money.
Funny how the idealism in the music never ever translates into idealism in, you know, real life.
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