Ron Schenone

Would You Pay $80,000 For A Song?

Posted by on Jun 19, 2009 | 7 Comments

That is the amount of the award that the RIAA has won against one alleged copyright violator who download songs to the tune of $1.92 million. In the first trial the award was only $9,250 per song, but the defendant wanted a second trial and fared worse. Though the amount of the award is ridiculous and there are doubts that the RIAA will be able to collect, what it does show is that the courts and looking down on copyright violations.

According to one article, it states that:

Spokesperson Cara Duckworth of the RIAA, who attended the trial, told reporters afterwards, “Since day one we have been willing to settle this case… and we remain willing to do so.” The industry appears to be doing everything it can not to appear vindictive in these cases, though Duckworth refused to discuss any details of what a proposed settlement might look like.

Camara acknowledged the settlement offer and said that his side would certainly investigate it, but he made clear that he intends to file numerous motions if Thomas-Rasset wants to continue the fight. Motions on the constitutionality of such massive damages and other issues can still be filed with the judge, and then there’s the entire matter of an appeal.

Thomas-Rasset sounds inclined to fight on. The case was “one for the RIAA, not the end of the war,” she said.

As for Camara, he intends to press ahead with his class-action lawsuit against the recording industry, in which he will take up the daunting task of trying to claw back all the money that the recording industry has collected in the course of its legal campaign to date.

So what do you think? Is this going to be the end of downloading copyrighted songs? Or will the practice continue?

Comments welcome.

Source.

  • Jeff

    I bet there have been more song downloads since that trial started then the dollars she will have to pay.

    Music sharing won’t end until an affordable, and easy solution is found.

    Since the day of tapes people have been stealing music. Radio recorded tapes, duped tapes, copied CD’s and other such things always will prevail.

    What this teaches us is sharing one way can get you caught, but in the long run there have been hundreds if not thousands of people who share that information anonymously. If we are really going to stop music piracy we need to develop a means where both the artist themselves, and us get a break. If we sold songs for 50 cents, and gave more then the tiniest of shares to the artists, we could both make money. Saving 50 cents a song is great. Look at iTunes charging 1.29 for new and popular music. I took that time to switch to Napster, for 1 dollar a song and 30 days of streaming if I buy 5 dollars worth of music.

    iTunes users are mostly trapped in the idea that they have to use it to get their iPods filled. With napster around, we don’t have to worry. DRM free music for a dollar beats DRM free music at slightly higher quality for 1.29. In a time where price matters, Apple once again sets the bar – as high as possible.

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  • mhz

    RIAA: “We hate music lovers. If you attempt to cross us, we will utterly destroy you. We want to deal in death and slavery. We hate you, and we will enslave your children, and your children’s children’s children. Kill. Kill. Kill. We must destroy the young music sharing population.”

    $80,000 per song sounds pretty ludicrous to me. I wonder if people even get fined that much (per count) for printing counterfeit money? If they wanted to fine her, they should have made it reasonable.

    I predict that Thomas-Rasset will end up opening a Paypal account, with a donation web page, and will eventually end up paying reduced fines. She will become a folk hero.

    It would be really ironic if she took up music and became an independent recording artist, offering her stuff for free, or donation.

    At the very least, she could get her own reality TV show out of this. “Busted: Life as an RIAA Slave Girl.”

  • mhz

    Well, she may be a little old to do those things I said. But her kids….they could really stick it to the RIAA.

    If one of them can someday secretly obtain a video camera (since the RIAA controls his allowance), and create a documentary about “life after the RIAA”, it could be a smash hit.

    The kids should try to personally interview the artists who made the 24 songs their mother was convicted of sharing, and see if they think that $80,000 per song was a reasonable penalty. Although, those Swedish death metal guys may not be all that sympathetic. (Definitely don’t ask Metallica, if their music is involved.)

    But who knows, maybe they themselves are from broken or destitute homes, and would warm up to the kids. It would be a touching picture, a rock star now acting as a “big brother” for a foster kid whose mom can’t afford to feed him due to garnished wages from an RIAA lawsuit.

    There is enough info made public in the case for people to portray the RIAA as the real “big brother” of the 21st century. There are so many angles. I should be a lawyer. Or a screenwriter. LOL.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    mhz,
    Thanks for the chuckles. You are in rare form today! Have a great weekend.

  • Ryan Farmer

    Do you think that any jury member who hadn’t been bribed or threatened with harm or death by the music cartels would award damages of $80,000 for a song? (Which doesn’t even exist, it’s just bits of computer data on a hard drive which can be destroyed as easily as they were conjured up, or copied a million more times for free).

    I kind of wish I could be on one of those juries so I could try to award the RIAA the damages of 99 cents per song, the “fair market value”.

    It’s simply unbelievable that we’ve let these crooks and scumbags at the mafiAA industries corrupt our government, waste our tax money, and tie up the courts going after people who haven’t even taken any valuables.

    The MPAA, RIAA, and Microsoft have this certain type of circular logic that just damns any semblance of reason to the pits of hell.

    If sales suck, it’s not that our product sucks, it’s those damned pirates.

    If we clamp down on “piracy”, and sales continue to plummet because our product sucks, it’s those damned pirates.

    Why don’t these worthless piles of fecal matter just have the government rewrite the laws so that every American has to buy a mandatory copy of Vista, Photoshop, as well as every movie or song they release?

    Though that may be closer to the truth than I like.

  • junaid

    hey pal u r doin a cool job may god bless u n ur family amen