Excuse me for being so frank, but after hearing about Jammie Thomas' trial against the RIAA (truly a David and Goliath-type tale), that was the only word that came to mind.
Jammie Thomas is a 30-year-old mother of two who makes $36,000 per year. She was found guilty on October 4 of violating copyright on 24 songs by providing them for download from her Kazaa account. Thomas denied ever using file-sharing software. However, her Kazaa user name, "tereastarr" has long been attached to Thomas. (In fact, it's her MySpace user id)
The verdict would have Thomas pay up $220,000; quite a sum considering her financial standing. It didn't take jurors long to deliberate on the appropriate sum. Thomas could have been fined anywhere from $750 to $150,000 per song. Jurors settled on $9,250. Juror Lisa Reinke said, "You go too low, it's not going to stop the illegal downloading of music. People are going to think, 'I could do this, I could go through federal court and get off cheap.'"
REALLY?! You really think people would have sat there and thought that $750 per song made it affordable? (24 songs at $750 each would still have been $18,000.) The jury was FAR too harsh in their judgment.
Thomas has since said she would appeal the verdict, an uphill battle considering the support and financial clout of the RIAA. Even still, I cannot say if her efforts are heroic or dumb. Yes, it sucks to pay for music that's out there for free, but at the same time I wouldn't want someone stealing work I had done, either. Yes, most of the money goes to record companies, but it's the principle of the matter. They cannot be bypassed.
Even still, the amount the court ordered Thomas to pay is ridiculous.
People can help support Jammie by donating to her site, FreeJammie. As of the 13th of October, over $13,000 had already been donated.
1 comment:
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