The RIAA Armageddon has begun

Manhattan Federal Judge Kimba Wood Calls Record Companies' Request for $75 Trillion in Damages 'Absurd' in Lime Wire Copyright Case

Victor Li
The American Lawyer
March 15, 2011

Does $75 trillion even exist? The thirteen record companies that are suing file-sharing company Lime Wire for copyright infringement certainly thought so. When they won a summary judgment ruling last May they demanded damages that could reach this mind-boggling amount, which is more than five times the national debt.

Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood, however, saw things differently. She labeled the record companies' damages request "absurd" and contrary to copyright laws in a 14-page opinion.

The record companies, which had demanded damages ranging from $400 billion to $75 trillion, had argued that Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable. For a popular site like Lime Wire, which had thousands of users and millions of downloads, Wood held that the damage award would be staggering under this interpretation. "If plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringers per work, defendants' damages could reach into the trillions," she wrote. "As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is 'more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877.'"

While Wood conceded that the question of statutory interpretation was "an especially close question," she concluded that damages should be limited to one damage award per work.

"We were pleased that the judge followed both the law and the logic in reaching the conclusion that she did," said Lime Wire's attorney, Joseph Baio of Willkie Farr & Gallagher. "As the judge said in her opinion, when the copyright law was initiated, legislatures couldn't possibly conceive of what the world would become with the internet. As such, you couldn't use legislative history. Instead, the overarching issue is reasonableness in order to avoid absurd and possibly unconstitutional outcome." Baio, who is scheduled to represent Lime Wire when the damages trial begins on May 2, joked that the money that the record companies sought from his client would be better spent on paying for health care or wiping out the national debt.

Glenn Pomerantz of Munger, Tolles & Olson, who represented 13 record company plaintiffs, did not return requests for comment.

Oh joy:

The four largest record labels are unhappy with the way the courts have interpreted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in recent years and may need to ask Congress for changes, according to Jennifer Pariser, the attorney who oversees litigation for the Recording Industry Association of America.

The DMCA is just not providing the kind of protection against online piracy that Congress intended, Pariser said at a conference here on Thursday.

"I think Congress got it right, but I think the courts are getting it wrong," Pariser said during a panel discussion at the NY Entertainment & Technology Law Conference. "I think the courts are interpreting Congress' statute in a manner that is entirely too restrictive of content owners' rights and too open to (Internet) service providers.

"We might need to go to Congress at some point for a fix," Pariser added. "Not because the statute was badly drafted but because the interpretation has been so hamstrung by court decisions."

LOL @ the continuing demise of the RIAA. For every person you sue there are thousands more stealing your shit that you will never catch and there is nothing you can do to put the genie back in the bottle.

You can't argue with FREE

Poor babies.

But when you steal music, you condemn the children of the RIAA to go to community colleges.

As long as they take an economics class I don't care where they go.

http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/news/international/30628/Anthraxs-Scott-Ian-wants-illegal-downloaders-banned-from-the-internet

I want Scott Ian's facial hair banned from life.

not just 'banned from the internet' ?

Before the internet, the only way to steal music was to walk into a music store and physically walk out with something, and you were stealing, and you knew it. You knew, unless you’re a fucking maniac, that there was a consequence. If you got caught, you were going to get in trouble.

Nobody tell him about cassette recorders.

eh, I don't see anything wrong with the idea. they're trying it in France and I think some other countries.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2011/10/07/french-government-disconnect-60-file-sharer/1

"So until there is a consequence, it’s going to happen more and more and more, and people are going to see less and less original and good content from the record industry and movie industry.”

oh reeeeeeeally now

Keen to know what this "Scott Ian" bloke has done to keep up with market trends

made shitty bandwagonjumping records for 20 years

lol at anybody on ilx thinking they can say shit about scott ian, dude's a legend, show yr work or stfu imo

He's a super nice dude.

ALSO WHERE'S *YOUR* SUPER-GOATEE ILXORS. <3 Scott Ian for all time.

people are going to see less and less original and good content from the record industry and movie industry

LOL

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/15/american-isps-to-launch-massive-copyright-spying-scheme-on-july-12/

oh, how delightful

*downloads furiously*

lol yeah, I guess I have a couple months to run my ratios into the dirt before I quit using private trackers altogether.

"although publicly, none of the network operators have agreed to “terminate” a customer’s service."

interesting.

So basically, if no injunction filed, no more downloading free shit from Mediafire, et al after July 1.

*July 12

would slsk downloads register here?

really don't download a lot of officially released/in-print stuff, but am bummed that this probably means the end of all the cool bootleg-y/live blogs out there. including mine!

They'll pry tyler's 82 tom verlaine solo gig bootleg mp3s from my cold dead hands

amen to that!

was thinking i'd just start doing a "bootleg of the month" CDR-by-mail subscription club. they aren't opening everyone's mail yet, are they? they probably are.

just sort of constantly amazes me how much power the RIAA and the MPAA really have

yea look what they did to District 13

how can they know what is being downloaded? wont that break data protection acts? They brought in a new law doing away with data protection??

really think the music industry needs to go to a model where all musicians get paid a base salary by the label, and gives them bonuses based on incentives (ie sales benchmarks like a bonus for going platinum, etc), and quit focusing on who paid for which individual unit.

make all music available via some pay for service that doesn't charge by unit, but just a flat rate or something.

the old model just ain't gonna fly anymore.

you'll have to pry the old model out of their cold dead hands... which I am totally cool with.

yeah I don't realistically see it happening until some kind of impasse is reached, and well given how much leeway they're given to do whatever they want, don't think that's anywhere near.

arranging chairs on the titanic

RIAAgnarok

All of this might just bring back the era of paying for bootlegs...

or the days of driving by the library to torrent shit

If this keeps on we'll end up in a terrifying world in which every piece of content is made available simultaneously worldwide at a reasonable price

No, I'm fairly certain that this will be the measure which finally prompts the populace of earth to view their wanton disregard for intellectual property rights with shame and disgust, vowing forevermore to keep their noses clean and suckle contentedly at the teats of their corporate masters. It'll be like when we won the War on Drugs back in the '80s.

restrict access to only certain major websites like Google, Facebook or a list of the top 200 sites going

The future of the internet: TV.

Agreed, when the people stop worrying about the rights of artists and start weeping for the lost sales of conglomerates we'll be in a better place xp

in the future there will be no recorded music. bands will play their music live into a microphone on demand.

in that case, RIP loudness war

as much as I was hoping this would be fake I suppose it does succeed in 1) pissing off customers and 2) generating virtually no revenue, so it at least seems like a legitimate RIAA idea

Even if they shut down the whole internet for good, most people already have more music than they could possibly listen to in several lifetimes.

lol frogbs