Get Legit, or else

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Get Legit, or else

Another reason to get all your stuff legally.

"Federal Jury: Music Downloader Owes $1.92 Million

Jammie Thomas-Rasset went to trial this week hoping to nullify an earlier judgment against her on charges that she illegally downloaded music from the Internet. But in this week’s jury trial she was deemed liable to pay $80,000 per song or $1.92 million.
An earlier jury had delivered a verdict in which she was deemed liable for $9,250 for each downloaded song.

This week’s trial, in a Minnesota federal court, was short and sweet for the Recording Industry Association of America, which had brought the charges against Thomas-Rasset in the nation’s sole music file-sharing case that has gone to trial. The RIAA recently changed its tactics against what it maintains is the illegal downloading of music from the Internet. Now it is asking internet service providers to send warnings to suspected illegal downloaders.
“There’s no way they’re ever going to get that (money),” said Ms Thomas-Rasset after the trial Thursday, according to media reports. “I’m a mom, limited means, so I’m not going to worry about it now.”

“In the end, the jury awarded the RIAA $1.92 million or $80,000 a song. Earlier, the RIAA had initiated more than 30,000 lawsuits against persons it claimed had illegally downloaded music. Most of them settled for $3,500, but some said they were innocent of the charges but didn’t have the financial resources to defend themselves in expensive litigation.”

Full article news

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Fucked up shit. It’s basically big money bully tactics from a bunch of money hungry pricks.

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Or, its a thief getting caught stealing.
Im not saying its right or wrong but she knew she was breaking the law and shes been caught.
Dunno how they can justify the $80,000 per song but hey, dont do the crime if you cant do the time.

typical comment from me eh

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While I agree with you, Karlos, that they broke the law, this does seem a little exhorbidant.

I mean, is the individual value of every song she downloaded $80,000 in their digital format? I mean, it’s one thing to take the music, charge her a fine and let her go. But I don’t think it’s fair to punish someone using rules that are not fit to deal with the laws they are breaking.

If she had walked in to a CD store and stolen these albums instead of downloading them it wouldn’t have cost her nearly as much. And then, if the digital format is worth more than the hard copy that I’d buy, that doesn’t make any sense.

5

Yeah id totally agree with all that. Its fucked up.

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Its more of a scare campaign - like she basically said herself shes never going to have to pay for anyway.

Boycott the RIAA completely, including their torrents and their outdated business model finally die.

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a modest proposal for alternative resolution:

defendant deletes all pirated music; defendant sentenced to hours of community service equal to double the total time to download all pirated tracks at 10Mbps; RIAA lawyers pay the defendant’s attorneys fees and each get punched in the nuts for wasting the court with this crap.

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Yeah meanwhile us taxpayers are paying for a slice of the costs of all of this - we fund the courts that these lawsuits are held after all.

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It is scare tactics, and that’s not going to solve anything. If they really want to solve the problem you really need to start with the younger generations and educate them about piracy and how it hurts the artists and labels. It needs to be a cultural change more than anything I think

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i’m just wondering how they caught her.

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sigh united states unites states united states, what are we going to do with you!?

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usually its from sniffing the IP’s of p2p’ers which is super easy to do.

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sit back and watch like you always do.. :smiley:

DO SOMETHING PLEASE!

yeah, it is. but is it completely random? i know you’re not an RIAA operations specialist, it just really intrigues me how these random people are selected.

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if only she had peer guardian, ip hider and used tor :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m curious who was on the jury who convicted her. I wonder what goodies we would find on their computers?

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It’s not quite the same as stealing from a shop, she used P2P so she was hosting and distributing the files which enabled other users to steal them too.

But still, $80k a track. Why fine someone an amount of money that you know they can’t pay?

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what he said …

What she is actually getting done for is that facet she was sharing the 24 songs i dont think its so much the downloading of them.

Torrents are bad for that … so many people don’t realise they are sharing when they are downloading. Kazzaa was what she was using wasnt it (well it was in the article i got) and that works a little like torrents doesnt it ? sharing out automatically whilst downloading? Ive never used it for that reason.

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see now this whole thing makes no sence at all

dont get me wrong Dj Phad
i know youre simply posting the information as it is written but

this article content completly contradicts the LAWS set forth by the RIAA

dont know what im talkin about?
simply

the article states more then once
…llegally downloaded music…

however the contradiction is that in the laws set under the digital millenium rights acts
as well as those agreed to be followed by the RIAA

it is NOT illegal to download music by any means
you are in NO WAY in breach of ANY law when you

DOWNLOAD

the only part that is illegal is

UP LOADING
hear me? UP-LOADING

the basic theory they are working on is that if no one is able to upload
then there wont be anything to download anyway right?

what would be hte point of stopping people from downloading?
what then… everyone just keeps on uploading?
well that makes no sence at all now does it?

anyway even the rest of the text in the charges shows the contradiction

they went after her because she was allegidly downloading (With intend to distribute)

wait a minute? distribute… is that uploading?
i have the document here somewhere but it specifically says that the law is broken when you are the person(s) individule or entity that is sending a file AWAY from your local location

ok again,… that is called UPLOADING

if you are receiving it then you are downloading it
and there is no law against that

lets think for a second

if there was a law against downloading
ISPs would have stopped this already and
i would be able to randomly pick an email address or set of addresses
and send a file to them right?

just by them checking their email without even knowing that i was sending them an mp3
they would also be breaking the law

what would their defense be? " I just went to check my mail…i didnt know i was getting an mp3 "
yea theyll go for the I DIDNT KNOW excuse anytime right?

Boys i hope i made this clear enough to everyone
the law baiscally says

download all you want
upload and we will get you

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Another thing you have to consider is that she actually downloaded/uploaded 1700 songs, the 24 cited were a small sample size representative of the larger amount.

Originally she was to pay $2700 for each of the 24, but she fought it further, ending up with the $80000 amount.

Still, I don’t think the punishment fits the crime, at most they should have been granted $0.99 per song, per download or upload (using $0.99 as the average download price for the songs she possessed). Granted, depending on how many uploads actually took place, this figure could end up being even larger.

I’ve always been legit for DJ’ing purposes… I’ve even had a run-in with, for lack of a better term, CD Cops. Luckily, a rep from EMI was visiting me at the club at the time and politely told them to slag off. I guess the CD Cops were satisfied that if I was getting CDs for free from the label, then I wouldn’t have much point to steal music. That being said, I know of 2 other DJs who got busted that night… granted nothing major happened, but they stopped DJ’ing after that (maybe to prevent anything major from happening). Now that so many have gone digital, do CD Cops even exist anymore? Not like you can readily tell a pirated digital song (unless you are a crap DJ who plays stuff with radio calls or other DJs and MCs talking over it). :slight_smile:

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WTF. You dont need to be a lawyer to know that that is nonesense.
Downloading music that you havent paid for that is only legally available when paid for is illegal.

Come on dude get real. This is some student party discussing urban myths about why the Law is always bad.

Shes bang to rights (English saying).

No matter what our points of view are about whether the law is RIGHT or not we all know she has broken it . She knew she was breaking it when she did it.

One things thing that IS true about the Law is : Ignorance is not an excuse.

Whatever the ins and out or fine print the girl stole music and is paying for it. I dont agree with how she has been treated but im not gonna delude myself that shes hasnt broke the law just because the law is an ass.