8th amendment - why is it not used in these RIAA cases?

[mugs]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Juddog

Originally posted by: videogames101

Originally posted by: jonks
Because the courts ruled that it wasn't excessive. The copyright act states willful violations as punishable up to $250,000 PER VIOLATION. All file sharers found guilty so far have gotten off easy.

But that law would then be in violation of the 8th amendment. You can't say "This Law says it's OK" and just pretend like the bill of rights never happened.

^^ This is what I'm trying to say - the Legislature passed a law which violates the 8th amendment, therefore it should be overturned.

Then let it go to the supreme court and removed if that's the case. If SC says it's unconstitutional then that's the end of it.

But I'm not seeing anything wrong here because it's civil, not criminal.

This chick appealed and did worse the second time. If she makes it to the supreme court, I'm worried about what rights they may take away from us.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: mugs


This chick appealed and did worse the second time. If she makes it to the supreme court, I'm worried about what rights they may take away from us.

Well in the article she says she doesn't have any money. Let the ACLU take it from here to provide counsel. So I don't think she has much to lose if she pushes it. But I see your concern.

 

[actuarial]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Then let it go to the supreme court and removed if that's the case. If SC says it's unconstitutional then that's the end of it.

But I'm not seeing anything wrong here because it's civil, not criminal.

Maybe the more important question is if civil cases should ever have punitive damages? The criminal code should punish/deter people. The civil system should be to compensate people for losses. There's a lot less of that up here (punitive damages, as well as pain and suffering) which is why you don't hear of ridiculous lawsuits.

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: actuarial

Originally posted by: spidey07
Then let it go to the supreme court and removed if that's the case. If SC says it's unconstitutional then that's the end of it.

But I'm not seeing anything wrong here because it's civil, not criminal.

Maybe the more important question is if civil cases should ever have punitive damages? The criminal code should punish/deter people. The civil system should be to compensate people for losses. There's a lot less of that up here (punitive damages, as well as pain and suffering) which is why you don't hear of ridiculous lawsuits.

The loss here though is only the equivalent of 3 CD's; the only difference between the laws back then regarding theft and the copyright theft laws in place passed by our legislature is that the RIAA / MPAA had a hand in the legislature's pocket when writing the laws. A few hundred dollars in damages, maybe even a couple thousand should be the top end of the amount rewarded in a case such as this.

The user wasn't ripping the CD's and selling them on the street to make a profit, nor did she make a profit from the music by placing it within a commercial, etc.. The fines on any civic lawsuit should be somewhat grounded in reality.

That was the intent of the 8th Amendment the way I see it, was exactly to prevent cases such as this from ever happening. For example in United States v. Bajakajian, the supreme court ruled it was unconstitutional to take $357,144 for a person who failed to report his taking of more than $10,000 in US currency out of the united states, describing the fine as "grossly disproportional". Title 18,982 - criminal forfeiture

In the case for the RIAA, $1.92M is "grossly disproportional" for downloading 24 songs. No person in their right mind would look at that level of damages and think it was appropriate.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: Juddog

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: jonks
Because the courts ruled that it wasn't excessive. The copyright act states willful violations as punishable up to $250,000 PER VIOLATION. All file sharers found guilty so far have gotten off easy.

No they haven't. $80,000 per song isn't "easy" just as $250,000 isn't.

These fines are for "willful" violations. That means not accidental. These are people that a jury found knowingly, intentionally and unapologetically distributed copyrighted materials. Inadvertent copyright infringement is a far lesser offense. That didn't occur here. If you have been breathing for the last decade you are aware p2p of copyrighted material is illegal. You know the fines are extreme. You proceed at your own risk.

I think the RIAA is a gestapo lobby with far too much power and legislative backing, but the way to fuck them over is to STOP BUYING CDS, and not to break the law and then complain you got caught.

I agree that there should be fines for distributing copyrighted material, but to get back to the original point, wouldn't the level of the fines fall under the context of the 8th amendment?

Not unless it was a criminal suite... which it isn't...

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: actuarial
Maybe the more important question is if civil cases should ever have punitive damages? The criminal code should punish/deter people. The civil system should be to compensate people for losses. There's a lot less of that up here (punitive damages, as well as pain and suffering) which is why you don't hear of ridiculous lawsuits.

Is your username coincidental? I doubt it

So the manufacturing company who makes shitty swingsets should only pay for the damages resulting from kids who not only fall, but fall and get hurt enough to require massive medical bills justifying recompense by lawsuit? If the company makes tens of millions of dollars selling these deathtraps, then restricting damages to only actual losses would allow them to form a calculus whereby the failure rate of only a few percent (still dozens to hundreds of children) doesn't justify fixing the problem. Sorry, no thanks. Pure capitalism in this regard would reduce corporate responsibility to pure actuarial administration for products to be "just safe enough" that profit is still made regardless of the human cost to the customers. "Johnson, how many of these dead or injured kid suits can we expect to face and lose while still managing to stay in the black?" "About 1 per 1000 sir." "Eh, I can live with that."

Deterrance must absolutely be present in the civil forum.

 

[Juddog]

Finnish Court equivalent: Man who shared 150 albums owes 3,000 euros:
article

$2.16 per song - a reasonable fine.

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: actuarial
Maybe the more important question is if civil cases should ever have punitive damages? The criminal code should punish/deter people. The civil system should be to compensate people for losses. There's a lot less of that up here (punitive damages, as well as pain and suffering) which is why you don't hear of ridiculous lawsuits.

Is your username coincidental? I doubt it

So the manufacturing company who makes shitty swingsets should only pay for the damages resulting from kids who not only fall, but fall and get hurt enough to require massive medical bills justifying recompense by lawsuit? If the company makes tens of millions of dollars selling these deathtraps, then restricting damages to only actual losses would allow them to form a calculus whereby the failure rate of only a few percent (still dozens to hundreds of children) doesn't justify fixing the problem. Sorry, no thanks. Pure capitalism in this regard would reduce corporate responsibility to pure actuarial administration for products to be "just safe enough" that profit is still made regardless of the human cost to the customers. "Johnson, how many of these dead or injured kid suits can we expect to face and lose while still managing to stay in the black?" "About 1 per 1000 sir." "Eh, I can live with that."

Deterrance must absolutely be present in the civil forum.

I agree in deterrance but it's the amount of deterrance that's ridiculous in this case. Look at the Sony / BMG case where they distributed millions of CD's which compromised security by installing rootkits on so many computers - they were only given a fraction of the amount of punishment versus the damage caused compared with this case.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: her209
Remind me again what Sony's "punishment" was for installing root kits on people who purchased their CDs.

Let me guess... slap on the wrist and being told not to break the law?

Funny how it doesn't work both ways...

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Courts need to use a little common sense in cases like these. I can understand damages up to $250k in the case of commercial infringement/bootlegging. Obviously there is a lot of money to be made with these activities, which is why the law allows for such large damages. You need a large deterrent to prevent people from engaging in commercial infringement.

File sharing is a completely different beast, though. The law needs to put a much lower cap on damages for non-commercial infringement, or as I said the courts need to use a little common sense and stop awarding ridiculous damages for these cases. There's no justification for fining some file sharer $80k per song.

The problem is the law is entirely set up to help prevent commercial infringement and doesn't discriminate because piracy didn't really exist (in the form of p2p sharing, although home taping existed... and apparently killed music )

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Courts need to use a little common sense in cases like these. I can understand damages up to $250k in the case of commercial infringement/bootlegging. Obviously there is a lot of money to be made with these activities, which is why the law allows for such large damages. You need a large deterrent to prevent people from engaging in commercial infringement.

File sharing is a completely different beast, though. The law needs to put a much lower cap on damages for non-commercial infringement, or as I said the courts need to use a little common sense and stop awarding ridiculous damages for these cases. There's no justification for fining some file sharer $80k per song.

Which causes more damage and lost revenue to the media industries, a few commercial shops that pirate tens of thousands of copies on street corners or overseas, or the millions of people who regularly pirate music and movies? The large fines make sense because the damage is caused by the behavior of millions of small violaters which is is not practical or possible to go after. The paperwork alone for suing millions of people is prohibitive. Recognizing that in this internet environment that copyright owners cannot pursue every violator, the law was crafted to include extremely large fines to deter that behavior. Is every single violation a "lost sale"? Of course not, but the recent decrease in music sales didn't happen by coincidence either.

It is the former... the latter are your customers, and it has been shown that the people who share and download are actually your best customers. If the RIAA wants to pursue the latter they can't come running to me when they find themselves up a river...

I hope you (the US) have the sense not to bail them out when the time comes.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: Special K

Originally posted by: Razgriz
yea I could steal a CD from a store (with roughly the same amount of songs), and would owe a fraction of what this person does. That's how screwed up our court system is.

Shoplifting a CD is more difficult than downloading the songs off a P2P service, so it makes sense that downloading the songs carries a harsher penalty.

That said, the amount they have established per downloaded song is still insane.

Killing someone is more difficult than speeding, so it makes sense that speeding should carry a harsher penalty...

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: mugs
It's interesting how many people think $2 million is an absurd amount of money to pay for sharing 24 songs, but hardly anyone agreed with me that it was absurd to sue for $2 million when an airline pilot made a passenger sit in the bathroom for a few hours.

I don't remember the thread...

So I will state my agreement with you now.

It is as absurd as suing someone for $65 million over dry cleaning...

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: TehMac

Originally posted by: destrekor
It's absolutely ridiculous and it pisses me off. The Supreme Court just doesn't give a shit anymore, because the entire government has the goal of moving toward larger and larger Federal Government - Constitutional rights of states be damned, let alone citizens.

Forgive me if I got this wrong, but weren't you trumpeting about how great Obama is?

Did Obama hold a gun to her head and force her to download the files?!?

That would totally get her off would it not?

 

[Razgriz]

Look here, this is an example of a much more reasonable fine, and look how much more he was sharing! If he was in the US, he could have been fined over $240 million . Text

 

[0roo0roo]

i dunno.
but obama voters are feeling that "change" eh?

hollywood/industry backed ....what did u expect

but yea basically at 1.x million you could probably get away with speeding for life...while drunk...holding a baby by the leg hanging out the window of a car.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: actuarial
Maybe the more important question is if civil cases should ever have punitive damages? The criminal code should punish/deter people. The civil system should be to compensate people for losses. There's a lot less of that up here (punitive damages, as well as pain and suffering) which is why you don't hear of ridiculous lawsuits.

Is your username coincidental? I doubt it

So the manufacturing company who makes shitty swingsets should only pay for the damages resulting from kids who not only fall, but fall and get hurt enough to require massive medical bills justifying recompense by lawsuit? If the company makes tens of millions of dollars selling these deathtraps, then restricting damages to only actual losses would allow them to form a calculus whereby the failure rate of only a few percent (still dozens to hundreds of children) doesn't justify fixing the problem. Sorry, no thanks. Pure capitalism in this regard would reduce corporate responsibility to pure actuarial administration for products to be "just safe enough" that profit is still made regardless of the human cost to the customers. "Johnson, how many of these dead or injured kid suits can we expect to face and lose while still managing to stay in the black?" "About 1 per 1000 sir." "Eh, I can live with that."

Deterrance must absolutely be present in the civil forum.

If they are death-traps aren't they criminally negligent?

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Originally posted by: Razgriz
Look here, this is an example of a much more reasonable fine, and look how much more he was sharing! If he was in the US, he could have been fined over $240 million . Text

Juddog beat you to it...

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: TehMac

Originally posted by: destrekor
It's absolutely ridiculous and it pisses me off. The Supreme Court just doesn't give a shit anymore, because the entire government has the goal of moving toward larger and larger Federal Government - Constitutional rights of states be damned, let alone citizens.

Forgive me if I got this wrong, but weren't you trumpeting about how great Obama is?

definitely got me confused with someone else.
you have permission to do whatever you can imagine as punishment the moment you catch me doing that. :laugh:

 

[jonks]

Originally posted by: Juddog
Finnish Court equivalent: Man who shared 150 albums owes 3,000 euros:
article

$2.16 per song - a reasonable fine.

this is kind of ironic since you brought up dead babies before. Did you know france and canada have a criminal charge for mothers that kill just born infants called infanticide that is a lesser form of homicide usually punishable by merely 5 years in prison? I don't think that sentence would fly in the US either.

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: jonks

Originally posted by: Juddog
Finnish Court equivalent: Man who shared 150 albums owes 3,000 euros:
article

$2.16 per song - a reasonable fine.

this is kind of ironic since you brought up dead babies before. Did you know france and canada have a criminal charge for mothers that kill just born infants called infanticide that is a lesser form of homicide usually punishable by merely 5 years in prison? I don't think that sentence would fly in the US either.

My point still stands - the amount of punishment for the crime is unconstitutional. Punish the criminals - yes, but a $1.92M settlement for 24 songs is ridiculous, and you know it.