Jammie Thomas

BTTT

Well officer everyone else was speeding, won’t get you out of a ticket. The law needs changing, but as it stands she got of light. I still think they should have just slapped her with like 5000, this isn’t winning any hearts in sheeple land.

While on the other side of the pond this is will get you fined 200,000 pounds...

Kwik-Fit sued over staff radios (employees listen to radios at work)

So how much of the money will the singers themselves see from this collected fine? Anything?

” The end result is still the same though: Thomas is going to have to pay, unless her appeal somehow succeeds.”

Of course she’s nno going to pay. No way she can...

With apologies to those who’ve seen it a million times, Don’t download this song.

The RIAA has a strong ally in the current U.S. administration, which has made major efforts to police copyright infringement and raise the fines for violators, including championing and signing into law the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005.

Too bad the Government isn't as interested in enforcing the Immigration laws that have been on the books for years.

The RIAA has a strong ally in the current U.S. administration, which has made major efforts to police copyright infringement and raise the fines for violators, including championing and signing into law the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005.

Meanwhile the artists who actually give them a product aren't nearly as behind them.

Radiohead released their newest CD without a label. If you are lucky enough to hit their Web site when it is up, you get to decide how much you want to pay for the CD.

Following their lead, Trent Reznor no longer has a label and will be releasing his new music directly to the consumer. He had also encouraged his fans to steal his last CD after learning his label was charging more for it than other new CDs.

He had been told that they could charge more for his CD because he had loyal fans who would pay whatever for what he produced. They had to lower the price for Avril Lavigne since she didn't have that type of fan.

Clearly it isn't just people using P2P who need to be taught a lesson.

She’s guilty, but that award is insane. Screw the RIAA.

People just need to come to the conclusion that popular music is not worth going to jail over, not worth getting fined over, and not worth paying for to support that industry.

Just listen to the radio and listen to Radiohead or better yet...buy a harmonica or a guitar.

Not worth getting sued to get it for free.....and not worth paying for.

Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, was called to testify. Pariser noted that music labels make no money on bands touring, radio, or merchandise, so they are particularly vulnerable to file sharing. She went on to say that when people steal music the label is harmed.

Pariser believes in a very broad definition of stealing that is echoed by many supporters in the RIAA. She believes that users who buy songs are entitled to one, and only one copy. Burning CDs is just another name for stealing, in her mind. "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'."

Another possible avenue of legal action for the RIAA is the pursuit of businesses that play unauthorized music in stores. The Performing Rights Society (PRS), Britain's version of the RIAA, may give the RIAA some possible ideas with its pending litigation. The PRS is suing the Kwik Fit Group, a car repair shop in Edinburgh, for £200,000 in damages. The case revolves around the complaint that Kwik Fit employees brought in personal radios which they played while working on cars, which could be heard by colleagues and customers. The PRS says this amounts to a public "performance" and should have entailed royalties.

I think it's a ridiculous verdict, but the truth is she had something like 17gigs of songs on her hard drive and a fast dsl. They know she was trading songs for weeks/months, but they decided to only charge her with a handful to save time. They went after the worst of the worst to make it a slam dunk.

Having said that, its still ridiculous.

One exhibit, viewed multiple times showed that there were 2 million users on Kazaa, the network Thomas was accused of using, on the night RIAA investigators found Thomas's alleged folder.

If 2 million people were sharing an average of 12 music files each, then the RIAA could collect $222,000.00 * 2 million = 444 billion dollars or 444 thousand million dollars = 56 billion shy of .5 trillion dollars. Wow! I don't even listen to copyrighted music anymore!

The RIAA needs to face antitrust action.

UPDATE:

Defendant knocks Web illiterate juror in RIAA case Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Defendant knocks Web illiterate juror in RIAA case

Posted by Greg Sandoval

Jammie Thomas is hard to rattle.

Jammie Thomas

She doesn't raise her voice or get angry when a reporter asks her to read a story where she is called a "liar" by a member of the jury that found her guilty of copyright violations and ordered her to pay the recording industry $220,000 in damages.

She calmly reads the quotes by juror Michael Hegg, from Duluth, Minn., that appeared Tuesday in a story by Wired.com. She then draws a bead on where Hegg said he is a father, former snowmobile racer and has never been on the Internet.

"I don't need to say too much, obviously," Thomas told CNET News.com on Wednesday. "They admit that they are computer illiterate. This person (Hegg) has never been on the Internet, so how can he say whether my story is possible? I've been contacted by Internet security experts who said that spoofing my address would have been trivial. Internet illiterate people are not going to be able to understand that."

Thomas was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sharing 24 songs online and infringing on intellectual property. Instead of settling for a few thousands dollars like most of those sued by the group, Thomas is the first to take her case to a jury.

In the interview with Wired's David Kravets, Hegg, a steelworker, said that during deliberations, the jury concluded after only five minutes that Thomas was guilty. He said that they spent five hours trying to decide what to award the recording industry. Hegg, 38, said the jurors did not believe her story that someone spoofed her IP address.

"She should have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars," Hegg told Wired. "Spoofing? We're thinking, 'Oh my God, you got to be kidding.' She's a liar."

Thomas, 30, has announced that she intends to appeal the case brought against her by the RIAA, She said she is seeking to argue her case before someone who is more tech-savvy.

But if Thomas can produce experts that can at least prove its possible her IP was spoofed, why didn't she present them in court?

"We didn't have the money to put those experts on the stand," Thomas said. "(Hegg) can say my story is not true, but at the same time you're talking about a person with no technology background whatsoever. He said his wife is an Internet guru, but his wife wasn't on the jury."

Thomas also was disappointed that the jury may have been punishing her for crimes committed by others.

"We wanted to send a message," Hegg said in the Wired interview, "that you don't do this, that you have been warned."

Thomas doesn't believe the law allows that.

The jury "saw those feeds that showed 2 million people shared using (file-sharing service) Kazaa and they want to hold me responsible for that," Thomas said. "The law states that you can't hold me responsible for the actions of another. This is one of the reasons why I'm appealing."

On a separate issue, a Web site created to accept donations from supporters has crashed after receiving more than 500,000 visitors, Thomas said. Freejammie.com is being moved to a new host server and should reappear in a few days.

Thomas said the site has raised more than $9,000 and the money will go to pay her legal bills.