Jammie Thomas-Rasset is back to square one.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit rules that the 34-year-old is guilty of having lied about illegally uploading music and will have to pay $222,000 in damages to the RIAA.
Thomas-Rasset's case has first the headlines in 2007, when (then single mom) Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $222,000 in statutory damages for illegally uploading 24 files. Thomas previously had declined a $5,000 settlement offer. She was granted a re-trial, and received a $25,000 settlement offer and ordered to pay $1,920,000, or $80,000 per song, in that trial. The sum was then reduced to $54,000, which the RIAA declined and was awarded $1.5 million in a third trial. This amount was reduced again to $54,000, while the Court of Appeals now reinstated the original $222,000 judgment.
There is no reason to believe that this battle is over as Thomas-Rasset's attorneys said that they will be fighting all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the unreasonable awards are targeted to punish organized crime, not individual persons.
A fine should only be as large as one can afford to pay back.
Seriously.. Who the fuuu ruins somebody's life for reasons of sharing someone's work.
If someone distributed one of my songs and I lost $100,000 who cares. I would still be sitting on millions.
It's not like I would be poor, and if I had to take action I would fine according to their income (50k a year income, I would fine possibly 5-10k to give them a nasty slap).
1.9M is NOT a reasonable amount.
the punishment is worse than murdering another person... got to love how laws work.
Copyright infringement cases should just be settled by making the person pay for the stuff he or she pirated. You wouldn't sue somebody for millions if they took a CD from a music store; don't do that shit to people who downloaded it.
A fine should only be as large as one can afford to pay back.
Seriously.. Who the fuuu ruins somebody's life for reasons of sharing someone's work.
If someone distributed one of my songs and I lost $100,000 who cares. I would still be sitting on millions.
It's not like I would be poor, and if I had to take action I would fine according to their income (50k a year income, I would fine possibly 5-10k to give them a nasty slap).
1.9M is NOT a reasonable amount.
the punishment is worse than murdering another person... got to love how laws work.