

RIAA wins $675,000, or $22,500 per song in Tenenbaum Case - jasonlbaptiste
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/o-tenenbaum-riaa-wins-675000-or-22500-per-song.ars

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fallentimes
When you need to consistently sue your customers to survive, you already know
you're fucked. I can't even tell you how much I enjoy watching the RIAA slowly
die. I hope they enjoy their skirmish wins because the war is already over.

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jasonlbaptiste
I really try not to curse much, but I'm using it here for emphasis. It's the
kind of emphasis that cursing can't even do justice to because I just want to
scream at the top of my lungs:

THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

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donw
To be fair, after reading the article, I'm not surprised at the verdict.
Tenenbaum admitted that he lied about several key points, which is enough to
piss any jury off, regardless of how skilled your counsel is.

Exaggerate, diminish, omit, or forget things in court -- never, ever lie.

~~~
lutorm
That should not affect the damages awarded. Until recently, damages were
supposed to be compensatory in nature, not punitive. In the latest revision of
copyright law, the "not punitive" part was removed, and it's hard to claim
that tens of thousands of dollars per song is anything but punitive.

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blasdel
_Tenenbaum said he was "not displeased with the jury considering how the trial
went."_

This is probably the first reasonable thing anyone involved with this trial
(save the Judge, I suppose) has said to date. The RIAA really lucked out by
suing someone even douchier than themselves, and then got an exponential boon
when the plaintiff's counsel (Charlie Nesson) turned out to me even more of an
asshat by orders of magnitude.

The plaintiff in the first case was a fuckup too, to a lesser degree. I guess
you have to be a major idiot to still be using a Fasttrack client in 2008 at
all, much less after getting infringement letters.

Why is everyone involved in the 'copyfight' so incompetent? Even Lessig has
epically lost _every single IP case_ he's ever litigated!

~~~
lutorm
_Why is everyone involved in the 'copyfight' so incompetent? Even Lessig has
epically lost every single IP case he's ever litigated!_

Maybe that has more to do with how the deck is stacked than how competent they
are?

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pg
Every battle they win this way just makes them more likely to lose the war.

~~~
rms
I had some hope that Rick Rubin would be able to slap some people around in an
effort to stop the insanity, but apparently he was overwhelmed by the minutiae
of absurdest corporate bureaucracy and he's basically given up.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/arts/music/07rubi.html>

Compare with this article from 2007.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02rubin.t.html>

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robryan
Theses win's are especially pointless given that there never going to see the
money.

I guess they feel that they need to pursue them as a deterrent to the masses.

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jacquesm
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=735687>

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socratees
When will the recording industry even move to the future? They know iTunes
store, myspace music, they know how pervasive internet is and how internet is
disrupting the traditional distribution of music, and yet they don't get it.

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grellas
_Pro malo_ legal work done for _in terrorem_ effect - in the end, a Pyrrhic
victory.

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paul9290
Another win for copyright! The writing is on the wall after hundreds of
similar verdicts through out the last decade, which have killed many music
start-ups, along the way. Copyright will continue to win and the public
education will continue in their favor!

~~~
paul9290
Hey it's not popular to say the above, but just look at the last decade and
the court cases won in their favor, no matter the country. I was just stating
fact!

Gladly they have been forced to change their model and now we have free sites
like pandora, spotify, vid on youtube and etc...

Though in the courts even amongst a panel of peers (jury) they have always
come out victorious. Again just stating the facts!

~~~
jamesbritt
> Hey it's not popular to say the above, but just look at the last decade and
> the court cases won in their favor, no matter the country. I was just
> stating fact!

But it's not a win for copyright, it's a win for onerous laws and senselessly
punitive decisions.

It also motivates some people to further skirt copyright laws because they
appear so weighted in favor of huge corporations with powerful legal teams.

