

Difference in judgements passed by courts in Europe v USA - zippykid
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/42-german-p2p-fine-stark-contrast-to-seven-figure-us-judgments.ars
Really interesting that the judge in Europe is allowed to throw out any of the "what if" conjecture about the possible loss in revenue, but the one in the USA doesn't or can't. IANAL. I just find the punishment to not fit the crime at all.
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tzs
One difference is that Jammie Thomas-Rasset lied under oath, tried to destroy
evidence, tried to blame her kids and others, and has refused quite reasonable
settlement offers.

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xilun0
That surely sounds serious enough to make him pay probably his whole life. I
mean, what a villain!

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tzs
She could have avoided all of this by simply accepting their initial
settlement offer. I don't know if the exact amount has been published, but
based on the offers that other people got, it would have been in the ballpark
of maybe 2-5 thousand dollars, which is not much more than it would cost to
legally obtain the couple thousand songs she had downloaded.

It was her choice to go to court rather than settle, even though she had
pretty much no case. The actual lawsuit was for only 24 songs. If, for some
reason, the court had found that she was an innocent infringer, and awarded
the minimum possible statutory damages of $200/song, that would still have
been $4800. Since there is pretty much no chance of them finding her to be an
innocent infringer, the minimum is $750/song, or $18000.

So, when she turned down their initial, quite reasonable, settlement offer,
she was looking at an almost certain loss in court for a _minimum_ of $18000.
The jury gets to decide the actual amount, and they can go way higher than
$750/song. When the defendant lies, tampers with evidence, and tries to blame
their kids and others, you think a jury is going to go for the minimum? No
way.

This is now the third time it has been to court. After each victory in court
(each of which resulted in a larger damages award than the previous one), the
RIAA has offered to settle for much much less than the court awarded. And yet
she still turns them down.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for a defendant who exhibits such monumental
stupidity.

