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Piracy Lawsuit Could Cost RIAA Billionsby George Ziemann -- December 8, 2009 Sony, EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music are currently on trial in Canada for copyright infringement. This is a class-action lawsuit brought by the artists who have tired of watching the labels sue everyone for being pirates, when it's the labels who consistently steal real money from the artists and songwriters. This story seems to concentrate on "compilations," which is usually a collection of related songs from unrelated artists. A few examples would have titles like "Best of Motown," "Greatest Hits of the Seventies," any album from the "That's What I Call Music..." series, or maybe a collection of Christmas songs. However, a record label can take the position that any album or CD is a compilation -- a collection of songs. Or not -- depending on which is in the label's best interests. Michael Geist writes about this in the Toronto edition of The Star (emphasis added):
In the intro of Geist's article, he says, "The infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million." Well, that's an amusing number, but The Infringer is notoriously bad at mathematics. Also in the news (at Wired) is the finalization of the $675,000 verdict against Joel Tenenbaum for sharing 30 songs. "The only other accused file sharer to go to trial against the RIAA was Jammie Thomas-Rasset. The RIAA won a whopping $1.92 million verdict against the Minnesota woman this summer for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa." Joel Tenenbaum was fined $22,500 for each song he shared. Jammie Thomas-Rasset was fined $80,000 per song. Both of these people had no profit motive whatsoever. At the Joel Tenenbaum rate, infringing 300,000 songs would add up to $6.75 billion*; at the Jammie Thomas-Rasset standard, the total goes up to $24 billion. The labels think they should pay $166 for each copyright violation. Of course, Tenenbaum and Thomas-Rasset were civil cases. This certainly fulfills the criteria for a criminal copyright infringement case in the U.S. (since manufacturing, distribution and a strong profit motive are all involved), but I'm not sure how this works in Canada. Those are the statutory damages. The artists are also asking for punitive damages. They are charging that "the conduct of the defendant record companies is aggravated by their strict and unremitting approach to the enforcement of their copyright interests against consumers." In other words, the artists (at least in Canada) are tired of the record labels suing their fans and have decided that if the labels want to be assholes about copyright law, maybe it's finally time they started being forced to adhere to it as well. This is just one of the many, many ways the labels skirt their responsibility to pay the people who create the music -- those same people they claim to be "protecting." It's like closing one fixed game in a sprawling carnival full of them. Maybe losing a year or two of global income will be enough to get the stockholders to wake up and demand some integrity in the record business. If there is still is one. A $20-30 billion defeat could be tough for some of the labels to take. If this case were being tried in the United States, I would assume that the labels would win. Not because they're innocent, just because of the way our court system works. In the past, the RIAA's favorite defense against a Dept. of Justice inquiry was "No, you can't look at our records. We are in a foreign country. You have no jurisdiction." (United States v. Time Warner, Inc., Sony, PolyGram, EMI Music, Bertelsmann, and MCA) If they do get caught at something, it ends up being settled out of court for a minimal fee without admitting guilt. It's how they resolved charges of restraining competition, price fixing and payola. So the government has been letting the labels get away with everything, never receiving more than a slap on the wrist, never admitting they did anything wrong. Now that the DOJ is run by ex-RIAA lawyers, it would seem that regardless of the outcome of the trial, the labels would never be held to account. I don't know if Canada's legal system is as accommodating to the record labels as the U.S. courts, or if they will look at the fines the RIAA has won in the U.S. as real world guidelines for statutory fines. It's the not knowing that lets me enjoy the fantasy that this one is going to hit the cartel hard. Note: Both Geist and TorrentFreak need to check their calculators, as they multiplied 300,000 times 20,000 and came up with $60 billion. Sounds good, but I'm only getting $6 billion... (although I suspect TorrentFreak just copied Geist's article and pasted without checking the math -- or giving him credit). |
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