Capitol v. Thomas

This is an issue in which the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been hoping would happen for a real long time.  However, after all of the hoopla, it appears that this whole thing may be backfiring in their face.  The recording industry has had a long going paranoia about stealing music, thus the DRM (Digital Rights Management) that had been poisoning our recordings for a long time.  DRM is nothing more than copy protection, but quite frankly, the only people who get hurt are the ones who are legally downloading and PAYING for their music.  People who are “pirating” music can by-pass the copy protection almost as fast as they release.  Apple has had on going “discussions” about removing the DRM from music that is downloaded from iTunes.  Finally, the recording industry ceded and allowed Apple to sell music from iTunes without DRM, but Apple had to concede something too, thus the tri-leveled pricing structure now found on iTunes.  Frankly, I will gladly pay a few more cents for songs without the copy protection.

Now enters Jammie Thomas, a Native American single mother of 4 children from Brainerd, Minnesota. Thomas was visiting the popular sharing site Kazaa and downloaded 24 songs illegally from the site. In steps the RIAA and decides to sue Jammie for copy protection infringement.  Normally in cases such as this, most people concede to the RIAA and settle out of court by paying a few thousand dollars, but Thomas decided to fight this.  Well, the case did not go too well for her as the court ruled her of being guilty and fined her an astounding amount of $222,000 in infringement penalties.  Well, things changed when the judge ruled that he had been misinformed about whether the law read that merely “making available” evidence that constituted guilt or whether the actual data would have to be presented.  Thomas had surrendered her hard drive which contained no evidence of Kazaa or the music files in question.  The judge had informed the jury that the actual files did not need to be presented as evidence.  Because of this misinformation the judge proclaimed a mistrial and the process started all over.  Thomas probably felt that things were going her way at this point.  Well, along came the retrial with a new jury, well guess what? They found her guilty again, but this time ruled that she should pay damages to the tune (forgive the pun) of $80,000………PER SONG or $1.92 million dollars.  This may sound like a victory for the RIAA, but as it turns out, it is fast becoming egg on their face.  First of all, Jammie Thomas, remember she is a single mother of 4, is never going to be able to pay the ridiculous amount.  The recording industry knows this as they have been trying to negotiate a settlement, but to date, Thomas is not interested. I think the artists whose songs were illegally downloaded have got to be embarassed by this publicity.  Now let me make something clear, the suit was filed not by the artists, not by the recording studios who make the recordings, but by the distribution company that delivers the CD’s to the stores from which they are purchased. They are so afraid of “sharing” music as they have not been able to keep up with the newer technologies and are cornered, so instead of concentrating on the real “pirates”, they go after the Thomas’ of the world.

Now all this being said, Jammie Thomas was definitely sharing copy protected music on her computer, which is something that I do not condone.  However, $1.92 million for 24 songs seems a little much.  How about a slap on the wrist, let’s not make an example here.  After all, haven’t we all used Limewire, Kazaa, Poisoned, and other torrent sites at some point or another.  The warning that I am giving here is that the RIAA is not going after people who download the music, but instead concentrating on people who are redistributing it.  Anyone who knows anything about these sights is that you are doing this automatically when you download music from them.  These files go into a special folder and are then available to anyone who wants to download it from you and many others who share the same file……this is how Bit Torrents work.  Unless you tell the sight that you do not want to share your files with others, it is done automatically.  This is where you can get yourself into trouble, just like Thomas.  Whether or not she was willingly distributing the songs to other people is not the issue here.  She is small time, just like you and me would be.  My warning……beware of Sharing and Bit Torrent sites, like Limewire and Kazaa as aside from the risks of also downloading malware with your music, you also could face the risk of receiving the dreaded letter from the attorney’s of the RIAA.

What are your thoughts?????  Comments???