Technically Legal

Judge Gertner of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts has released an opinion in which she found that the jury’s verdict of $675,000 to the RIAA violated Due Process, and reduced the award to $67,500, or $2,250 per song.

It’s a 64-page opinion. So, more to come.

2 Comments Posted in: Links on July 9, 2010

In the never ending saga of the RIAA v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the parties have finally agreed on something: that they won’t agree on something.

The judge in the case ordered the parties to undergo mediation to settle the suit. The problem is that the RIAA is no longer willing to settle for a reasonable sum, but neither is Jammie Thomas-Rasset. The parties told the judge that settlement negotiations were just a waste of time and money, and that they should just set the case for a new trial, this time only addressing how much money Jammie Thomas-Rasset owes the RIAA.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on July 7, 2010

This has been covered well, but it’s worth noting that Limewire, and its owners have been found liable for various forms of secondary copyright infringement. We’ll cover it more once we get a chance to read the opinion.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on May 12, 2010

Gene Patents, eBay v. Tiffany’s, and a new round of RIAA style litigation.

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Judge Invalidates Some Gene Patents

Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid
Myriad Loses Ruling Over Breast Cancer-Gene Patents
The Opinion

Appeals Court Backs eBay

eBay Mostly Beats Tiffany in the Second Circuit, but False Advertising Claims Remanded
The Opinion

Indie Movie Producers Send 20,000 demand letters

Extortion-Like Mass Automated Copyright Lawsuits Come To The US: 20,000 Filed, 30,000 More On The Way

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on April 5, 2010

Innocent infringement off the table, Apple sues HTC, and is it illegal to poach tickets?

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Innocent infringement off the table

5th Circuit rules innocent infringement defense not supported in Maverick v Harper
The opinion

Apple Sues HTC

Apple sues HTC over iPhone patents
Apple sues HTC–court filings
Apple HTC Complaint U.S. Google & HTC

Poaching Gaga Tickets

Couldn’t Get Those Coveted Gaga Tickets? Here’s Why
Four Charged in Bid To Buy, Resell Tickets

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on March 9, 2010

Two quick updates:

The RIAA has rejected re remittitur in the Jammie Thomas case, meaning that there will be a third trial, this one only for damages. One wonders what this trial will look like, when the Judge has already ruled at $54,000 was the maximum that any jury could reasonably award for these damages.

Similarly, the RIAA opposed Joel Tenenbaum’s motion for remittitur, which is in no way surprising.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on February 9, 2010

The RIAA offered to settle Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s case for $25,000 this afternoon. An offer which Thomas-Rasset quickly rejected. From her lawyers:

[A]s our response makes clear, Jammie is standing on principle here, and will not accede to payment demands that the RIAA is making thru an unconstitutional statutory scheme (that they lobbied for the creation of) and we will ride this train to it’s appellate end no matter how many future remittiturs are rejected.

At this point, any amount that the RIAA is likely to collect, through the actual amount imposed, or through bankruptcy proceedings of Thomas-Rasset (at the end of all the litigation and appeals), is going to be far less than they’ve paid their lawyers for the endless motions and two trials. There’s no question in my mind that this litigation was a money loser for the RIAA. Removing DRM from MP3s probably converted more people to music buyers than the threat of litigation.

Comments Off Posted in: Commentary on January 27, 2010

FBI Spying, Jammie Thomas gets a Break, and Joel Tenenbaum Tries to Reduce his Verdict.

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FBI Takes Phone Records

FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
The statute

Jammie Thomas-Rasset Gets a Break

The opinion

Joel Tenenbaum Asks for a Break

Department of Justice defends constitutionality of $675,000 award against Tenenbaum; p2p user caused ‘great public harm’

UPDATE: We’ve switched to a new recording system that results in a better quality, but for some reason, lower volume podcast. We’re aware of this, and looking in to it. In the meantime, if you have iTunes, turn the volume adjust on the mp3 to 100%, or download it directly from the website. Either of these seem to help solve the problem.

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on January 25, 2010

In Podcast 34 (to be released later tonight), we talked about the order lowering damages in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case. As you will hear, we discussed whether the RIAA would challenge the order. What we failed to talk about is whether Jammie Thomas-Rasset would challenge the order. The judge’s ruling, which reduced the amount Jammie Thomas-Rasset owed to 1/36th the original verdict is still too high in the view of her lawyer. The main issue seems to be that the judge didn’t squarely decide whether or not statutory damages here are unconstitutional. A topic we address on this week’s podcast.

Comments Off Posted in: Commentary on January 25, 2010

The judge in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case just reduced the damages owed from $1.92 million to $54,000. The RIAA can now choose to accept the lower damages, or schedule a new trial on the issue of damages.

We will certainly discuss this more, either in a post or podcast, but we wanted to get this up now.

1 Comment Posted in: Links on January 22, 2010