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BU grad student back on hook for $675,000 for illegal song downloads
By adamg on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 1:30am
A federal appeals court yesterday reinstated a jury's monetary damages against Joel Tenenbaum for downloading and sharing copyrighted music on various peer-to-peer networks - and ruled there is nothing unconstitutional about the law used to go after him.
The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston does not mean Tenenbaum has to fork over the money to Sony and four other recording companies just yet, however.
The court said it didn't object in general to district Court Judge Nancy Gertner's decision to reduce the award to $67,500, only that she was wrong to do so on the grounds it was so excessive it violated his constitutional right to due process. Instead, the appeals court directed Gertner to consider whether to reduce the damages under a common-law principal that lets judges reduce jury awards. The difference is that if she decides to do so that way, the companies could seek a new trial.
The judges expressed little sympathy for Tenenbaum, represented by Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson, calling him a liar who knew that repeatedly downloading songs over several years was wrong - because everybody from his father to the RIAA told him to knock it off, and he didn't, even as he blamed everybody from his sisters to burglars for installing file-sharing software on his computer.
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Comments
Law's time has passed
I can go on Spotify right now, and probably find most if not all that this guy is being penalized for sharing. Surely the RIAA has lost more money chasing this one than they will gain. Time to give it up, folks. The music is out there in the wild, and it won't be contained!
(FWIW; I have already *bought* a CD due to some music I've heard, for free on Spotify. Yes, there are still some idiots like me out there. :) )
Which law's time has passed?
Certainly you don't mean the copyright law?
If that be true,
then the time for overhauling the law is long, long overdue. It doesn't need to be thrown out, it needs to be overhauled in order to make it more comprehensive, and more hard-and-fast, with stiffer penalties for violating it.
I hope he got better lawyers.
I hope he got better lawyers. I was at the trial, and I remember that when the judge asked plaintiffs for the law on calculating statutory damages, what they said was slightly wrong in a way that could have led the jury to inflate the award. Tenenbaum's lawyers didn't object at the time (although several of us in the gallery instantly caught the mistake), and the actual award turned out to be an even multiple of the minimum award, which is the sort of error that you'd expect in this case.
(It's been a few years, but IIRC, the specific issue was that the law says that statutory infringements are calculated per work, not per the number of times the defendant infringed on that work -- so if you download a song and share it a million times, it still only counts once; download two songs, and it counts twice, etc. The plaintiff, OTOH, said it was the number of infringements, which could cause a jury to multiply the minimum amount in an effort to both keep damages low but also account for the times that the defendant let other people download from him.)
Tenenbaum is a schmuck, but the law is so bad he gains sympathy anyway.
No sympathy from me
You want music without paying for it? All you had to do was look up the video on YouTube, and dub the audio to another source. No trail of illegal activity, and no nasty software on your computer.
The RIAA can catch you using Limewire, et al, but the simple reality is that in 2011, if the audio exists, it can and will be copied and distributed. This kid is ignorant, lazy, and defiant, and deserves to have the book thrown at him for those reasons.
torrents
dude, stop wasting your time on youtube and just use torrents
Torrents aren't safe either..
My Dad got a letter from Comcast saying they got a complaint that he had violated DMCA by downloading an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" off of Demonoid.
Usenet with SSL is the only safe method of downloading today, in my experience.
Private trackers
And VPN. Also helps if you're not into "whats the popular stuff of the week".
this is completely irrelevant
this is completely irrelevant to the case. The infringement occurred before YouTube existed.
The guy doesn't deserve any sympathy.
Tenenbaum doesn't deserve any sympathy for engaging in this kind of piracy, but I think &675, 000.00
for an award, or for damages is more than just a bit excessive, imo.
Thanks to the fact that, under Reagan, the SCOTUS voted, by just one vote, to allow movies to be made into videos, it's not surprising that guys like Tenenbaum have begun to come out of the woodwork. The "something for nothing" attitude that the Reagan Administration engendered has finally come home to roost. I hope Tenenbaum goes to jail, at least as a lesson for other people who might consider doing the same stuff that he did.
They missed the boat on this one..
I don't nessarily agree with Tennebaum OR the RIAA. However, this is where the RIAA didn't keep up with the times. CD Technology has been around since 1979, and the ability to rip CDs to the computer since the advent of CDROMS inside computers that could read Audio CDs (~1986).
With that said, until the MP3 craze around the turn of the century, gave the RIAA a ton of time to stop piracy by putting copy protection in place. Even today, CDs still have virtually no copy protection.
I understand that to add copy protection to the disc itself would result in people having to upgrade their CD players (in order to decifer the encryption). VHS hit the market in 1976 (widely adapted by 1983), but was replaced by DVD by the late 1990s or early 2000s. A far shorter amount of time of adaptation by the consumer market than CDs from Cassette tapes or LPs.
It took 5-7 years for people to switch from VHS to DVDs (1996-2003ish). Yes, VHS was a crappy format, and DVD trumped VHS in every way. Yet in 2011 we're STILL using a 1979 format without copy protection? Please even Cassette Tapes didnt even last that long. (1965 to 1992-ish)
And Yes, some would argue that the age of digital music.. a la the MP3 is the new format, but I'm talking physical media here. But even by the late 1980s, most pre-recorded VHS tapes had MacroVision installed so you couldn't copy them via DoubleDecked VCRs.
(However MacroVision was an 'analog' technology that only worked with analog signals, not digital, BUT it still didn't require new hardware to play MacroVision Enabled tapes... unless you wanted to dub them!)
So why not come up with a similar technology? Or make people switch to a new format?
IMHO, RIAA was too busy making head over fist on CDs to give a crap about copy protection to even care until it was far too late. Movie Companies (MPAA) cared because they saw what it did early on.. long before the digital age.. with VCRs and copying movies, to make copy protection apart of the newer DVD technology. (as a requirement to the DVD standard, not an option)
Yes copy protection doesn't stop everyone from ripping DVDs, but it stops most people. Its far easier to rip a CD on a computer than it is to rip a DVD. Just about every media player now that can play CDs can rip them to a digital format.
Like I said, I don't agree with both sides. And I'm not excusing Tennebaum either, but I think the RIAA really missed the boat on this one, and is just doing this 'just because they can', just as Tennebaum did it 'just because he could'.
Copy protection
So what if DVD's copy protection (which was cracked in 2001) stops most" people from ripping DVDs? If it doesn't stop -all- people, the DVD still ends up on BitTorrent. And it's probably impossible for perfect copy protection to exist (since the playback device must have the decryption key).
The problem is price and usablility
People loved Napster and MP3's because they sounded the same, they were small, easy to download, and you could find EVERYTHING at your finger tips.
The biggest blow to illegally downloading music came not from litigation, but from Apples iTunes. Litigation happens, both toward file sharers and file sharing networks, but something always pop's up in it's place. It's still very easy to download music and software on the net. The difference was Apple, who was the first to offer a store where you could download almost everything you wanted, legally, and use it on any device you wanted. Since then we have Amazon, and a litany of other legal channels to finally purchase MP3's.
The second big thing, that hasn't taken place, is price competition. $10-20 for a physical CD is absolute worth it. You have to price in artwork, packaging materials, shipping costs, manufacturing costs, ect.
For an album of digital MP3? Hell no. The .99 cent song / $10-20 album is to the point of price gouging.
Once you price MP3's competitively, piracy becomes even less of an issue.