OCTOBER 2007
Mark Vinet blog homepage
Mark Vinet website
TV - Annual Gemini Awards
MUSIC - Copyright Board's decision Online Tariffs - There were so many misleading articles by the media and bloggers last week regarding Canada's Copyright Board's decision on Oct. 18 to set license fees for the use of on-line music services for the years 1996-2006.The Copyright Board released a portion of its decision governing MP3 music files and online services that offer music on demand. It did not release a decision on Internet radio broadcasts or the use of music on a personal or business website, yet.Within hours of the decision, it was widely reported on the Internet (followed in the media) that the tariffs given to the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) are a tax intended to compensate artists (nope) for the loss of revenue from downloading (nope). That it follows similar levies "that add 21 cents to the price of every blank CD sold in Canada." (nope)There was also the suggestion that publishers and composers would be "double-dipping" in the Internet revenue stream. (nope again).Typical of the coverage was Vito Pilieci in the Ottawa Citizen reporting that, "The Copyright Board of Canada has approved new taxes on MP3 music files-- at least for those that are downloaded legally."Perhaps, Canada's media and music fans (well, at least bloggers) should better understand the dynamics of today's music industry. They seem not to be aware that there are separate components battling against each others' interests. Nor do they seem to grasp the concept that an entity should get paid in relation to the value they offer.After being so media-bashed, SOCAN--as well as most other Canadian music industry associations--should consider recalibrating its PR to better combat such inaccurate assessments in the future. The clock to control the spin on these stories starts on-line minutes after a decision is announced. The Board's decision followed public hearings in Hull, Quebec in April. Tariff 22 was first proposed and filed by SOCAN in 1996, and was again filed for each of the years 1997 to 2006. A hearing took place in 1998 that determined certain legal and jurisdictions issues. Certain aspects of the Board's decision were subsequently reviewed by the Federal Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada, resulting in a decision in 2004.Under last week's decision, online music service providers will pay SOCAN license fees of: a.. Permanent downloads: 3.4% of the amounts paid by the consumer with a minimum fee of 1.7¢ per file in a bundle and 2.3¢ per file in all other cases; b.. Limited downloads: 6.3% of the amounts paid by subscribers with a minimum fee of 60.9¢ per month, per subscriber, if portable downloads are allowed and 39.9¢ if not; c.. On-demand stream: 7.6% of the amounts paid by subscribers with a minimum fee of 48.1¢ per month, per subscriber.The Board also determined that the online service industry would benefit from a phase-in discount. A 10% discount will be applied to the rates for the duration of the tariff. The decision is retroactive to the launch of the digital services and will set the rate for the next few years until future copyright hearings are held."On behalf of our songwriter and music publisher members, we are encouraged by the Board's decision," says Paul Spurgeon, SOCAN's VP Legal Services & General Counsel. "While the rates are not exactly what we'd hoped for, they provide an excellent foundation for the management of performing rights royalties for online music use as the industry evolves in the future."With 80,000 members, SOCAN is a Toronto-based copyright collective that administers the performing rights of its members-composers, lyricists, songwriters and their publishers-and those of affiliated international societies by licensing the use of their music in Canada. SOCAN represents the founders of today's music industry. The folks who sold sheet music to performers (and got directly paid) and who later negotiated rights of their music to be played in public, on radio and TV, and on recordings. This SOCAN license amounts to about three cents on a 99-cent track. Record labels command the biggest slice of the Internet music revenue, at 50-60 per cent on many deals, while E-commerce costs (collected by credit card companies) may run between 10 and 20 per cent of the sale price, depending on the number of tracks purchased in a transaction.Fierce skirmishes have raged in recent years between the publishing and recording sectors over revenue of music downloads, ringtones (another appeal is underway this week), and over the licensing of recorded music. The Canadian Record Industry Association, primarily representing major label interests, had in fact argued for a much lower rate for SOCAN, approx. 0.1%, in order to put the overall royalty rate in line with such other territories as the U.K. (8%), Japan (7.7%) and the U.S. (9.1%), as well as the royalty rate applicable on physical product in Canada.In March, 2007 the Copyright Board announced its ruling on a proposed tariff by CMMRA/SODRAC Inc. (CSI) for the reproduction right use of music on the Internet. The Board ruled that with permanent downloads, 7.9% of the price of a song will go back to copyright holders. For downloads that require a subscription, and for on-demand streaming music, rates were set at 5.9% and 4.6% of the cost of a month's subscription, respectively. Significantly, the Board made it clear that the on-line services must deal directly with to CSI for licensing their repertoire.CSI--incorporated in 2002--is a joint venture of the Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada (SODRAC) in Montreal, and The Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd. (CMRRA) in Toronto. It claims to represent 1.1 million musical works from around the world.With SOCAN's tariff in place, digital distribution services in Canada-including Apple's iTunes Music Store, Yahoo Music, Bell Canada's Puretracks, U.S.-based Napster and Quebec's Archambault must now pay the combined amount collected by SOCAN and CSI.The Board also significantly concluded that offering music previews constitutes fair dealing under Canadian copyright law as it can be characterized as copying for the purpose of research. It noted that listening to an excerpt of a work is consumer research into whether they might like to purchase the song, concluding that:"Generally speaking, users who listen to previews are entitled to avail themselves of section 29 of the Act, as are those who allow them to verify that they have or will purchase the track or album that they want or to permit them to view and sample what is available online."On the issue of whether there can be liability when servers are located outside of Canada, the Board avoided reviewing what the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled but indicated that that there could be such a liability where there is a real and substantial connection. In the Speech from the Throne delivered October 16, the Canadian government indicated its intent to address copyright in the coming session of Parliament. Under a section of the speech titled "Providing Effective Economic Leadership for a Prosperous Future," the Speech stated that: "Our government will improve the protection of cultural and intellectual property rights in Canada, including copyright reform." Source: LEBLANC NEWSLETTER ISSUE #7 (OCT. 22 2007)
MUSIC - CANADIAN ABORIGINAL AWARDS -- With five nominations each, country singer/songwriters Donny Parenteau and Shane Yellowbird lead the list of nominees for the Ninth Annual Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards being held Nov. 30 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.Parenteau's "What It Takes" CD picked up nominations for top country album and top album. As well, he is nominated in producer and songwriter categories. His song "Father Time" is nominated for top single. Yellowbird's album "Life is Calling My Name" received nods for top country album and top album. As well, his single "Pick Up Truck" is nominated in single and video categories. As well, he is nominated for top male singer. A full list of nominees is available at: http://www.canab.com/ (source: THE LEBLANC NEWSLETTER ISSUE #6 , Oct 11 2007)
MUSIC - Bands Rushing To Ditch Labels And Embrace Free; Are The Floodgates Opening? - From the tipping-point dept 10oct2007 -- We've only been predicting that music would eventually go free for about a dozen years, but it feels like we may be nearing a tipping point among musicians recognizing this simple truth as well, kicked off by last week's Radiohead announcement. Suddenly, similar announcements seem to be coming fast and furious. Apparently both Oasis and Jamiroquai are interested in following Radiohead's lead and the Charlatan's (managed by a member of Oasis) is already doing the same. On top of that, Trent Reznor proudly announced today that Nine Inch Nails is now free from its record label contract. Will.i.am, from the band The Black Eyed Peas, announced "the new distributor is your niece" in discussing how he plans to promote his new solo album. There are two key things to note in all of this. First, all these bands feel the need to ditch big record labels to do this (and, no, that doesn't mean that small bands without recording contracts can't succeed this way too). This is a sad state of affairs for the record labels -- because there still should be a place for them in helping to promote and market a band, even if they're giving away the music for free. It's just that they're not venture capitalists any more and bands don't need help in distributing content -- two businesses the record labels insist they're in. What's really sad here is how clueless the record labels remain to this reality. In a Reuters article about the Radiohead move, a record industry insider mistakenly claims that this trend is going to hurt the music business because bands will rush out singles instead of albums. Apparently that insider only read the first half of the details of what Radiohead is doing (as well as what others are doing). They're doing exactly the opposite. They've put together a whole "discbox" with lots of extras to make it more compelling to buy. Will.i.am specifically made his latest album a "cohesive story" to encourage people to buy the whole album. Reznor purposely tried to make his CD as cool as possible (it changes colors when you play it in a CD player) to encourage people to buy it -- even as he tells people at concerts to download his songs. That brings up the second key point. For all the whining about "free" music, the complainers keep missing the fact that free is only a part of the business model. This seems to be the thing that people get most confused about when we discuss business models around free music. They get stuck on free and assume that if something's free, there's no way to make money. But, all of these bands are showing exactly the opposite is true. The Times Online has a story incorrectly headlined "The day the music industry died" discussing these exact changes, but as you read the details, the music industry is doing just fine -- it's just the folks in the recording industry who are in trouble. Musicians are raking in record revenue from concerts -- and the artists are realizing that the free music only helps generate more interest in those concerts. Listen to Alan McGee from Oasis and the Charlatans, saying that giving away the music for free was a can't miss proposition: "We increase our fan base, we sell more merchandise, more fans talk about the band and we get more advertising and more films (soundtracks). More people will get into the the Charlatans and will probably pay the money to see the show. I presume it will double the gig traffic, maybe even treble it." In other words, more bands are recognizing exactly what a bunch of folks knew was inevitable at least a decade ago. Unshackle the music, give it away free, and use it to make a lot of other stuff a lot more valuable, and there's plenty of money to be made. The only sad part in all of this is that the record labels have been not just blind to the idea -- they've actively tried to discredit anyone who pointed it out to them.
MUSIC & COPYRIGHT - RIAA Awarded $222,000 from First Individual Copyright Infringment Trial - DULUTH, Minnesota 05oct2007 -- Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two from Brainerd, Minn., was found liable of copyright infringement by the RIAA. The twelve jurors said she must pay US$ 9,250 each for the 24 songs she downloaded - a total of $222,000, according to Wired's Threat Level.Though the RIAA thinks it's sending a strong message by handing out lawsuits, online measuring service BigChampagne says P2P users unlawfully trading goods has tripled since the RIAA first began targeting individuals in 2003 - up from 3.8 million to 9 million. Around 70 percent of those trade digital music. Wired has posted the 24 songs Thomas was sent to court over, calling them the Internet Trial of the Century's Playlist of the Century, which includes hits such as Guns n' Roses' "November Rain" and "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard.
RIAA Jury Finds Minnesota Woman Liable for Piracy, Awards $222,000 - AP 05oct2007 - Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement in the nation's first file-sharing case to go before a jury. Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties. They could have dinged her for up to $3.6 million in damages, or awarded as little as $18,000. She was found liable for infringing songs from bands such as Journey, Green Day, Aerosmith and others. After the verdict was read, Thomas and her attorney left the courthouse without comment. The jurors also declined to talk to reporters. The verdict, coming after two days of testimony and about five hours of deliberations, was a mixed victory for the RIAA, which has brought more than 20,000 lawsuits in the last four years as part of its zero-tolerance policy against pirating. The outcome is likely to embolden the RIAA, which began targeting individuals in lawsuits after concluding the legal system could not keep pace with the ever growing number of file-sharing sites and services. "This is what can happen if you don't settle," RIAA attorney Richard Gabriel told reporters outside the courthouse. "I think we have sent a message we are willing to go to trial." Still, it's unlikely the RIAA's courtroom victory will translate into a financial windfall or stop piracy, which the industry claims costs it billions in lost sales. Despite the thousands of lawsuits -- the majority of them settling while others have been dismissed or are pending -- the RIAA's litigation war on internet piracy has neither dented illegal, peer-to-peer file sharing or put much fear in the hearts of music swappers. According to BigChampagne, an online measuring service, the number of peer-to-peer users unlawfully trading goods has nearly tripled since 2003, when the RIAA began legal onslaught targeting individuals. At the time, BigChampagne says, there were about 3.8 million file sharers trading over the internet at a given moment. Now, the group has measured a record 9 million users trading at the same time. Roughly 70 percent of trading involves digital music, according to BigChampagne. The case, however, did set legal precedents favoring the industry. In proving liability, the industry did not have to demonstrate that the defendant's computer had a file-sharing program installed at the time that they inspected her hard drive. And the RIAA did not have to show that the defendant was at the keyboard when RIAA investigators accessed Thomas' share folder. Also, the judge in the case ruled that jurors may find copyright infringement liability against somebody solely for sharing files on the internet. The RIAA did not have to prove that others downloaded the files. That was a big bone of contention that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis settled in favor of the industry. Thomas, 30, maintained that she was not the Kazaa user "Tereastarr," whose files were detected by RIAA's investigators. Her attorney speculated to jurors that she could have been the victim of a spoof, cracker, zombie, drone and other attacks. The jury found her liable after receiving evidence her internet protocol address and cable modem identifier were used to share some 1,700 files. The hard drive linked to Kazaa on Feb. 21, 2005 -- the evening in question -- did not become evidence in the case. According to testimony, Thomas replaced her hard drive weeks after RIAA investigators accessed her share file and discovered 1,702 files. The industry sued on just 24 of those files.
MUSIC - Canada at the CMJ Music Marathon October 16 - 20 - Various New York City venues Web: http://www.cmj.com/ The annual CMJ Music Marathon once again takes over New York`s club scene for five days of heightened energy and heart-stopping music from a huge international line-up of artists.So far, participating Canadian bands include Chromeo, Crystal Castles, Dragonette, Holy F*ck, Les Breastfeeders, We Are Wolves, The Most Serene Republic, and more to be announced. Keep an eye on http://www.cmj.com/ for further line-up announcements, as well as relevant dates, times, and venues.
____________________________________
This blog is available and distributed for free by the offices of Mark Vinet and Wadem Publishing. Information contained herein should not be relied upon or considered as legal advice. This blog may be forwarded, downloaded or reproduced in whole in any print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes provided that its author is acknowledged and that you cc: mark@markvinet.com © ™ Mark Vinet & Wadem Publishing
Mark Vinet website
TV - Annual Gemini Awards
MUSIC - Copyright Board's decision Online Tariffs - There were so many misleading articles by the media and bloggers last week regarding Canada's Copyright Board's decision on Oct. 18 to set license fees for the use of on-line music services for the years 1996-2006.The Copyright Board released a portion of its decision governing MP3 music files and online services that offer music on demand. It did not release a decision on Internet radio broadcasts or the use of music on a personal or business website, yet.Within hours of the decision, it was widely reported on the Internet (followed in the media) that the tariffs given to the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) are a tax intended to compensate artists (nope) for the loss of revenue from downloading (nope). That it follows similar levies "that add 21 cents to the price of every blank CD sold in Canada." (nope)There was also the suggestion that publishers and composers would be "double-dipping" in the Internet revenue stream. (nope again).Typical of the coverage was Vito Pilieci in the Ottawa Citizen reporting that, "The Copyright Board of Canada has approved new taxes on MP3 music files-- at least for those that are downloaded legally."Perhaps, Canada's media and music fans (well, at least bloggers) should better understand the dynamics of today's music industry. They seem not to be aware that there are separate components battling against each others' interests. Nor do they seem to grasp the concept that an entity should get paid in relation to the value they offer.After being so media-bashed, SOCAN--as well as most other Canadian music industry associations--should consider recalibrating its PR to better combat such inaccurate assessments in the future. The clock to control the spin on these stories starts on-line minutes after a decision is announced. The Board's decision followed public hearings in Hull, Quebec in April. Tariff 22 was first proposed and filed by SOCAN in 1996, and was again filed for each of the years 1997 to 2006. A hearing took place in 1998 that determined certain legal and jurisdictions issues. Certain aspects of the Board's decision were subsequently reviewed by the Federal Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada, resulting in a decision in 2004.Under last week's decision, online music service providers will pay SOCAN license fees of: a.. Permanent downloads: 3.4% of the amounts paid by the consumer with a minimum fee of 1.7¢ per file in a bundle and 2.3¢ per file in all other cases; b.. Limited downloads: 6.3% of the amounts paid by subscribers with a minimum fee of 60.9¢ per month, per subscriber, if portable downloads are allowed and 39.9¢ if not; c.. On-demand stream: 7.6% of the amounts paid by subscribers with a minimum fee of 48.1¢ per month, per subscriber.The Board also determined that the online service industry would benefit from a phase-in discount. A 10% discount will be applied to the rates for the duration of the tariff. The decision is retroactive to the launch of the digital services and will set the rate for the next few years until future copyright hearings are held."On behalf of our songwriter and music publisher members, we are encouraged by the Board's decision," says Paul Spurgeon, SOCAN's VP Legal Services & General Counsel. "While the rates are not exactly what we'd hoped for, they provide an excellent foundation for the management of performing rights royalties for online music use as the industry evolves in the future."With 80,000 members, SOCAN is a Toronto-based copyright collective that administers the performing rights of its members-composers, lyricists, songwriters and their publishers-and those of affiliated international societies by licensing the use of their music in Canada. SOCAN represents the founders of today's music industry. The folks who sold sheet music to performers (and got directly paid) and who later negotiated rights of their music to be played in public, on radio and TV, and on recordings. This SOCAN license amounts to about three cents on a 99-cent track. Record labels command the biggest slice of the Internet music revenue, at 50-60 per cent on many deals, while E-commerce costs (collected by credit card companies) may run between 10 and 20 per cent of the sale price, depending on the number of tracks purchased in a transaction.Fierce skirmishes have raged in recent years between the publishing and recording sectors over revenue of music downloads, ringtones (another appeal is underway this week), and over the licensing of recorded music. The Canadian Record Industry Association, primarily representing major label interests, had in fact argued for a much lower rate for SOCAN, approx. 0.1%, in order to put the overall royalty rate in line with such other territories as the U.K. (8%), Japan (7.7%) and the U.S. (9.1%), as well as the royalty rate applicable on physical product in Canada.In March, 2007 the Copyright Board announced its ruling on a proposed tariff by CMMRA/SODRAC Inc. (CSI) for the reproduction right use of music on the Internet. The Board ruled that with permanent downloads, 7.9% of the price of a song will go back to copyright holders. For downloads that require a subscription, and for on-demand streaming music, rates were set at 5.9% and 4.6% of the cost of a month's subscription, respectively. Significantly, the Board made it clear that the on-line services must deal directly with to CSI for licensing their repertoire.CSI--incorporated in 2002--is a joint venture of the Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada (SODRAC) in Montreal, and The Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd. (CMRRA) in Toronto. It claims to represent 1.1 million musical works from around the world.With SOCAN's tariff in place, digital distribution services in Canada-including Apple's iTunes Music Store, Yahoo Music, Bell Canada's Puretracks, U.S.-based Napster and Quebec's Archambault must now pay the combined amount collected by SOCAN and CSI.The Board also significantly concluded that offering music previews constitutes fair dealing under Canadian copyright law as it can be characterized as copying for the purpose of research. It noted that listening to an excerpt of a work is consumer research into whether they might like to purchase the song, concluding that:"Generally speaking, users who listen to previews are entitled to avail themselves of section 29 of the Act, as are those who allow them to verify that they have or will purchase the track or album that they want or to permit them to view and sample what is available online."On the issue of whether there can be liability when servers are located outside of Canada, the Board avoided reviewing what the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled but indicated that that there could be such a liability where there is a real and substantial connection. In the Speech from the Throne delivered October 16, the Canadian government indicated its intent to address copyright in the coming session of Parliament. Under a section of the speech titled "Providing Effective Economic Leadership for a Prosperous Future," the Speech stated that: "Our government will improve the protection of cultural and intellectual property rights in Canada, including copyright reform." Source: LEBLANC NEWSLETTER ISSUE #7 (OCT. 22 2007)
MUSIC - CANADIAN ABORIGINAL AWARDS -- With five nominations each, country singer/songwriters Donny Parenteau and Shane Yellowbird lead the list of nominees for the Ninth Annual Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards being held Nov. 30 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.Parenteau's "What It Takes" CD picked up nominations for top country album and top album. As well, he is nominated in producer and songwriter categories. His song "Father Time" is nominated for top single. Yellowbird's album "Life is Calling My Name" received nods for top country album and top album. As well, his single "Pick Up Truck" is nominated in single and video categories. As well, he is nominated for top male singer. A full list of nominees is available at: http://www.canab.com/ (source: THE LEBLANC NEWSLETTER ISSUE #6 , Oct 11 2007)
MUSIC - Bands Rushing To Ditch Labels And Embrace Free; Are The Floodgates Opening? - From the tipping-point dept 10oct2007 -- We've only been predicting that music would eventually go free for about a dozen years, but it feels like we may be nearing a tipping point among musicians recognizing this simple truth as well, kicked off by last week's Radiohead announcement. Suddenly, similar announcements seem to be coming fast and furious. Apparently both Oasis and Jamiroquai are interested in following Radiohead's lead and the Charlatan's (managed by a member of Oasis) is already doing the same. On top of that, Trent Reznor proudly announced today that Nine Inch Nails is now free from its record label contract. Will.i.am, from the band The Black Eyed Peas, announced "the new distributor is your niece" in discussing how he plans to promote his new solo album. There are two key things to note in all of this. First, all these bands feel the need to ditch big record labels to do this (and, no, that doesn't mean that small bands without recording contracts can't succeed this way too). This is a sad state of affairs for the record labels -- because there still should be a place for them in helping to promote and market a band, even if they're giving away the music for free. It's just that they're not venture capitalists any more and bands don't need help in distributing content -- two businesses the record labels insist they're in. What's really sad here is how clueless the record labels remain to this reality. In a Reuters article about the Radiohead move, a record industry insider mistakenly claims that this trend is going to hurt the music business because bands will rush out singles instead of albums. Apparently that insider only read the first half of the details of what Radiohead is doing (as well as what others are doing). They're doing exactly the opposite. They've put together a whole "discbox" with lots of extras to make it more compelling to buy. Will.i.am specifically made his latest album a "cohesive story" to encourage people to buy the whole album. Reznor purposely tried to make his CD as cool as possible (it changes colors when you play it in a CD player) to encourage people to buy it -- even as he tells people at concerts to download his songs. That brings up the second key point. For all the whining about "free" music, the complainers keep missing the fact that free is only a part of the business model. This seems to be the thing that people get most confused about when we discuss business models around free music. They get stuck on free and assume that if something's free, there's no way to make money. But, all of these bands are showing exactly the opposite is true. The Times Online has a story incorrectly headlined "The day the music industry died" discussing these exact changes, but as you read the details, the music industry is doing just fine -- it's just the folks in the recording industry who are in trouble. Musicians are raking in record revenue from concerts -- and the artists are realizing that the free music only helps generate more interest in those concerts. Listen to Alan McGee from Oasis and the Charlatans, saying that giving away the music for free was a can't miss proposition: "We increase our fan base, we sell more merchandise, more fans talk about the band and we get more advertising and more films (soundtracks). More people will get into the the Charlatans and will probably pay the money to see the show. I presume it will double the gig traffic, maybe even treble it." In other words, more bands are recognizing exactly what a bunch of folks knew was inevitable at least a decade ago. Unshackle the music, give it away free, and use it to make a lot of other stuff a lot more valuable, and there's plenty of money to be made. The only sad part in all of this is that the record labels have been not just blind to the idea -- they've actively tried to discredit anyone who pointed it out to them.
MUSIC & COPYRIGHT - RIAA Awarded $222,000 from First Individual Copyright Infringment Trial - DULUTH, Minnesota 05oct2007 -- Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two from Brainerd, Minn., was found liable of copyright infringement by the RIAA. The twelve jurors said she must pay US$ 9,250 each for the 24 songs she downloaded - a total of $222,000, according to Wired's Threat Level.Though the RIAA thinks it's sending a strong message by handing out lawsuits, online measuring service BigChampagne says P2P users unlawfully trading goods has tripled since the RIAA first began targeting individuals in 2003 - up from 3.8 million to 9 million. Around 70 percent of those trade digital music. Wired has posted the 24 songs Thomas was sent to court over, calling them the Internet Trial of the Century's Playlist of the Century, which includes hits such as Guns n' Roses' "November Rain" and "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard.
RIAA Jury Finds Minnesota Woman Liable for Piracy, Awards $222,000 - AP 05oct2007 - Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement in the nation's first file-sharing case to go before a jury. Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties. They could have dinged her for up to $3.6 million in damages, or awarded as little as $18,000. She was found liable for infringing songs from bands such as Journey, Green Day, Aerosmith and others. After the verdict was read, Thomas and her attorney left the courthouse without comment. The jurors also declined to talk to reporters. The verdict, coming after two days of testimony and about five hours of deliberations, was a mixed victory for the RIAA, which has brought more than 20,000 lawsuits in the last four years as part of its zero-tolerance policy against pirating. The outcome is likely to embolden the RIAA, which began targeting individuals in lawsuits after concluding the legal system could not keep pace with the ever growing number of file-sharing sites and services. "This is what can happen if you don't settle," RIAA attorney Richard Gabriel told reporters outside the courthouse. "I think we have sent a message we are willing to go to trial." Still, it's unlikely the RIAA's courtroom victory will translate into a financial windfall or stop piracy, which the industry claims costs it billions in lost sales. Despite the thousands of lawsuits -- the majority of them settling while others have been dismissed or are pending -- the RIAA's litigation war on internet piracy has neither dented illegal, peer-to-peer file sharing or put much fear in the hearts of music swappers. According to BigChampagne, an online measuring service, the number of peer-to-peer users unlawfully trading goods has nearly tripled since 2003, when the RIAA began legal onslaught targeting individuals. At the time, BigChampagne says, there were about 3.8 million file sharers trading over the internet at a given moment. Now, the group has measured a record 9 million users trading at the same time. Roughly 70 percent of trading involves digital music, according to BigChampagne. The case, however, did set legal precedents favoring the industry. In proving liability, the industry did not have to demonstrate that the defendant's computer had a file-sharing program installed at the time that they inspected her hard drive. And the RIAA did not have to show that the defendant was at the keyboard when RIAA investigators accessed Thomas' share folder. Also, the judge in the case ruled that jurors may find copyright infringement liability against somebody solely for sharing files on the internet. The RIAA did not have to prove that others downloaded the files. That was a big bone of contention that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis settled in favor of the industry. Thomas, 30, maintained that she was not the Kazaa user "Tereastarr," whose files were detected by RIAA's investigators. Her attorney speculated to jurors that she could have been the victim of a spoof, cracker, zombie, drone and other attacks. The jury found her liable after receiving evidence her internet protocol address and cable modem identifier were used to share some 1,700 files. The hard drive linked to Kazaa on Feb. 21, 2005 -- the evening in question -- did not become evidence in the case. According to testimony, Thomas replaced her hard drive weeks after RIAA investigators accessed her share file and discovered 1,702 files. The industry sued on just 24 of those files.
MUSIC - Canada at the CMJ Music Marathon October 16 - 20 - Various New York City venues Web: http://www.cmj.com/ The annual CMJ Music Marathon once again takes over New York`s club scene for five days of heightened energy and heart-stopping music from a huge international line-up of artists.So far, participating Canadian bands include Chromeo, Crystal Castles, Dragonette, Holy F*ck, Les Breastfeeders, We Are Wolves, The Most Serene Republic, and more to be announced. Keep an eye on http://www.cmj.com/ for further line-up announcements, as well as relevant dates, times, and venues.
____________________________________
This blog is available and distributed for free by the offices of Mark Vinet and Wadem Publishing. Information contained herein should not be relied upon or considered as legal advice. This blog may be forwarded, downloaded or reproduced in whole in any print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes provided that its author is acknowledged and that you cc: mark@markvinet.com © ™ Mark Vinet & Wadem Publishing
<< Home