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General
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Written by Daniel
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Wednesday, 05 December 2007 10:45 |
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Establishment bears down on single mum
The Inquirer
By Egan Orion: Wednesday, 05 December 2007, 3:21 PM
IN REPLY to a motion filed by Jammie Thomas, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) sided with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to argue that the jury's $222,000 damage award is not unconstitutonal.Thomas was found to have willfully infringed the music company's copyrights on 24 songs she made available on the Kazaa file-sharing network. The jury awarded the RIAA $9,250 per track for a total award of $222,0000.
The US Copyright Act allows statutory damages ranging from $750 to $150,0000. Thomas has argued that the damages assessed violate the Due Process clause of the US Constitution, which says that legal penalties imposed may not be "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense or obviously unreasonable."
Thomas' motion claims that even the minimum $750 statutory damage amount is excessive because the record labels make only about 70 cents per track sold.
It asks that damages assessed be limited to actual damages proven, or at most, ten times actual damages. It terms any award more than the record label's actual damages "purely punitive."
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