While the Court does not discount Plaintiffs\u2019 claim that, cumulatively, illegal downloading has far\u2010reaching effects on their businesses, the damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs. Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs \u2010 the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000 \u2013 more than five hundred times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than four thousand times the cost of three CDs. While the Copyright Act was intended to permit statutory damages that are larger than the simple cost of the infringed works in order to make infringing a far less attractive alternative than legitimately purchasing the songs, surely damages that are more than one hundred times the cost of the works would serve as a sufficient deterrent.
\nThomas not only gained no profits from her alleged illegal activities, she
\nsought no profits. Part of the justification for large statutory damages awards in
\ncopyright cases is to deter actors by ensuring that the possible penalty for
\ninfringing substantially outweighs the potential gain from infringing. In the case
\n43 of commercial actors, the potential gain in revenues is enormous and enticing to potential infringers. In the case of individuals who infringe by using peer\u2010to\u2010peer networks, the potential gain from infringement is access to free music, not the possibility of hundreds of thousands \u2013 or even millions \u2013 of dollars in profits.
\nThis fact means that statutory damages awards of hundreds of thousands of
\ndollars is certainly far greater than necessary to accomplish Congress\u2019s goal of
\ndeterrence.
\nUnfortunately, by using Kazaa, Thomas acted like countless other Internet
\nusers. Her alleged acts were illegal, but common. Her status as a consumer who
\nwas not seeking to harm her competitors or make a profit does not excuse her
\nbehavior. But it does make the award of hundreds of thousands of dollars in
\ndamages unprecedented and oppressive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minnesota has declared a mistrial in the only win in RIAA’s long legal fight against consumers. He also commented on the laws behind the copyright infringement claims of RIAA stating that they were “unprecedented and oppressive” for non commercial p2p users and intended only for operations which sought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[271],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rights-online"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/zeroday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}