A federal judge has significantly reduced the penalty against Joel Tenenbaum, the graduate student that was convicted of sharing 30 unauthorized tracks online.
Last July, Tenenbaum was found guilty and told to pay $675,000 to the RIAA and record labels.
The judge has now reduced the verdict to $67,500, saying the damages award was “unconstitutionally excessive” given the fact that Tenenbaum made no money off the sharing of the music.
Judge Nancy Gertner added the following of the new verdict: The new damages “not only adequately compensates the plaintiffs for the relatively minor harm that Tenenbaum caused them; it sends a strong message that those who exploit peer-to-peer networks to unlawfully download and distribute copyrighted works run the risk of incurring substantial damages awards.”
$67,500 is three times the statutory minimum.
Despite being grateful, Tenenbaum still called the new verdict ‘ridiculous:’ “I still don’t have $70,000 — and $2,000 per song still seems ridiculous in light of the fact that you can buy them for 99 cents on iTunes,” Tenenbaum said. “I mean $675,000 was also absurd.”
The RIAA, unsurprisingly, was not happy: “With this decision, the court has substituted its judgment for that of 10 jurors as well as Congress. For nearly a week, a federal jury carefully considered the issues involved in this case, including the profound harm suffered by the music community precisely because of the activity that the defendant admitted engaging in.”
Result for: graduate student
The Justice Department has vocally supported the awarding of $675,000 in damages to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from a Massachusetts student for sharing 30 songs illegally on the Internet. The department said that copyright infringement, “creates a public harm that Congress determined must be deterred.”
The comments aren’t very surprising, since several former RIAA lawyers do serve in high positions. The student in question is Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University graduate student, who is only the second person to go to trial against the RIAA following a P2P lawsuit. Over 30,000 such claims were made, almost all of which have resulted in settlements for a few thousand dollars.
The Copyright Act allows for fines ranging from $750 to $150,000 per infringement. After the Jury verdict in Tenenbaum’s case, his defense team mounted a legal challenge against the damages, claiming they were unconstitutional on the grounds that they were disproportionate to the harm done to the industry by the crime.
“The current damages range provides compensation for copyright owners because, inter alia, there exist situations in which actual damages are hard to quantify,” the Justice Department wrote. “Furthermore, in establishing the range, Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where many violators believe they will go unnoticed.”
Tenenbaum’s legal team is attempting to bring the damages down to $750 per infringement.
Result for: graduate student
A federal judge has officially placed graduate student Joel Tenenbaum on the line for $675,000 USD, the fine he was given by a jury after being found guilty of sharing 30 unauthorized songs via P2P networks.
Judge Nancy Gertner signed off on the damages, meaning Universal gets $292,500, Warner gets $225,000, Sony BMG gets $112,500 and Arista gets $45,000.
Despite signing off on the giant fine, Judge Gertner once against expressed concern over the “astronomical penalties” available to copyright holders, and noted that Tenenbaum missed out on an opportunity to shape the future of fair use laws.
“As it made clear previously, the Court was prepared to consider a more expansive fair use argument than other courts have credited—perhaps one supported by facts specific to this individual and this unique period of rapid technological change. For example, file sharing for the purposes of sampling music prior to purchase or space-shifting to store purchased music more efficiently might offer a compelling case for fair use. Likewise, a defendant who used the new file-sharing networks in the technological interregnum before digital media could be purchased legally, but who later shifted to paid outlets, might also be able to rely on the defense,” says Gertner.
Tenenbaum has said he will declare bankruptcy leaving the record labels with nothing if the fine is ruled constitutional on January 5th.
