Jammie Thomas :- RIAAl Liability

A quick re-cap. Jammie Thomas was 'caught' by the record industry sharing 24 songs on the internet. She didn't settle for thousands of dollars, but instead fought tooth and nail. A federal court awarded the record industry 1.92 million dollars for her copyright infringement. No, that's not a typo.

A single mother shared a few random songs on the internet and the justice system has fined her 1.92 million dollars. The fact that a judge has to be asked to label these statutory damages as unconstitutional is inane. But this fine isn't really a problem for Jammie, because there's no way in hell she is going to be able to pay out. This fine is really a problem for the plaintiff, not the defendant.

It's outstanding media manipulation that allows a massive trade organization to get away without this raw and blatant injustice reaching the mainstream media. But since there are so many people rallying around Jammie and people across the internet all feeling her pain, how long can the 'industry' keep this from leaking out? The truth is that as mainstream media becomes less and less relevant, the power of these organizations is also dwindling. There's manipulation of content on the internet, never doubt it, but since there are so many sources of information no false source survives past their own stupid greed.

The movie industry in Australia lobbied for copyright infringement fines to be DRASTICALLY increased in the last few years. The deterrent now sits at about 1000 times the level of fines in the US!!! So if some Australian were to infringe like Jamme, would they be fined 1.92 BILLION dollars?

The truth is that the only real harm occurs when one group tries to profit from another at the unreasonable expense of the former. If children are exploited in sweat shops producing goods that are sold at ridiculous profit margins. Or if consumers are exploited using inflated physical media prices fixed by a monopolistic group. Or if Jammie was to copy the physical media and profit from it with no recompense for the content owner.