Friday Evening Links > Harvard Law guru loses big to RIAA in court

After a brief deliberation, a federal jury has ruled that PhD student Joel Tenenbaum willfully infringed on the record labels' copyrights, awarding them $675,000 in damages, $22,500 for each of the 30 songs in question. Ars reports with reaction from Tenenbaum and his attorney, Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson.

When asked about the size verdict, Tenenbaum's attorney and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson told Ars that "it's a bankrupting award." He also felt things might have been different had they been allowed to argue Fair Use. "We were not allowed to speak to fairness," he told Ars. "I thought we had pretty damn good arguments on Fair Use."

The RIAA was pleased with the verdict. "We are grateful for the jury’s service and their recognition of the impact of illegal downloading on the music community," the RIAA said in a statement. "We appreciate that Mr. Tenenbaum finally acknowledged that artists and music companies deserve to be paid for their work. From the beginning that’s what this case has been about. We only wish he had done so sooner rather than lie about his illegal behavior."

Judge Gertner previously announced that she will hold a post-trial proceeding to determine whether the size of the award violates the US Constitution’s guarantee of due process of the law. While no federal court has ever invalidated an award of copyright statutory damages as constitutionally excessive, the record labels’ litigation campaign has spurred arguments that the Supreme Court cases imposing limits on punitive damages should be extended to statutory damages, which may contain a punitive element.

said by RARPSL:

I wonder how much Judge Gertner was paid under the table to prevent Joel Tenenbaum and his Lawers from getting a fair trial by ruling that they were not allowed to present their case about "Fair Use".

said by Kearnstd:

i still think copyright cases involving P2P should be treated strictly at retail value. if the record goons want to call it theft instead of its proper legal name of copyright infringement then people should only be liable for the value of what is "stolen", in this case music which is worth on average 99 cents per track. if someone uploads 1000 tracks then they should only be liable for around a grand.

said by Kearnstd:

i still think copyright cases involving P2P should be treated strictly at retail value. if the record goons want to call it theft instead of its proper legal name of copyright infringement then people should only be liable for the value of what is "stolen", in this case music which is worth on average 99 cents per track. if someone uploads 1000 tracks then they should only be liable for around a grand.

said by RARPSL:

I wonder how much Judge Gertner was paid under the table to prevent Joel Tenenbaum and his Lawers from getting a fair trial by ruling that they were not allowed to present their case about "Fair Use".