Last year Jammie Thomas lost her retrial against the RIAA and was ordered to pay $1.92 million in damages for sharing 24 songs using Kazaa.

Outrage at the huge damages eventually resulted in Judge Davis lowering the damages last week to $54,000.

To try and bring the whole sorry episode to an end, yesterday the RIAA made an offer to Thomas to settle the case for $25,000, if she agreed to ask the judge to “vacate” last week’s decision, which means removing it from the record.

Her lawyers immediately rejected the offer, indicating they would only accept a settlement which means Thomas has to pay nothing.

The RIAA said that this rejection means that they will now challenge the judge’s decision last week to lower the $1.92m damages.

Will this ever come to an end? What a complete waste of money.

Article from: FreakBits

According to Judge Michael Davis the damages are lowered because the initial fine was “so grossly excessive as to shock the conscience of the court. A verdict is not considered excessive unless there is plain injustice or a monstrous or shocking result.”

The result is that, if Thomas is able to pay anything at all, the RIAA will have ‘only’ $54,000 to add to their anti-piracy funds instead of the $1.92 million it was awarded initially.

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy previously informed us that the ‘damages’ will not go to any of the artists, but to more anti-piracy campaigns. “Any funds recouped are re-invested into our ongoing education and anti-piracy programs,” he said.

The RIAA has 7 days to challenge the reduced verdict and request for a new trial.

Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston student hit with $650,000 in damages back in July 2009, has filed for a new trial earlier this month, also because of excessive damages.

Article from: FreakBits

For reasons unknown the RIAA was asked to comment on the news, and the anti-piracy outfit made one of the most idiotic comments we’ve seen or heard this year.

According to the RIAA the incident was “evidence of a need for controls on peer-to-peer software to block the improper or illegal exchange of music.”

RIAA’s chairman Mitch Bainwol added, “It’s now happening (in) Congress’ backyard, and that should be a powerful catalyst to enact real reforms to protect consumers.”

That’s right, because some junior staff member is stupid enough to put confidential documents in the shared folder of his filesharing client, access to P2P apps should be restricted.

If we follow this logic it’s only a matter of time before the RIAA will pledge to stop selling USB drives because people might lose them, potentially exposing confidential information.

Then, they will go after out laptops and lobby for the Internet to be shutdown entirely. That should keep us safe.

Article from: FreakBits

Last month, Joel Tenenbaum, a graduate student from Boston admitted to downloading and sharing 30 songs back in 2004.

After a week long trial a jury decided to award the RIAA $22,500 per song for “willful infringement” which all mounted up to a whopping $675,000 for Tenenbaum.

Since the trial, torrents have been popping up which link to the songs that Tenenbaum shared, but now The Pirate Bay crew have fired possibly one of their last parting cannon shots at the RIAA before they get sold, by promoting one of these on their main page.

The torrent contains all 30 songs, which are listed below;

01 – Incubus – New Skin
02 – Green Day – Minority
03 – Outkast – Wheelz of Steel
04 – Incubus – Pardon Me
05 – Nirvana – Come As You Are
06 – Green Day – When I Come Around
07 – Green Day – Nice Guys Finish Last
08 – Nirvana – Heart Shaped Box
09 – Nine Inch Nails – The Perfect Drug
10 – Blink 182 – Adam’s Song
11 – Limp Bizkit – Rearranged
12 – Limp Bizkit – Leech
13 – Linkin Park – Crawling Hybrid
14 – Deftones – Be Quiet And Drive
15 – The Fugees – Killing Me Softly
16 – Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication
17 – Red Hot Chili Peppers – By The Way
18 – Red Hot Chili Peppers – My Friends
19 – Beck – Loser
20 – Eminem – My Name Is
21 – Eminem – Drug Ballad
22 – Eminem – Cleaning Out My Closet
23 – Beastie Boys – (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)
24 – The Ramones – The KKK Took My Baby Away
25 – Monster Magnet – Look To Your Orb For The Warning
26 – Aerosmith – Pink
27 – OutKast – Rosa Parks
28 – Rage Against The Machine – Guerrilla Radio
29 – Goo Goo Dolls – Iris
30 – Aerosmith – Water Song/Janie’s Got A Gun

Article from: FreakBits