Monday, June 22, 2009

Tort Reform for Everybody!

Unless, by chance, your plaintiff happens to be the RIAA...
The recording industry secured a resounding victory when a Minnesota jury awarded the four major labels $1.92 million in damages after unanimously finding that Jammie Thomas-Rasset had willfully infringed on their copyrights by downloading and sharing 24 songs on the Kazaa peer-to-peer network.

The mammoth size of the verdict, representing $80,000 per track, may help dissuade more P2P users from illegally downloading music, and for that the labels are happy. "We appreciate the jury's service and that they take this as seriously as we do," RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said in a statement.
In other words, punitive damages are perfectly reasonable when we're talking about individuals sitting at home on their laptops. But multi-billion dollar corporations? That's just excessive, man.

Three cheers for choosing law school!

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