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Written by mikee
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Friday, 10 November 2006 17:02
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Techdirt.com: When the RIAA sues people for unauthorized uploading of songs, they
usually put a price between $750-per-song to $30,000-per-song in
losses. Many have argued that this seems rather excessive -- especially
considering how much the songs are actually sold for.
A year and a half ago, there was a scholarly paper that examined whether the RIAA's excessive loss claims were unconstitutionally excessive. With that in mind, it wasn't that surprising earlier this year to see one defendant in an RIAA suit question the constitutionality of the $750 number
that was trotted out in her case. At the time, we stated that the
reasoning used to back this up seemed much weaker than the reasoning in
the law review article, but as lawyer Ray Beckerman (who is involved in
the case) explained, the filing was limited in length and only needed
to serve a specific purpose. It also looks like they were later able to
submit either the law review article we mentioned, or other supporting
documents. No matter what happened, the judge has now ruled that it is a perfectly legitimate question,
and will be included as part of the case. The judge tossed out all of
the RIAA's objections, noting that the defendant actually backed up
their claim with case law and law review articles. The RIAA, on the
other hand, could offer no similar case law to explain why the
constitutionality of the fines couldn't be questioned. Of course, who
knows how the case will turn out, but should the RIAA lose, it would be
pretty damaging for them. They use the threat of the $750/song (or
higher) fines as a way to bully people into just settling, rather than fighting -- even if they know they're innocent.
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