In comp.os.linux.advocacy, 7
<website_has_email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:10:04 GMT
<MBOOi.28419$c_1.17095@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> Minnesota woman to appeal $220,000 RIAA award
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman who last week was ordered to pay the
>> | recording industry $222,000 for copyright violations related to sharing
>> | songs, has decided to appeal the verdict.
>> `----
>>
>> http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9792759-7.html
>
>
> Unless the RIAA can prove they are not living off immoral earnings,
> I think RIAA could and should get prosecuted.
On what charges?? *Illegal* earnings, certainly, but
immorality has (and should have) little to do with law,
though the two concepts often run parallel (e.g., murder,
fraud, and robbery are generally considered both immoral
and illegal; however, adultery is hit-and-miss).
> The companies that sponsor the RIAA all have recording artists
> that are hooked on drugs and their work is the product of their
> drug taking habbits.
Overgeneralization. To be sure, drugs are reputed to run
rampant in some subcultures related to music production.
I don't know the details. (I'm not sure I want to.)
> Like athletes, runners and cyclists in the sporting
> industry, drug taking enhanced the drug taking artists' abilities
> and the products of those artists is what the members of RIAA peddle.
> In other words, the members of the RIAA that fund the RIAA do so
> on the back of immoral earnings.
Not quite that simple; though if members of the RIAA
are/were handing out controlled substances they can
easily be accused by various agencies -- the DEA being the
most obvious one -- and then formally charged and tried.
Of course the RIAA has *very* good lawyers; things could
get interesting in a rather nasty sort of way.
>
> A judge has to weigh the morality of passing down
> fines to this woman on the basis that she has done something
> immoral when all of the fines that is going to be gathered
> will all be passed to an organisation that is itself immorally funded.
A judge need do *nothing of the sort*; he is constrained
by and required to know and follow the law. A jury has
the option of overthrowing the law in a case, rendering
an individual innocent, if I'm not mistaken. However,
AFAIK this was not a jury trial.
But judges are not eccliastical in nature in the US.
Never have been, and hopefully never will be.
>
> If a counterfitter manufactured some money through illegally
> printing and it got stolen, and he then prosecuted
> the thief with a big fine,
How does a counterfeiter prosecute? He's not an agent
of the Executive Branch.
> there
> is sufficient immorality in this case to make you think
> and not proceed with a prosecution in the first place.
>
Well, personally I think it's a sad day for jurisprudence
that the RIAA went forward with the suit, and it may
(and hopefully will) backfire badly. However, the law *as
written at the time of the transgression* is what one has
to go by, presumably -- and the DMCA is not the best of
laws, but it did pass Constitutional muster, unfortunately.
(At least, AFAIK.)
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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