RIAA’s outrageous fines questioned in court

Written by Smaran on November 10, 2006 

Earlier this year, a victim of a RIAA lawsuit questioned how constitutional the organisation’s $750 per-song-uploaded claim was. A judge has now ruled that this is worth looking into and will be included in the case.

The RIAAThe defendants provided a research paper and substantial evidence that questioned the legality of the RIAA’s unreasonably large fines to back up their case. The RIAA objected, but the judge refuted the objections because the RIAA had nothing to back up its claim, no case law articles, no nothing.

The judge has ruled in favour of the defendant. The $750 claim will now be questioned in court and could lead to the defendants winning the case (or at least paying reasonable fines). If that happens, it could set a precedent for future law suits and might even prevent the RIAA from demanding such outrageous amounts.

The RIAA’s demands usually range from $750 to a whooping $30,000 per song uploaded. According to them, that’s how much loss they incur per song, per person. These claims seem to be rather overstated since the cost of one of those songs from an online music retailer like iTunes is under $1.

The RIAA seems to use law suits merely as threats, a way to “bully” people into paying their exorbitant fines. Is this their new business model? Sue for revenue? Young adults seem to be their favourite targets as
they do not have the money to fight back.

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5 Responses

1 Nov 11, 2006 at 00:16 by mr linux

evil

2 Nov 11, 2006 at 03:20 by Platypus

Holy shit!

3 Nov 11, 2006 at 20:40 by Yatti

About time..

4 Nov 25, 2006 at 21:46 by I HATE SKATEBOARDERs

that sucks….

5 Jun 16, 2008 at 03:28 by Anonymous

Even if it were true that they “lost” $30,000 per song, that only means that the original uploader caused it. If 30,000 people have received it and they want to potentially sue all of them, they would receive $900 million for one song. Is that logical, or just insane greed?

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