Difference in judgements passed by courts in Europe v USA | Hacker News Reader

Difference in judgements passed by courts in Europe v USA

arstechnica.com

7 pointszippykid3 comments

Really interesting that the judge in Europe is allowed to throw out any of the "what if" conjecture about the possible loss in revenue, but the one in the USA doesn't or can't. IANAL. I just find the punishment to not fit the crime at all.

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One difference is that Jammie Thomas-Rasset lied under oath, tried to destroy evidence, tried to blame her kids and others, and has refused quite reasonable settlement offers.

That surely sounds serious enough to make him pay probably his whole life. I mean, what a villain!

She could have avoided all of this by simply accepting their initial settlement offer. I don't know if the exact amount has been published, but based on the offers that other people got, it would have been in the ballpark of maybe 2-5 thousand dollars, which is not much more than it would cost to legally obtain the couple thousand songs she had downloaded.

It was her choice to go to court rather than settle, even though she had pretty much no case. The actual lawsuit was for only 24 songs. If, for some reason, the court had found that she was an innocent infringer, and awarded the minimum possible statutory damages of $200/song, that would still have been $4800. Since there is pretty much no chance of them finding her to be an innocent infringer, the minimum is $750/song, or $18000.

So, when she turned down their initial, quite reasonable, settlement offer, she was looking at an almost certain loss in court for a minimum of $18000. The jury gets to decide the actual amount, and they can go way higher than $750/song. When the defendant lies, tampers with evidence, and tries to blame their kids and others, you think a jury is going to go for the minimum? No way.

This is now the third time it has been to court. After each victory in court (each of which resulted in a larger damages award than the previous one), the RIAA has offered to settle for much much less than the court awarded. And yet she still turns them down.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for a defendant who exhibits such monumental stupidity.

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