Majors Welcome P2P win, but $1.92 million Award Could Make for Bad PRPlease go to Billboard's site to read the whole thing.
June 18, 2009 -- Legal and Management
By Ben Sheffner
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.
"We are pleased that the jury agreed with the evidence and found the defendant liable."
But a question arose after the verdict about whether the sheer size of the damages could lead to a backlash against an industry that is already portrayed in some quarters as overreaching.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Billboard: 'Majors Welcome P2P Win, But $1.92M Award Could Make For Bad PR'
Billboard just posted the following piece by yours truly:
1 comment:
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Interesting article. I can say for one that the RIAA and record label's bad rep isn't only among music fans, but more importantly it's spreading other industries, especially the advertising industry that deal with these entities (has been for a long time) Mentions of the RIAA and even major record labels during our meetings lead to a room of rolling eyes and at least one person mentioning lawsuits against 13 year-old girls, and it will be inteesting to see what type of perception fallout yesterday's verdict will bring since the bar has been raised.
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