Judges Start to Question Sanity of Copyright Awards

Two judges have now slashed awards for copyright violations by around 90%:

In fact, according to Gertner, they trampled the Constitution's "Due Process" clause. In a ruling today, the judge slashed the $675,000 award by a factor of 10, to $67,500.
Two for two

If it sounds like a familiar result, it should. In Minnesota, Judge Michael Davis used a different legal approach called remittitur to lower Jammie Thomas-Rasset's liability from $1.9 million to $2,250 per song. That amount is three times higher than the $750 minimum for statutory damages, and Judge Gertner has accepted both Judge Davis' number and his reasoning when issuing her own opinion.

"Weighing all of these considerations, I conclude that the jury’s award of $675,000 in statutory damages for Tenenbaum’s infringement of thirty copyrighted works is unconstitutionally excessive," she wrote. "This award is far greater than necessary to serve the government’s legitimate interests in compensating copyright owners and deterring infringement. In fact, it bears no meaningful relationship to these objectives. To borrow Chief Judge Michael J. Davis' characterization of a smaller statutory damages award in an analogous file-sharing case, the award here is simply 'unprecedented and oppressive.'"

This is a good thing. The previous award levels did nothing additional to deter people who violated the exclusive licenses that are a part of IP, but they did make it much easier for bottom feeding legal firms to prey on technically non-astute parents and people who were innocent.

There is a whole lot of what could only be described as shake downs being promulgated by agents of the RIAA and the MPAA, and hopefully, this will put a crimp in those ghouls' business.