RIAA Lawsuits May Be Unconstitutional
Harvard law professor Charles Nesson is arguing, in court, that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional:
He makes the argument that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is very much unconstitutional, in that its hefty fines for copyright infringement (misleadingly called “theft” in the title of the bill) show that the bill is effectively a criminal statute, yet for a civil crime. That’s because it really focuses on punitive damages, rather than making private parties whole again. Even worse, it puts the act of enforcing the criminal statute in the hands of a private body (the RIAA) who uses it for profit motive in being able to get hefty fines.
Imagine a statute which, in the name of deterrence, provides for a $750 fine for each mile-per-hour that a driver exceeds the speed limit, with the fine escalating to $150,000 per mile over the limit if the driver knew he or she was speeding. Imagine that the fines are not publicized, and most drivers do not know they exist. Imagine that enforcement of the fines is put in the hands of a private, self-interested police force, that has no political accountability, that can pursue any defendant it chooses at its own whim, that can accept or reject payoffs in exchange for not prosecuting the tickets, and that pockets for itself all payoffs and fines. Imagine that a significant percentage of these fines were never contested, regardless of whether they had merit, because the individuals being fined have limited financial resources and little idea of whether they can prevail in front of an objective judicial body.
Another news story.
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A nonny bunny • November 19, 2008 2:17 PM
Reminds me about a post I read on boingboing.net yesterday, about why copyright law should be revised.
Here’s a small excerpt:
“What John does in the article is go through the average day of a professor (seems to be modeled on himself). He does a bunch of stuff on the internet, he goes to the gym, he works out with his tattoos on his shoulders, he plays loud music in his car, and he sings Happy Birthday to people in a restaurant, and by the time he’s finished with his average day, he counts 83 acts of plausible infringement, because some sort of copying was done. And he multiplies that by the maximum statutory damages – $150,000 per infringed work. So, just in one day, even without any kind of peer-to-peer file-sharing going on, John calculates 12.5 million dollars of potential liability for those ordinary infringing acts”
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/17/samuelson-and-lessig.html