The appeals court ordered a new trial on damages because it said the $46.8 million award was too high, but affirmed the lower court's finding that Grande is liable for contributory copyright infringement. //

Back in 2020, we wrote about the voir dire questions that record labels intended to ask prospective jurors in their case against Grande. One of those questions was, "Have you ever read or visited Ars Technica or TorrentFreak?" //

The 5th Circuit remanded the case to the district court for a new trial on damages. Record labels can expect a lower payout because the appeals court said they can't obtain separate damages awards for multiple songs on the same album.

"The district court determined that each of Plaintiffs’ 1,403 sound recordings that was infringed entitled Plaintiffs to an individual statutory damages award," the 5th Circuit said. "Grande contends that the text of the Copyright Act requires a different result: Whenever more than one of those recordings appeared on the same album, Plaintiffs are entitled to only one statutory damages award for that album, regardless of how many individual recordings from the album were infringed. Grande has the better reading of the text of the statute."

The Copyright Act says that "all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work," the court said. In the Grande case, record labels sought damages for each song but conceded that "each album constitutes a compilation." //

Cox told the Supreme Court that ISPs "have no way of verifying whether a bot-generated notice is accurate. And no one can reliably identify the actual individual who used a particular Internet connection for an illegal download. The ISP could connect the IP address to a particular subscriber's account, but the subscriber in question might be a university or a conference center with thousands of individual users on its network, or a grandmother who unwittingly left her Internet connection open to the public. Thus, the subscriber is often not the infringer and may not even know about the infringement."

Cox asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the 4th Circuit "err[ed] in holding that a service provider can be held liable for 'materially contributing' to copyright infringement merely because it knew that people were using certain accounts to infringe and did not terminate access, without proof that the service provider affirmatively fostered infringement or otherwise intended to promote it." //

Team Tardigrade Ars Centurion
4y
360
This should be fun. How long before someone accuses, oh I don't know, a hospital, state legislature, or The 5th Circuit of piracy to have them shut down? I'm assuming that systems like that become automated and that any accusation will result in being disconnected. //

Waco Ars Tribunus Militum
7y
1,674
Subscriptor

hillspuck said:
I'm struggling to find another solution than "lol copyright owners just have to suck it up and let people pirate all they want." That solution never flies with the people who own the politicians.
If they want to prove piracy, let them prove piracy. It still doesn't mean you get to cut off a utility necessary for modern life.

If they can't (or won't spend the money to do so) then piracy clearly isn't as big of a deal as they make it. //

mangoslice Smack-Fu Master, in training
9y
64
Subscriptor++
You are assuming there’s never even an accusation of piracy for an IP address that is tied to you. One of the issues here is that if a corporation says and claims you are committing piracy against them then ISPs would be compelled disconnect you.

No due process. //

Socks Mingus Ars Scholae Palatinae
5y
631
"The evidence at trial demonstrated that Grande had a simple measure available to it to prevent further damages to copyrighted works (i.e., terminating repeat infringing subscribers), but that Grande never took it," the 5th Circuit ruling said.

Does this mean we get to cut off access to the legal system any time a company and their affiliated law firms file a false DMCA claim? //

cyberfunk Ars Scholae Palatinae
12y
938
I think the decision headline here is really

"5th Circuit rules ISP should have to be bound by Jury Verdict​"

It's misleading to say that the 5th circuit here actually found in favor of Rightscorp per se.. they found that there was no credible reason to invalidate the jury verdict. In my eyes those are very different matters.

Yea, it's not the outcome I want either, but we do ourselves a disservice painting this as a bunch of "bad conservative judges doing the thing we don't like". I just don't see this decision as particularly partisan nor wildly unreasonable, legally speaking. It is, in fact, BETTER to have a jury rather than a bunch of judges deciding on such matters as it's a more direct representation of the popular power rather than the judiciary.

Yes, yes, the juries arn't always experts on matters of law, but the system is setup to work with a judge there advising them on such matters.. but the power rests with the common man here, not some set of judges.

I should say that this means we need to change the laws around copyright / DMCA notice abuse and procedure here rather than yell into the wind that some judges didn't do what we wanted (regardless of political orientation). Yelling at the judges for enforcing the laws on the books is silly and counterproductive.