Howell verdict: RIAA wins $40,850 P2P judgment

[zatoicchi]

How much does sharing "Waiting For A Girl Like You," "Money For Nothing," and "Sweet Child O' Mine" on P2P networks cost defendants if they end up in court? Arizona resident Jeffrey Howell has just found out the hard way. While Jammie Thomas came in for more than $200,000 of statutory damages in her Minnesota trial last year, Howell escaped with a (mere) $40,850 fine. Perhaps he should be grateful, though we doubt that's the emotion he's feeling today.

Few of the RIAA's thousands of cases against individual file-swappers ever make it to trial; fewer still reach a judgment, making these awards quite unusual. Howell, who served as his own counsel throughout the trial, did himself no favors by intentionally destroying evidence of his computer activity after being ordered by a judge to preserve it. According to the RIAA, Howell uninstalled KaZaA and deleted everything in the shared folder, reformatted his hard drive, downloaded and used a file-wiping program, and then nuked all the KaZaA logs on his PC. Anyone who has seen even a single episode of Perry Mason knows that this is a huge no-no.

Howell verdict: RIAA wins $40,850 P2P judgment (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080901-howell-verdict-riaa-wins-40850-p2p-judgment.html)

[anon]

According to the RIAA, Howell uninstalled KaZaA and deleted everything in the shared folder, reformatted his hard drive, downloaded and used a file-wiping program, and then nuked all the KaZaA logs on his PC.

Like anyone can use Kazaa anymore: the RIAA themselves made sure not :rolleyes2:

[Aurion]

heh ! another victim is down now :confused2: damn them !! what the intention behind doing all of this & that,just suing individuals for obtaining free file materials thru the wide web network using any filesharing tool should be a right as long as others do it easily tho,this is not fair at all :rolling_eyes:

[anon]

Here it is again: they threaten a downloader with big numbers, then they settle for something smaller to make him think it could have been a lot worse. In the meantime, they get a big slice :icon_angry[1]:

[Aurion]

Well,let's suppose that this new dig up was one of their silly cheap trix just to convince the world that they are doing their hard desired work just to prevent illegla file sharing movement around the world or else it's really happening but I don't think it's about threatening people at all,since if case 1 is a right scenario then maybe they paid money to that guy just to fake the whole picture by seeking extra credits from courts/govers ! Anyway,I don't believe that actually happened in way or another....

[anon]

then maybe they paid money to that guy just to fake the whole picture by seeking extra credits from courts/govers !

You may be right about this, there's no way to know... For the RIAA, bribes are very viable options without any drawbacks :mad2: