NPR reports that the RIAA's judgment against Boston University graduate student Joel Tenebaum in the amount of $674,000 has been upheld by a Federal District Court. The case that was first mentioned in this post back in 2010 claims Tenebaum had illegally downloaded 31 songs and then made them available to others through the peer to peer file sharing site, KaZaA. The District Court action follows remand from the 1st Circuit for the purpose of considering a remittur. The District Court upheld the original judgment. (The oral arguments from the 1st Circuit are available on YouTube.)
Tenebaum has since gone on to finish his PhD, but still needs to figure out how to deal with this crushing judgment. This is a cautionary tale for our students. One that they, sadly, often ignore. Perhaps playing the audio of the NPR report in class will help.
I know that I have posted this video before, but when these issues come up I can't resist the urge to post this social commentary from Weird Al Yankovic.
No comments:
Post a Comment