RIAA's Copyright Infringement Lawsuits Against College Students

The Copyright Act of 1976 specifies several different kinds of remedies for copyright infringement. The court may order them in any combination, so plaintiffs typically ask for all of the remedies. They are:

- Injunctions ordering a person to cease copying (or facilitating copying): § 502
- Impounding and disposition of infringing articles: § 503
- Damages and profits: § 504
- Costs and attorney's fees: § 505

Section 506 creates the crime of infringement, but these are only civil cases, so that section doesn't apply.

The default type of damages in a civil copyright case is "actual damages and profits." To compute this number, first take the economic damage that the plaintiff suffered because people copied the work. This number will probably come out of a "battle of experts" between economists who serve as witnesses at the trial. In figuring that out, don't look at whether the defendant made any profits and how much. Got that idea? Good. Now ADD any profits the defendant made to that number. Now you've got "actual damages and profits." There are more nuances, but that's good enough for now.

Statutory damages work quite differently. If the plaintiff elects statutory damages, the court refers to the upper and lower boundaries in the statute and picks a "just" number in between. The big question, of course, is what number is "just." It'll probably be tied to actual damages, but it could have a punitive component. If there are appellate cases on the issue of what counts as "just" for these determinations, I haven't read them yet.

Ordinarily, the lower boundary for statutory damages is $750 per work copied and the upper boundary is $30,000 per work copied. If the defendant proves that he or she wasn't aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts infringed copyright, then the lower boundary drops to $200 (but the court can still award up to $30,000). The statute directs a court to "remit" statutory damages when the infringer reasonably believed he or she was making a fair use of the work, but since "remit" can mean "limit" or "refuse" when one is talking about damages, it's not clear what exactly is supposed to happen. In this case, the plaintiffs will argue that the defendants knew what they were doing and knew that it was unlawful. If they can prove that by a preponderance of the evidence, the upper bar on the statutory damages award will climb to $150,000 per work copied.

So, in summary, the statutory damages limits are:
-> Ordinarily: $750 to $30,000 per work copied.
-> If Defendant shows that Defendant reasonably believed she or he wasn't infringing: $200 to $30,000 per work copied
-> If Defendant shows that Defendant reasonably believed she or he was engaged in a fair use: Court can (probably) ignore the lower boundaries?
-> If Plaintiff shows that Defendant knew what he or she was doing and that it was unlawful: $750 to $150,000 per work copied.

Since $150,000 per work copied is the absolute upper limit of statutory damages if the record labels are completely successful in proving their case, that's what they requested. There's practically no chance they'll get that kind of award, but it's not uncommon for people to ask anyway.

Notice that if the RIAA members prove infringement and a defendant can't trigger one of the mitigating factors above, the court can award no less than $750 per work copied. That'll still come to a rather hefty sum in these cases, and the court could tack on the plaintiffs' attorney's fees and court costs as well. Ouch.