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A piece of my artwork ended up as a design on a tshirt. I found the tshirt with my design when I was surfing the net. I was able to sue the stores to remove the infringing item (after sending Cease and Desist letters), but till this day, my design is still for sale, with no compensation to me, on various foreign websites that I am unable to bring to court. Many of those websites are registered to unknown entities in China using anonymous registrations on their domains. Issuing Cease and Desist letters to the ISP's hosting the sites, resulted in nothing happening to them.
Of course since China is a member of the WIPO you have filed a written complaint with them, yes?
THAT makes more sense then you sending cease and desist letters to ISP's over in China...
BTW, you DID hire a lawyer that is familiar with the Chinese legal system rather then some shyster, right?
Let me rephrase my earlier post:
After verifying your copyright and verifying the person or business in China is in fact using your material illegally I can give you an intelligent response...
When you have gathered the information I requested DM me and we can discuss atty's fees...
the original amount was ridiculous. At most he should have been fined $30,000.
I would have fined the person, for how much each song costs on iTunes and have that person pay that amount and plus 5% per song
Depending on how many songs he had downloaded illegally, at $.99 a pop, and if he had thousands of them (say about 4000) a reasonable fine of $4200 would have been enough for the man in the OP.
BTW, the court could at its discretion, up the fine to $150,000 if they wanted to:
I usually buy songs if possible.
But then again, just recently I was looking for a rare song to buy and nobody offered it legally on those official portals. So I wrote to one of those portals that if they don't offer it by a certain date, I will download and convert it from you Youtube where it is available in perfect quality. And that's what happened as they didn't comply...
Such excessive sentences are only meant to deter others, they are not about a fair sentence appropriate for the crime committed. And they will be as effective as the death penalty, after all there are no more murders being committed anymore
At the most, this is a case of copyright infringement. Even that is in question since copyright law was designed to prevent someone from profiting off of another's creative endeavors. There is no reason to believe that Tenenbaum profited from his sharing of these songs, and no way of knowing how many (if any) of the songs were actually downloaded by others. He is, essentially, accused of making the songs available to others at no cost.
The RIAA was in complete control from the beginning. Judge Nancy Gertner handicapped Tenenbaum's defense by prohibiting Tenenbaum from even presenting a "fair use" exemption argument to the jury.
Even if one would seek to define Tenenbaum's actions as "theft", it would be necessary to look at the proportional penalty. Tenenbaum was accused of sharing thirty songs. Each of these songs is, assumably, available for purchase at about a dollar a piece. If he "stole" them, he engaged in a total of $30.00 worth of theft. This is petty larceny, and would seldom lead to any kind of serious punishment. Restitution should cost him $1.00 a song. Yet his penalty is $22,500 per song!
The RIAA provided no proof of actual monetary damages. This is nothing more than the RIAA, flexing its litigation muscles.
Of course since China is a member of the WIPO you have filed a written complaint with them, yes?
Yes my lawyer did so.. bupkiss. I wasn't damaged in the millions. they don't care unless you can show that you were significantly damaged monetarily.
I didn't earn money on my artwork. it wasn't for sale. The issue was using my image that i created, on goods (tshirts). I can't provide monetary damage amount because I dont know how many tshirts were sold with my design.
Get it?
Quote:
THAT makes more sense then you sending cease and desist letters to ISP's over in China...
Actually any lawyer worth his salt, would show the due diligence in requesting that the offending item is first removed and not sold ever again. It escalates when that request is ignored.
The courts like to see that these matters are done at a civil level before reaching in front of a judge for enforcement.
that's what happened with my case for three stores that refused to remove the items that had my image for sale. Since they didn't comply with the Cease and Desist, I took them to court. Resulted with the removal of the offending item, and any earnings made on the item was paid to me, along with a fine of $25,000 from each store.
Quote:
BTW, you DID hire a lawyer that is familiar with the Chinese legal system rather then some shyster, right?
Yes, we actually worked with a lawyer in China, and he couldn't get anywhere with the ISP's in question. and since my damages were less than $50,000 it was not worth to pursue (my legal fees would cost more than what I lost in earnings)
Quote:
After verifying your copyright and verifying the person or business in China is in fact using your material illegally I can give you an intelligent response...
I already have done so, and no matter what you claim or ask, it doesn't change the fact that China doesn't CARE about their offenders. What you can provide now, matters not one wit. I didn't suffer damages in the MILLIONS. Get it? A lowly person like me will never get the due justice against Chinese pirates and bootleggers because WE do not suffer the kind of monetary DAMAGE that will make the Chinese government act upon a complaint.
A complaint to the ITC does nothing (you have to show them that you lost millions)
A complaint to WIPO does nothing (you have to show them that you lost MILLIONS)
Unless you are big conglomorate that earns millions a year, and can show that you LOSt millions (like Gucci, Chanel, etc), they could care less.
I've fought this battle already. I'm not going to continue fighting a battle that is only going to COST me money in end.
If you have hundred of thousands of dollars to throw away to chase down anonymous bootleggers, be my guest. I've been done with the issue, and have moved on. I got paid for my initial complaint against the stores in America who carried my artwork for sale illegally.
The RIAA was in complete control from the beginning. Judge Nancy Gertner handicapped Tenenbaum's defense by prohibiting Tenenbaum from even presenting a "fair use" exemption argument to the jury.
And rightly so. What he did isn't even the definition of FAIR USE.
Fair Use is about using for YOUR personal use and not to share, and your only limited to portions of a copyrighted work,
Even if one would seek to define Tenenbaum's actions as "theft", it would be necessary to look at the proportional penalty. Tenenbaum was accused of sharing thirty songs. Each of these songs is, assumably, available for purchase at about a dollar a piece. If he "stole" them, he engaged in a total of $30.00 worth of theft. This is petty larceny, and would seldom lead to any kind of serious punishment. Restitution should cost him $1.00 a song. Yet his penalty is $22,500 per song!
You do know by the LAW itself, he could have been fined $30K per song, but no less than $750 per song?
Or the judge could just say "You owe $150,000"
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