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Of course, the statutory damages are far too high to provide anything like justice; the amount should be based on actual damages.
Agreed
Thomas did not ruin the life of any of the involved corporation(s), nor did she ruin the life of any of their employees. It is simply not just to ruin her life in retaliation. That this goes on and is so widely considered legitimate is an example of our remaining barbarism.
I think most people, both in and out of the United States, see a result like this as absurd.
Nearly 10k per song is just dumb. If a CD is 12 tracks and costs ~15 bucks, its a bit over $1 per song. So this is a 1000000% penalty. one million percent. Just insane, no way that isnt unconstitutional. The fines should be like 200, maybe 300% penalty, maybe even 1000% (10x). That's reasonable. The punishment must fit the crime and all that.
That's the issue all right. And I think the Court's decision is absurd.
What principle, exactly, is he fighting for? The right to flaunt existing copyright law and then lie about it? Or the right to destroy evidence?
No, constitutional due process... the principle that statutory damage awards are supposed to bear some reasonable relation to the actual damages sustained.
What is the State Farm/Gore test, and how is it conducted?
After the jury's verdict, if the judge finds the verdict for punitive or statutory damages to be out of all reasonable proportion to the actual economic harm sustained, it is supposed to reduce the verdict to a number that bears a reasonable proportion to the harm sustained. The Supreme Court noted that it will rarely be a number higher than 10x the actual damages. In finding the magic number, the court weighs various factors, such as the outrageousness of the defendant's conduct, etc. Regular copyright law also requires that copyright statutory damages bear some reasonable relationship to actual damages. In non-RIAA cases the courts usually sustained multiples of 2 to 4 times the actual damages.