High Court Nominee Adopts RIAA Stance: Via Threat Level.

When it comes to financial damages in copyright infringement cases, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor embraces the Recording Industry Association of America’s party line.

The RIAA, which has sued more than 30,000 individuals for file-sharing copyrighted music, routinely seeks hefty monetary awards well beyond the financial losses associated with the pilfered music in question. That is why one music download — costing about $1 retail — can run defendants $1000 or more to settle a music infringement suit.

President Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court appears to back the RIAA theory — a false one at that — that large money damages deter copyright infringement.

When Sotomayor was a judge in the Southern District of New York, she ruled in favor of Las Vegas boxing promoter Top Rank, the Exclusive Rights blog points out. In 1996, Top Rank sued a host of taverns for the unauthorized showing of boxing matches.

“A willful infringement, which the magistrate judge found, combined with a willful
default, however, warrant an award greater and more significant than one which corresponds so closely to an estimated loss to the plaintiff,” Sotomayor wrote (.pdf) in upping the damages recommended by a magistrate.

Sotomayor added in that 1998 decision that “statutory damages must be sufficient enough to deter future infringements and should not be calibrated to favor a defendant by merely awarding minimum estimated losses to a plaintiff.”

The RIAA says it embarked on the 5-year-old litigation campaign as a “public relations” maneuver. Yet copyright infringement eats billions of dollars in would-be profits from the makers of music, movies, games and software, according to those industries.

Obama’s nominee now sits on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If elevated, she would become the first incoming justice to have a cyberlaw background.

That said, the Copyright Act’s $150,000 maximum damage award could get tested under a high court with Sotomayor as one of its nine members.

The Obama administration already weighed in on a pending lower-court case broaching a challenge to the Copyright Act. The Obama administration adopted the same position as the Bush administration, and supported $150,000 in damages per music track in an RIAA lawsuit.

Senate confirmation hearings have not been scheduled.

See Also:

• Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.
• No Settlement in RIAA v. Jammie Thomas
• New Jammie Thomas Lawyers Vow to Put RIAA on Trial
• Obama’s Supreme Court Pick Schooled in Cyberlaw
• Court Narrows National Security Secrecy, Limits Oversight
• File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA …
• Hollywood Control of DVD-Copying at Crossroads

Read Original Article:(Via Threat Level.)