A fact from Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 16 March 2011 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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I've added this page as an assignment for Brian Carver's WikiProject: Cyberlaw at UC Berkeley's School of Information. Appreciate feedback for how it can be improved. -- Carothuf ( talk) 03:08, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a problem here and I think it mostly concerns User:Mjb. There has been a conflation of two things. On one hand there was press misreporting that the injunction was still ongoing. On the other hand there is this concern over the 72 trillion dollar figure. People posting links to /r/todayilearned have been getting flagged and I think it is due to the wording in this article. This isn't just a reddit problem. The LimeWire article is out of sync with this one and mentions the 72 trillion dollar figure too.
I believe this article has problems with all three of the core content policies WP:NPOV, V and OR. Citing a source and then explaining why that is wrong isn't what is supposed to be done here. "Wikipedia's content is determined by previously published information rather than by the personal beliefs or experiences of its editors." If you want to say that a source is incorrect you need another source to say that. Saying that a source "inexplicably" said one thing, that something was "touted", or labeling it under "press misreporting" goes against this.
This article also hints at but doesn't explain the difference between the two numbers. The 75 trillion dollar number wasn't just taken from the defendant's pleadings. The 72 trillion dollar number is the "per-direct-infringement" number and it is calculated by multiplying $150,000 times the number of times the songs were downloaded. The 1.5 billion number is the "per-infringed-work" number and is calculated by multiplying $150,000 by the number unique of songs that were downloaded. The latter number was used when the Judge said that the former number was absurd. Some distinction needs to be made to show the amounts are being talked about in the form of (cost per infringement)*(number of infringements). Both numbers are highly variable and so you get a big variance in the actual number quoted. At least that's my take thus far. Gamerman2360 ( talk) 00:37, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
"If Plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory based on the number of direct infringers per work, Defendants’ damages could reach into the trillions."
She seemed to think it was a gigantic number. It confuses me so."more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877"
Sorry for the delay. I was busy, and also wanted some time away from the article so I could look at it with fresh eyes. I went ahead and made some edits today to tone it down a bit, removing inexplicably and touted.
Re: "Press reporting" as a section title: I'll go along with it, but it seems redundant. I intended "press" as short for "press coverage," as in "what kind of press did this case get?" *shrug*
Re: ref 29 (the Computerworld article), we do say it's from 2011, and that we cited/accessed it in 2012. Including the access date is customary when citing an online source, because the sources can change or go offline without notice.
Re: "The way you put it, it seems like if they plaintiffs don't ask for a specific amount then nothing can be said about how large or small the number is. Is this true?"... Sort of. We just have to be very careful to attribute whatever numbers we quote to whoever said them. The RIAA insists they didn't say a specific number, and that seems to be technically true. So even though many press outlets said "the RIAA asked for $X", the RIAA's denial means we can't just say "the RIAA asked for $X" but rather we have to say there's a conflict between what different sources say the RIAA asked for, and this in turn requires us to vet the sources more than normal. As it turns out, nearly all of the reports were just echoing each other and appear to ultimately derive from the 2011 Law.com article. It also appears that while the RIAA really didn't ask for a specific amount in writing, in docket document no. 540 (ref #25) they do essentially (but still not quite in so many words) say how they expect the court to make the calculation. The defendants went ahead and did the calculation, mentioning the specific numbers in another document in the docket, a document still locked behind PACER's paywall. Victor Li says the latter document was the source of the numbers in the Law.com article. Once we have the doc, I'll gladly cite it, but I'm not sure it would really change anything.
Re: what numbers you (or Reddit) should use, well, it depends on what you want to say, and how comfortable you are with doing the calculations yourself. When filing the lawsuit in 2006, the RIAA sought the statutory maximum of $30K or $150K per work in damages from LimeWire and its owners for roughly 11,000 different songs downloaded by LimeWire users. Doing the calculation yourself, you could say that the RIAA implicitly sought roughly $330 million–$1.65 billion, although the actual outcome could be as low as the minimum ($750 per work), so the possible range, if they prevailed, would be $8.25 million–$1.65 billion. Then, in mid-2010, after LimeWire was found liable for infringement by its users, the RIAA demanded that damages be calculated per infringement by each user, and they estimated there were 500 million downloads of the works. Doing the calculation ourselves, that's $375 billion–$75 trillion. Victor Li suggests that LimeWire actually estimated the RIAA wanted at least $400 billion instead of $375 billion. Maybe this was an error in LimeWire's math. Regardless, the RIAA was forced to stop seeking per-infringement damages in March 2011, when the court ruled the possible result of "trillions" "absurd" and required that damages be calculated per work, resulting in a range of $7.5 million–$1.5 billion because the number of songs at issue for statutory damages dropped to about 10,000 by this point of the trial. The parties then settled out of court in May 2011, with one of LimeWire's owners paying out $105 million (there was probably more to the settlement than that, though). Not sure this helps :) — mjb ( talk) 13:58, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at University of California, Berkeley supported by WikiProject United States Public Policy and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Spring term. Further details are available on the course page.
The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}}
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PrimeBOT (
talk) on 16:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
A fact from Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 16 March 2011 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
|
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I've added this page as an assignment for Brian Carver's WikiProject: Cyberlaw at UC Berkeley's School of Information. Appreciate feedback for how it can be improved. -- Carothuf ( talk) 03:08, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a problem here and I think it mostly concerns User:Mjb. There has been a conflation of two things. On one hand there was press misreporting that the injunction was still ongoing. On the other hand there is this concern over the 72 trillion dollar figure. People posting links to /r/todayilearned have been getting flagged and I think it is due to the wording in this article. This isn't just a reddit problem. The LimeWire article is out of sync with this one and mentions the 72 trillion dollar figure too.
I believe this article has problems with all three of the core content policies WP:NPOV, V and OR. Citing a source and then explaining why that is wrong isn't what is supposed to be done here. "Wikipedia's content is determined by previously published information rather than by the personal beliefs or experiences of its editors." If you want to say that a source is incorrect you need another source to say that. Saying that a source "inexplicably" said one thing, that something was "touted", or labeling it under "press misreporting" goes against this.
This article also hints at but doesn't explain the difference between the two numbers. The 75 trillion dollar number wasn't just taken from the defendant's pleadings. The 72 trillion dollar number is the "per-direct-infringement" number and it is calculated by multiplying $150,000 times the number of times the songs were downloaded. The 1.5 billion number is the "per-infringed-work" number and is calculated by multiplying $150,000 by the number unique of songs that were downloaded. The latter number was used when the Judge said that the former number was absurd. Some distinction needs to be made to show the amounts are being talked about in the form of (cost per infringement)*(number of infringements). Both numbers are highly variable and so you get a big variance in the actual number quoted. At least that's my take thus far. Gamerman2360 ( talk) 00:37, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
"If Plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory based on the number of direct infringers per work, Defendants’ damages could reach into the trillions."
She seemed to think it was a gigantic number. It confuses me so."more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877"
Sorry for the delay. I was busy, and also wanted some time away from the article so I could look at it with fresh eyes. I went ahead and made some edits today to tone it down a bit, removing inexplicably and touted.
Re: "Press reporting" as a section title: I'll go along with it, but it seems redundant. I intended "press" as short for "press coverage," as in "what kind of press did this case get?" *shrug*
Re: ref 29 (the Computerworld article), we do say it's from 2011, and that we cited/accessed it in 2012. Including the access date is customary when citing an online source, because the sources can change or go offline without notice.
Re: "The way you put it, it seems like if they plaintiffs don't ask for a specific amount then nothing can be said about how large or small the number is. Is this true?"... Sort of. We just have to be very careful to attribute whatever numbers we quote to whoever said them. The RIAA insists they didn't say a specific number, and that seems to be technically true. So even though many press outlets said "the RIAA asked for $X", the RIAA's denial means we can't just say "the RIAA asked for $X" but rather we have to say there's a conflict between what different sources say the RIAA asked for, and this in turn requires us to vet the sources more than normal. As it turns out, nearly all of the reports were just echoing each other and appear to ultimately derive from the 2011 Law.com article. It also appears that while the RIAA really didn't ask for a specific amount in writing, in docket document no. 540 (ref #25) they do essentially (but still not quite in so many words) say how they expect the court to make the calculation. The defendants went ahead and did the calculation, mentioning the specific numbers in another document in the docket, a document still locked behind PACER's paywall. Victor Li says the latter document was the source of the numbers in the Law.com article. Once we have the doc, I'll gladly cite it, but I'm not sure it would really change anything.
Re: what numbers you (or Reddit) should use, well, it depends on what you want to say, and how comfortable you are with doing the calculations yourself. When filing the lawsuit in 2006, the RIAA sought the statutory maximum of $30K or $150K per work in damages from LimeWire and its owners for roughly 11,000 different songs downloaded by LimeWire users. Doing the calculation yourself, you could say that the RIAA implicitly sought roughly $330 million–$1.65 billion, although the actual outcome could be as low as the minimum ($750 per work), so the possible range, if they prevailed, would be $8.25 million–$1.65 billion. Then, in mid-2010, after LimeWire was found liable for infringement by its users, the RIAA demanded that damages be calculated per infringement by each user, and they estimated there were 500 million downloads of the works. Doing the calculation ourselves, that's $375 billion–$75 trillion. Victor Li suggests that LimeWire actually estimated the RIAA wanted at least $400 billion instead of $375 billion. Maybe this was an error in LimeWire's math. Regardless, the RIAA was forced to stop seeking per-infringement damages in March 2011, when the court ruled the possible result of "trillions" "absurd" and required that damages be calculated per work, resulting in a range of $7.5 million–$1.5 billion because the number of songs at issue for statutory damages dropped to about 10,000 by this point of the trial. The parties then settled out of court in May 2011, with one of LimeWire's owners paying out $105 million (there was probably more to the settlement than that, though). Not sure this helps :) — mjb ( talk) 13:58, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at University of California, Berkeley supported by WikiProject United States Public Policy and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Spring term. Further details are available on the course page.
The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}}
by
PrimeBOT (
talk) on 16:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)