[jersey]

Just simply sad. $222,000.00 for sharing 24 songs. Even worse, the artists will see none of this.

[Cold Warrior]

Although reading an article on Yahoo, it mentioned she was off (lied?) in her deposition, saying that she'd replaced her HDD in 2004, but in fact did it shortly after receiving a copyright infringement notice in 2005.

It's too bad she lost. I was hoping the case would be more about the gestapo techniques and nastiness of the RIAA.

[Timo]

[Chuckit]

She used her normal name? Oy gevalt.

[wallinbl]

What's sad? Being found liable for infringement of copyright or the fact that people somehow think it's really okay because it's not technically stealing.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by wallinbl 

What's sad? Being found liable for infringement of copyright or the fact that people somehow think it's really okay because it's not technically stealing.

If you walked out of my house with one of my pencils, do you think you would owe me $200,000? Same deal. I can tell you how much a song download is worth, and it's no higher than $1.29. That means the penalty was about $221,971.62 too high. How would you like to lose that kind of money for no good reason?

What's even more sad, though, is that people (or at least one person, apparently) think the RIAA should be rewarded for its blatantly unethical and arguably illegal tactics and normal people should be ridiculously overpenalized for "offenses" that harm no one.

[Timo]

I work in intellectual property and copyright stuff.

That being said, the penalty is disproportionate to the crime, and that's sad.

[OldManMac]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

If you walked out of my house with one of my pencils, do you think you would owe me $200,000? Same deal. I can tell you how much a song download is worth, and it's no higher than $1.29. That means the penalty was about $221,971.62 too high. How would you like to lose that kind of money for no good reason?

What's even more sad, though, is that people (or at least one person, apparently) think the RIAA should be rewarded for its blatantly unethical and arguably illegal tactics and normal people should be ridiculously overpenalized for "offenses" that harm no one.

I wouldn't be in your house unless I was invited, which would make me a burglar if I wasn't. The reason she owes the money is because, as the law is currently written, damages and other incidental amounts may be collected, which is the case here.

What's even more sad, though, is that some people think that they can take others' work and appropriate it for their own use without any compensation, which, as this jury has decided, is in fact illegal. Just because you don't like the results, and I don't either, doesn't give you the right to break the law to suit your purposes. That's something I simply can't understand. Work to get the law changed, write your representatives, etc., but don't try to justify stealing because you don't like the laws. Two wrongs have never made a right, although lots of people seem to be very creative and delusional in the ways they think the laws shouldn't apply to them.

[wallinbl]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

harm no one.

Get off that ridiculous argument. It harms all of society to have a large portion of the population disregard intellectual property and actively engage in infringement.

You can complain about the size of the penalty, but no one seems to complain about the number of people downloading endlessly.

[Weyland-Yutani]

The Weyland-Yutani corporation is pleased with the outcome of this case. People have been infringing on the property of corporations far too long.

We own you. We own the things you create. You. Shall. Pay.

One way or another.

[Cold Warrior]

Chilling threat-quote from the lead RIAA attorney, Richard Gabriel, who said:

This is what can happen if you don't settle

[wallinbl]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

If you walked out of my house with one of my pencils, do you think you would owe me $200,000? Same deal. I can tell you how much a song download is worth, and it's no higher than $1.29.

Uhh, that's ridiculous. If the penalty is only that you have to pay for what you should have paid, there is no deterrent. If you steal a $1000 TV from Circuit City, should you be fined $1000 when caught? If that were the actual punishment, theft would be rampant because it would be very profitable.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by wallinbl 

Uhh, that's ridiculous. If the penalty is only that you have to pay for what you should have paid, there is no deterrent. If you steal a $1000 TV from Circuit City, should you be fined $1000 when caught? If that were the actual punishment, theft would be rampant because it would be very profitable.

Precisely. Punishment is to pay until it hurts and then pay some more.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by wallinbl 

Uhh, that's ridiculous. If the penalty is only that you have to pay for what you should have paid, there is no deterrent. If you steal a $1000 TV from Circuit City, should you be fined $1000 when caught? If that were the actual punishment, theft would be rampant because it would be very profitable.

Obviously not, no. But if we accept that the price of a song is the $1.29 you can download it for at the iTMS, the converse question can be asked, too:

If you steal a $1,000 TV from Circuit City, would it be fair to fine you 7.2 million dollars for it? Hardly.

[turtle777]

Uhm, when will the general public understand that the RIAA sues people for SHARING music, not downloading music.

Shared music obviously causes more financial loss, since hundreds or even thousands of people could have downloaded the music, instead of paying.

Not that I agree with the RIAA, but sharing carries a higher pricetag than just downloading (i.e. "stealing").

-t

[SirCastor]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

Obviously not, no. But if we accept that the price of a song is the $1.29 you can download it for at the iTMS, the converse question can be asked, too:

If you steal a $1,000 TV from Circuit City, would it be fair to fine you 7.2 million dollars for it? Hardly.

But it's not about monetary compensation for the good. If the RIAA only wanted that, they would have asked for the ~$17.00 for the portion that they profit off an iTMS sale.

The defendant is being accused of copyright infringement, which is punishable by fine (according to the article) of up to $150,000 per incident. She's not being ask to pay for the song, she's being asked to pay for the crime. Laws and their consequences are set as a method of deterring law-breaking. It's a very effective method IMO.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

But it's not about monetary compensation for the good. If the RIAA only wanted that, they would have asked for the ~$17.00 for the portion that they profit off an iTMS sale.

The defendant is being accused of copyright infringement, which is punishable by fine (according to the article) of up to $150,000 per incident. She's not being ask to pay for the song, she's being asked to pay for the crime. Laws and their consequences are set as a method of deterring law-breaking. It's a very effective method IMO.

My point was not about the price of the good, but rather that the limit of the law is unreasonable. Making copyright infringement (downloading a song illegally) punishable by fine of up to $150,000 is kind of equal to breaking and entering carrying the death penalty.

Sure, the punishment should of course be more than merely the price of the good, but a fine of, say, $2,000 per incident would be more realistic, the good considered. Obviously, the limit of $150,000 isn't doing anything to stop people actually commiting the crime, so what's the point of it, if not simply to line record companies' pockets? A limit of, say, $2,000 would be more than just a slap on the wrist for most people (especially since you're not likely to be charged with just one incident in cases like these), but it wouldn't be enough to completely ruin someone's entire life over illegal song downloads.

I realise maximum penalty is rarely employed in these cases, but imagine if it had been: Ms. Thomas would have been looking at a 3.5 million dollar fine. That's not something she'd be likely to ever recover from. Should that really be the goal of copyright infringement legislation?

[FireWire]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Uhm, when will the general public understand that the RIAA sues people for SHARING music, not downloading music.

Shared music obviously causes more financial loss, since hundreds or even thousands of people could have downloaded the music, instead of paying.

Uhm, when will the RIAA understand that shared music DOESN'T cause financial loss*, because the vast majority of people wouldn't have bought the song anyway.

If person A doesn't buy song XYZ, the company gets 0$. Now if person A pirates the song XYZ, the company still gets 0$. 0-0=0$ = no loss.

And to set the record straight, downloading isn't stealing.

Theft
1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

If you steal a bag of chips from the store, the owner is deprived of it and must pay to replace it. If you pirate a song, nothing is removed, there are no direct loss. All you can argue is that there is a potential, hypothetic loss of future revenue (and you can't prove that the person would have bought it in the first place, so you can't prove any loss at all).

And finally, these fines are outrageous... you shouldn't be fined on the amount of object you "stole".. When they catch a burglar, I don't think they count how many items were removed from the house "OK let's see.. a VCR, a TV, and ah ha! a set of 156-pieces silverware!! That's it, you're fined 3 billion dollars and you're spending the rest of your life in prison" What about someone who steals a game of chess, do they fine him 32 times, for the number of pieces?

* OK, maybe a negligible loss, because some people would have bough the record otherwise, but it's only a minority.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by OldManMac 

I wouldn't be in your house unless I was invited, which would make me a burglar if I wasn't.

What is sad here is that we have allowed the language of theft and burglary to be associated with copyright disputes - they are simply not the same, in any way. Copyright disputes are not theft. Not at all.

[SirCastor]

Originally Posted by FireWire 

Uhm, when will the RIAA understand that shared music DOESN'T cause financial loss*, because the vast majority of people wouldn't have bought the song anyway.

If person A doesn't buy song XYZ, the company gets 0$. Now if person A pirates the song XYZ, the company still gets 0$. 0-0=0$ = no loss.

And to set the record straight, downloading isn't stealing. If you steal a bag of chips from the store, the owner is deprived of it and must pay to replace it. If you pirate a song, nothing is removed, there are no direct loss. All you can argue is that there is a potential, hypothetic loss of future revenue (and you can't prove that the person would have bought it in the first place, so you can't prove any loss at all).

And finally, these fines are outrageous... you shouldn't be fined on the amount of object you "stole".. When they catch a burglar, I don't think they count how many items were removed from the house "OK let's see.. a VCR, a TV, and ah ha! a set of 156-pieces silverware!! That's it, you're fined 3 billion dollars and you're spending the rest of your life in prison" What about someone who steals a game of chess, do they fine him 32 times, for the number of pieces?

* OK, maybe a negligible loss, because some people would have bough the record otherwise, but it's only a minority.

There are a lot of people who steal cars because they can't afford it. Those same people, if they had the money, probably wouldn't end up buying the car anyway.

Getting something without compensating the owner is theft. If the owner wishes to compensate himself in a way that is not direct (IE: advertisments, or promotions of some sort) so be it. But you don't have the right to dictate those terms.

[FireWire]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

There are a lot of people who steal cars because they can't afford it. Those same people, if they had the money, probably wouldn't end up buying the car anyway.

Getting something without compensating the owner is theft. If the owner wishes to compensate himself in a way that is not direct (IE: advertisments, or promotions of some sort) so be it. But you don't have the right to dictate those terms.

I'm not dictating anything, I'm just quoting the definition of theft. To steal, you have to take something, in a way that the owner can't use it anymore. I'm not inventing it, it's in the dictionary. If you steal a car, well, that's a theft, because you physically take the car, and the owner has to buy a new one to make up for the one you removed. To make an illicit copy of a virtual thing is not theft. It has another name, but it's definitively not theft.

[SirCastor]

Originally Posted by FireWire 

I'm not dictating anything, I'm just quoting the definition of theft. To steal, you have to take something, in a way that the owner can't use it anymore. I'm not inventing it, it's in the dictionary. If you steal a car, well, that's a theft, because you physically take the car, and the owner has to buy a new one to make up for the one you removed. To make an illicit copy of a virtual thing is not theft. It has another name, but it's definitively not theft.

That's just semantics. Whether we call it "theft" or "blargeltharg" we're essentially talking about the same thing. The focus however is not in denying the physical possession of an object, but rather the associated value of ownership. The fact that most people who download a song wouldn't buy it otherwise is irrelevant. By providing, and extending the option of downloading something for nothing, the inherent value of the song becomes less. If a person *can* get it for free, than a person will likely get it for free. This was the situation happening before legal, purchasable downloads were available.

The definition you provided states "The unlawful taking of property". It doesn't say that the property must be non-replicatable, or must exist in a linear fashion. A definition (in terms of law) of Property is:

Property: The right to possession, use, or disposal of something.

And by that definition, we can read "the unlawful taking of the right to possession, use or disposal of a thing". Whether that thing is virtual or real doesn't matter.

The value of owning a car is that you have transportation. The value of owning the distribution rights to a song is that you have potential to make money off of it.

If someone steals your car, you lose some of your transportation.
If someone distributes your music (or participates in so by downloading it), you lose some of your potential to make money off of it.

It's tough to argue in favor of this while looking at the RIAA. They've got money, power, etc. and it looks like realistically, they're not losing much. Additionally, I don't know a single person that actually likes the record industry. But in other terms, say a small piece of pirated software from a single developer, there is some practical loss. Yes I agree that all downloaded music cannot be counted as a lost sale, but that's not really the point.

[macintologist]

ok I have a serious question here. Could this woman just simply leave the country and never come back? Take her kids with her, get a job and new life in a new country and never ever come back.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

Getting something without compensating the owner is theft.

That's the kind of thinking employed by people who just up and wipe your car's windshield and then demand that you pay for it. Theft is depriving somebody of property without a legal right. People "get something" from me all the time without compensating me for it. Heck, right now you're receiving an education in the meaning of the word "theft" and you're probably not going to pay me for it. Should I sue for hundreds of thousands of dollars? If somebody overhears me teaching a class, do I have a right to charge them with theft of my words? No, you can't steal something intangible like that.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by wallinbl 

Uhh, that's ridiculous. If the penalty is only that you have to pay for what you should have paid, there is no deterrent. If you steal a $1000 TV from Circuit City, should you be fined $1000 when caught? If that were the actual punishment, theft would be rampant because it would be very profitable.

That is not entirely correct: first of all, you would have to pay restitution -- which would be $1000. The fine in addition to that is calculated according to the damage, so there must be a correlation between restitution and fine.

The woman has been sentenced to pay $222k, at $1 a piece, that's 222k downloads. Even if the fine is 10 times the damage, I still don't think she allowed more than 20k downloads of the 24 songs she had shared. Nor do I believe such a massive upload count was feasible.

Honestly, the woman is the equivalent of a `shoplifter': if the court insisted on maintaining proportionality between fine and damage, I doubt the fine would exceed $1k by a lot (for, say, ~100 downloads). The outrageous part of the story is that I find it hard to believe the RIAA has been successful in quantifying the damage (how many downloads, etc.?), at least not without breaking some laws in the meantime (apparently they have come up with 1702 downloads).

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

Getting something without compensating the owner is theft.

It's not theft, because the music has never been your property. You have purchased a licence to use it in certain ways (usually for non-commercial use).

Even if the artist gives away his/her music for free, it still might infringe his copyright if you distribute it by yourself (even though the `financial damage' is exactly zero).

[butterfly0fdoom]

Regardless, the big question here (for me, at least) is since the RIAA (at one point, dunno if they still do) has said they're doing this for the benefit of the artists, how much of this money will the artists get? I doubt any of the artists whose songs were shared will see a penny of that money. The RIAA is just an organization of greedy, ********d pigs that love screwing over their own customers by overcharging on CDs and demanding excessively restrictive DRM. There are so many artists that, if not for listening to people's iPods, I would never have even heard of (and bought albums of). That's what file-sharing does. It can (and, as the Napster era can show, has) increased the exposure of countless musicians. It's the ultimate form of word-of-mouth. Which means less money need to be spent on shitty TV and website advertisements.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by SirCastor 

It's tough to argue in favor of this while looking at the RIAA. They've got money, power, etc. and it looks like realistically, they're not losing much. Additionally, I don't know a single person that actually likes the record industry. But in other terms, say a small piece of pirated software from a single developer, there is some practical loss.

Not necessarily all that much. I particularly like Wil Shipley's take that it "doesn't hurt you to have something 'stolen' that (a) is virtual and (b) wasn't going to be purchased." And if the person likes your app, it could actually be a sales tool. Personally, I've bought hundreds of dollars' worth of music and TV shows that I would never have bothered with if it hadn't been available to download first. It would take a criminally insane mathematician to quantify that as a loss. The lack of financial commitment is one of the brilliant points of the iTunes Store and, coincidentally, one of the things the industry hates about it.

Anyway, I don't think anybody is arguing that people should download in lieu of buying, just that sharing music is barely a crime worth of hundreds of dollars in penalties, much less hundreds of thousands.

[OldManMac]

It's amazing how many ways people can attempt to justify thievery.

[IceEnclosure]

It's akin to shoplifting and giving the candy bars you stole to your friends. Not worth $200,000.

[mdc]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

ok I have a serious question here. Could this woman just simply leave the country and never come back? Take her kids with her, get a job and new life in a new country and never ever come back.

I was wondering something similar to that myself.
$222,000 is a lot of money. Say the RIAA garnish her wages by $1,000 a month, they'll get $12,000 a year, and she'll be paying them for 18.5 years?
Are they going to get the money from her someway like that?

And like macintologist asked, what would happen if she fled the country. Say she's a EU passport holder, got on a plane and flew to any EU country, and lived there.

[Kvasir]

Winning a lawsuit and collecting the judgement are two completely different things. For one thing, the court does not collect, the winning party has to collect. If the defendent has no assets to come up with the judgement, the plaintiff may well be plain SOL. Debtor protection laws also may make it very difficult, as you cannot simply sieze anything or everything they have. Even garnishing wages is limited (usually to some maximum percentage of post-tax income, typically 25% max., and Social Security and Pensions cannot be garnished), and low income earners are usually completely protected from garnishing. Even vehicles may not necessarily be seized, especially if the debtor is dependent on it for their livelihood, or if the equity value is too low.

I know nothing about this woman, so who knows what assets/money she has. But the RIAA may end up never collecting a penny from her, and there may be nothing they can do about it.

If she can legally leave the country and establish residency and earn a livelihood in another country, then she is free to do that. And any assets she moves out of the country, or new assets she acquires while there, are untouchable (until or unless she brings them back into the USA, where they could be seized in payment of outstanding debt).

That's at least how things seem to work, as far as I know. Look at the whole OJ civil suit action - has he actually paid any of the amount of that judgement?

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by OldManMac 

It's amazing how many ways people can attempt to justify thievery.

I think the majority of people here objects to the proportionality between punishment and damage. I don't think almost $10k per song are anywhere near justified.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by mdc 

And like macintologist asked, what would happen if she fled the country. Say she's a EU passport holder, got on a plane and flew to any EU country, and lived there.

That actually depends on the country: countries have bilateral agreements that regulate the respective jurisdiction of cases.

One of the more usual clauses is actually that a country (say the US) can ask the other country to extradite the person if the crime she is charged with in the US is also a crime in the other country. There are more regulations (e. g. German law dictates that it cannot extradite people who may face the death penalty). I don't think people can be extradited for civil suits; however, the court may decide to seize all assets within reach of the US.

[macintologist]

If this happened to me that's what I would do. Go to Cyprus, Malta, Morocco, someplace like that and start a new life.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by macintologist 

If this happened to me that's what I would do. Go to Cyprus, Malta, Morocco, someplace like that and start a new life.

Morocco? No need to move to the third world to escape the recording industry

V

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by FireWire 

Uhm, when will the RIAA understand that shared music DOESN'T cause financial loss*, because the vast majority of people wouldn't have bought the song anyway.

If person A doesn't buy song XYZ, the company gets 0$. Now if person A pirates the song XYZ, the company still gets 0$. 0-0=0$ = no loss.

And to set the record straight, downloading isn't stealing.

You really believe that bullsh!t ?

So, if you own a nice computer, car, TV etc, and I can't afford to buy it, you'd not consider it stealing if I break into your house and take it ?

Where do you live ? Can I get your address, please ?

-t

[peeb]

Originally Posted by OldManMac 

It's amazing how many ways people can attempt to justify thievery.

Again, it is not thievery. That does not make it ok, but it is absolutely not thievery.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

You really believe that bullsh!t ?

So, if you own a nice computer, car, TV etc, and I can't afford to buy it, you'd not consider it stealing if I break into your house and take it ?

Where do you live ? Can I get your address, please ?

-t

You could come to my house any time to make an exact duplicate of my computer, car, TV etc without depriving me of the original, come on over!

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by peeb 

You could come to my house any time to make an exact duplicate of my computer, car, TV etc without depriving me of the original, come on over!

And again, we're all confusing inappropriate metaphors. You're not selling TVs out of your house, so of course you're not harmed by it.

The music industry doesn't support file sharing for the same reason that publishers wouldn't want Barnes and Noble to set up free photocopiers in their stores.

Both positions are completely reasonable if you are of the mind that content that is offered for sale, that takes money to produce, should be protected from free duplication and dissemination. The RIAA's tactics are what is available to them under the law. The potential for lost income from even a single filesharer is certainly in the range of thousands of dollars.

[macintologist]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Morocco? No need to move to the third world to escape the recording industry

V

Morocco is a great place to live. You obviously have issues with racial and ethnic stereotypes.

[Kvasir]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Again, it is not thievery. That does not make it ok, but it is absolutely not thievery.

Sure it is. Criminal codes allow for the "theft" of purely pecuniary benefits and not merely of physical property (why larceny is often dealt with under the theft section of many criminal codes). By downloading the music, you are denying the copyright holder (and those lawfully entitled to distribute the copyrighted material) of pecuniary benefits (ie. money). So, by legal definition, it falls under the broad umbrella of "theft".

[Oisín]

The potential for lost income from even a single filesharer is certainly in the range of thousands of dollars.

Potential, yes. But the filesharer shoulnd’t be punished by potentially caused loss of income. Potentially, every single person on the planet could download the same song, and the lost income would be in the billions.

The only way to carry out punishment should be by actual lost income. That’s hard to prove conclusively without the RIAA breaking a few laws themselves; but that’s their problem. If three people download a song from me, it’s in no way fair or in the spirit of the law that the RIAA sue me for potential loss of 500,000 sales of that song. The court can set a claim for the songs themselves ($1, probably), and a penalty claim for each offence (each download), but that penalty claim should be proportional to the lost income and gravity of the offence, and for sharing copyrighted songs, setting that penalty claim at around 130 times the claim for the material itself (which it works out to in this case) is just way too high.

[butterfly0fdoom]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

The music industry doesn't support file sharing for the same reason that publishers wouldn't want Barnes and Noble to set up free photocopiers in their stores.

Both positions are completely reasonable if you are of the mind that content that is offered for sale, that takes money to produce, should be protected from free duplication and dissemination. The RIAA's tactics are what is available to them under the law. The potential for lost income from even a single filesharer is certainly in the range of thousands of dollars.

Yet the music industry price gouges. Who the hell would want to buy a CD for over $15? If the RIAA didn't overcharge the way they do, more people might be more willing to actually buy CDs. When even musicians stuck in the RIAA disagree with their pricing tactics (Trent Reznor went as far as to advocate filesharing his last album), it's clear what one contributing factor to file sharing is: the RIAA themselves. They deny themselves the possible income because they charge so much that no one wants to buy their CDs.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by butterfly0fdoom 

Yet the music industry price gouges. Who the hell would want to buy a CD for over $15? If the RIAA didn't overcharge the way they do, more people might be more willing to actually buy CDs. When even musicians stuck in the RIAA disagree with their pricing tactics (Trent Reznor went as far as to advocate filesharing his last album), it's clear what one contributing factor to file sharing is: the RIAA themselves. They deny themselves the possible income because they charge so much that no one wants to buy their CDs.

Not sure where you are located, but the internet revolution's greatest contribution to the legal music industry is that most CDs are now available for less than $15 from sites like Amazon. Even less than $10, in many cases. Bundle your orders to get free shipping and you can even feel like you're sticking it to the man. "The RIAA" doesn't decree that retailers sell the CDs for $18. Borders does that because that's their profit point. Do some intelligent comparison shopping and save!

BTW, I have in the past bought CDs for over $15 (usually double albums or other collections that just aren't available for less than that) because that's how much I value the content. If you don't value the content, then why is it worth it to you to break the law?

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

Potential, yes. But the filesharer shoulnd’t be punished by potentially caused loss of income. Potentially, every single person on the planet could download the same song, and the lost income would be in the billions.

The only way to carry out punishment should be by actual lost income. That’s hard to prove conclusively without the RIAA breaking a few laws themselves; but that’s their problem. If three people download a song from me, it’s in no way fair or in the spirit of the law that the RIAA sue me for potential loss of 500,000 sales of that song. The court can set a claim for the songs themselves ($1, probably), and a penalty claim for each offence (each download), but that penalty claim should be proportional to the lost income and gravity of the offence, and for sharing copyrighted songs, setting that penalty claim at around 130 times the claim for the material itself (which it works out to in this case) is just way too high.

If there is no legal way for them to prove the exact damages, then, in my view, it's completely appropriate for them to seek damages that are on the high end of what is reasonable. Given the amount of direct and indirect distribution that a single file sharer generates, the damages sought in this case are certainly high, but not completely absurd, IMO.

And again, there is a deterrence factor here that is difficult to quantify.

As always, I Am Not A Lawyer.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

And again, we're all confusing inappropriate metaphors. You're not selling TVs out of your house, so of course you're not harmed by it.

Exactly!

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey 

The music industry doesn't support file sharing for the same reason that publishers wouldn't want Barnes and Noble to set up free photocopiers in their stores.

Both positions are completely reasonable if you are of the mind that content that is offered for sale, that takes money to produce, should be protected from free duplication and dissemination. The RIAA's tactics are what is available to them under the law. The potential for lost income from even a single filesharer is certainly in the range of thousands of dollars.

Maybe, the point is that copyright infringement, while it is not ok, is not the same as theft.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Maybe, the point is that copyright infringement, while it is not ok, is not the same as theft.

I think the point is not so much whether they are legally the same (they aren't, and they aren't being prosecuted as such, so I see no contradiction), but whether they are ethically the same (IMO, in the case of taking intellectual property of a CD versus the physical CD itself, they are). That's what makes the defenders' claims of "but it's just intellectual property!" so mind-boggling to those of the opposite perspective.

[Uncle Skeleton]

And do you think the punishment is excessive? If she had stolen 2 CDs from Walmart and sold them on ebay, do you think she would deserve to be fined $222000?

[ort888]

Originally Posted by peeb 

You could come to my house any time to make an exact duplicate of my computer, car, TV etc without depriving me of the original, come on over!

A better example would be if he came to your house and made a copy of the book you had been working on for years, and then put it online.

Well, maybe it isn't that bad.

At any rate, yeah, stealing is wrong, but that punishment is beyond ridiculous.

Some rebel billionaire should bail her out.