Jury rules against Minn. woman in download case

[hikaricloud]

Right, but you know full well that the record companies are talking about having the "artist best interests" in mind.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Artists have already spoken out about it, but with mainstream media, if they actualy are against something that they should be against, it really wont get out.

 

[Apokalipse]

If you had millions of pirates attacking your front door every day would you be nice with your message? No, you wouldn't. Sure they make their millions anyway..and they shouldn't make that much to begin with. But stealing is stealing. Everyone wants to point at the "theoretical money" with the comment of "OH if they didn't pirate it they wouldn't buy it anyway". Well, tell wal-mart that whenever you decide to go steal a $10 shirt. "Oh if I didn't steal it I wouldn't buy it so you didn't lose any money" Well yea, they did..it cost them money to make it.

I do believe the music industry needs to make some changes. Charge less (who wants to pay $1 per song? That's crazy) and not be so greedy. But stealing is stealing. If she didn't want to pay $5,000 up front then she needs to be shown how outrageous they can be. If she wants to make stupid choices, they have the right to give her a stupid response.

I've said this in another thread and I'll say it here. the RIAA are nothing more than a middleman who try to profit from other people's work.
Not only that, but the amount of profit the artists get is only a tiny fraction of the profits the RIAA themselves take.

So not only is it a load of bollocks that they are screwing both the artists and consumers over with their copyrights, but now they've shown by example that they're willing to dish out an extremely disproportionate 'punishment' for not enabling them to do so.

Just as an example, murderers and rapists usually are forced to pay far lower amounts of settlement/compensation to victims or family of victims.

 

[patonb]

^ but you forget, the IRAA settled for 5000 a song, She went back to appeal it, and the jurors set the crazy amount!

Not that the iraa is good, but they did take a much smaller amount.

 

[hikaricloud]

I'm assuming the lawyer is the one who wanted to appeal. Seriously, a story with that much news coverage? He was trying to make his career. It isn't hard to talk to your client and tell them they can get it so she doesn't pay a cent to the RIAA. Even $5000 is a ridiculous sum of money for the songs that were on trial.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I thought a jury can't give out the punishment, and can only give a guilty/not guilty sentence and the judge him self decides the payment.... IMO, even $1000 a song is to much.

 

[HAVOC]

Absolutely hideous judgement and penalty.

Considering if you walk into a store and shoplift 24 songs. Let's say 2 CD's worth $25. Get caught chances are you get a petty theft misdemeanor charge, normally up to $400 in fines. Now, in this example the record companies and artists have already received their portion of the money for the music via the retail stores. The retail stores in this example take the hit.

Now take those 2 CD's convert them to MP3 files and distribute them online via P2P file sharing and now you're taking about $1.92 million in fines.

So essentially we are saying, "It's cheaper to walk into a store and shoplift 2 CD's than downloading or sharing them online."

It would really be cheaper just to purchase them online or at a retailer. Wouldn't it?

 

[S0ULphIRE]

^I believe it was already mentioned that there were more than 24 songs, more like a couple of thousand songs.

 

[hikaricloud]

Only 24 songs were on trial, though. So the others are a moot point.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

I suppose if she uploaded them and they got downloaded a ton of times they'd sue for a dollar for each d/l or something, so it sorta makes sense.