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Child Item

US woman fined $222,000 for..

gurramok

'illegally sharing 22 songs over Kazaa'

My question to boardsies is not if she was guilty or not or the rights/wrongs of 'sharing music' but does the punishment fit the 'crime'?

Take into account all other forms of crime and their consequent punishments but does sharing 22 songs over kazaa really merit a $222,000 fine that this person would pay for rest of her life due to the justice system and extreme DRM laws?

Me, i don't think so.

The following quote from sums it up..
'The US record industry said people would understand the verdict.'

Because they know that the public knows that the punishment don't fit the crime:mad:

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TheAlmightyArse

limklad wrote:

If she knowingly and intended to committed the crime of robbing other people earnings then, she should expect to be punishment, no matter how severe.

How did she rob other people's earnings? Point to the money she took. She didn't take anything from anyone's pocket.

Venom

maple wrote:

ridiculous fine, far outweighs the "crime". they're just making an example of her. Plus she was sharing the songs, not making a profit of selling them on.

This is high profile case for the RIAA and the big fine is merly used as scare tactics to make other people afraid to pirate music.

limklad

TheAlmightyArse wrote:

How did she rob other people's earnings? Point to the money she took. She didn't take anything from anyone's pocket.

gurramok wrote:

LOL..she DID NOT STEAL anything.

She has not been convicted of anything.

Incorrect, she stole "the right" for the owners of the songs to earn an income from them in which they invest their own money into. It was their property/product and she gave it away for free.

It like me saying that people can stay weekends at your house for free and handed them the keys, or you stole a bar of chololate from a shop and gave it away free to someone else

Is $222,000 not a conviction!! it hardly a slap on the hand.

limklad

Keyzer wrote:

Lets be honest man, she didn't kill anyone or molest children.....
She downloaded/uploaded a few songs and was fined $200,000 + ....

That, in my opinion, is a crazy punishment...

Fine her a couple of thousand dollars, enough to give her a wake up and give her some community service.
Don't ruin her life....

Is $222,000 (156,846 EUR) not a wake up call for her and for others? They can no longer break this particular law without serious consequences.
Would you hear about this crime if the fine was $6,000?

Remember this is the US (Land of extremes) not Ireland (land of liberal punishment laws) where young murders (first timers) can get out of jail within 5 years with good behaviour and with crowded jails have to be released so a judge can jail someone else for not payng a tv fine. A few years ago this actually happen here, where a mother was jail for not paying her TV licence and fine and was jailed, a female murder got out because they was no room left in the jail. They (US) do not do things in small measures. It has to be noticed.

If you are so worried about the Punishment, why don't you and others help pay the fine by donating!

TheAlmightyArse

limklad wrote:

Incorrect, she stole "the right" for the owners of the songs to earn an income from them.

That's assuming she would have bought the songs otherwise. Who's to say she would have? It seems unlikely. We can assume that she has a finite income, because realistically, everyone does. We can also assume that since she didn't spend any of that income on the music she downloaded, she must have spent it on something else. That something else must be of greater priority to her, so she almost certainly would have spent money on it over the music anyway.

So what have the song-owners lost between the two scenarios of her buying something else and not downloading the songs, and buying something else and downloading the songs? Imaginary potential money that never existed?

limklad wrote:

It was their property and she gave it away.

As far as I'm aware, she just took a copy of it for her own personal use.

limklad wrote:

It like me saying that people can stay weekends at your house for free and handed them the keys, or you stole a bar of chololate from a shop and gave it away free to someone else

Er, no it isn't. In your analogy, you're depriving someone of the use of their house, or the use of their chocolate bar. She didn't actually take any of their property. They still have it, and the use of it.

Capt'n Midnight

That's the US of A,
where Kevin Weber got 26 years to life for stealing 4 chocolate chip cookies.

MooseJam

The fine is way overboard, if that was me who was fined I would go postal at the RIAA offices

Nailz

Oh the American justice system does it again... :rolleyes:

An Citeog

The fine is way overboard and is simply a case of the RIAA covering up their own inability to embrace technology. I think this will have the opposite effect to that desired by the RIAA and the public outcry will badly effect them.

Here's an interesting blog I found on the whole subject of the future of the music industry: clicky

limklad

TheAlmightyArse wrote:

That's assuming she would have bought the songs otherwise. Who's to say she would have? It seems unlikely. We can assume that she has a finite income, because realistically, everyone does. We can also assume that since she didn't spend any of that income on the music she downloaded, she must have spent it on something else. That something else must be of greater priority to her, so she almost certainly would have spent money on it over the music anyway.

So what have the song-owners lost between the two scenarios of her buying something else and not downloading the songs, and buying something else and downloading the songs? Imaginary potential money that never existed?

read http://www.courant.com/business/hc-downloading1005.artoct05,0,112892.story

The group says the number of households that have used file-sharing programs to download music has risen from 6.9 million monthly in April 2003, before the lawsuits began, to 7.8 million in March 2007.

Copyright law sets a damage range of $750 to $30,000 for each infringement, or up to $150,000 if the violation was "willful."

Possibility of 7.8 millions lost sales. If this was your song where you invested and invested your own money (cost of promoting and paying others to get it to market) and invest your own time into, would you be mad too!! Or you just sit there and say it only your song.

TheAlmightyArse wrote:

As far as I'm aware, she just took a copy of it for her own personal use.

She not only downloaded copyright material, but she shared the music by uploading it to the web through Kazzaa.

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs on which the case was focused. The companies said she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.

In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, the record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account.

TheAlmightyArse wrote:

Er, no it isn't. In your analogy, you're depriving someone of the use of their house, or the use of their chocolate bar. She didn't actually take any of their property. They still have it, and the use of it.

If I use your view and apply it to films, copyright material.
If you copy a film that is currently in the cinema and gave it away free for all to see. Are the Film makers not losing out?

Or Books
Copy the copyright Books and give it away for free!! Are the Publishers/author not losing out in lost income?

If you take anything or deny sales from the rich or poor and not benefit from it, it is still stealing.

limklad

MooseJam wrote:

The fine is way overboard, if that was me who was fined I would go postal at the RIAA offices

And then you just made yourself a target for them to go after you. From there point of view, Why would you be angry unless you are guilty or intended to steal their product?

by the way the law states

Copyright law sets a damage range of $750 to $30,000 for each infringement, or up to $150,000 if the violation was "willful."

if you take the 24 songs they accuse her of stealing and multiply by $30,000 then the fine should be $720,000. They claim she shared 1702 songs in violation of their copyrights, then multiply that by the max fine equals $51,060,000, that $51 Millions in potential fines

Firetrap

It's a bit harsh IMHO. Will IMRO decide to pursue Irish people who've used P2P to download music?

leninbenjamin

the music industry espouse such bull**** in these matters.

one, the figures they produce tend to be highly questionable. there has long been questions of dodgy accounting practices on their part to relieve musicians of some of their due royalties. in fact the only reason we havn't seen this verified or properly refuted is that no individual can afford to foot the bill for an audit.

they have lost earnings over the past decade or so, and they would like us to believe that this is fully from illegal downloading. i've read a number of independent studies though that maintain that in reality the loss as a percentage of potential income is in single digits, no higher than 8%. the rest of this loss in earnings comes from the industries own incompetancy, reasons such as their failure to invest in the new technologies of distribution, their failure to produce the talent the public want, marketing the wrong bands/musicians and so on.

another issue here is that the industry clearly does not appear to be acting towards the group it's supposed to represent. their actions are causing musicians to potentially lose income by preventing the distribution of their music. Radiohead would not be as popular or as successful as they are today if it weren't for Naptser. their label had effectively abandoned them in the American market. and i've seen plenty of cases of my own peers who purchased the CDs of bands they only heard of in the first place through filesharing, as the record label failed to market them. have a look at the CMCC for example to see an example of some artist who feel their labels are failing to represent them as they wish.

in cases like these the industry are shooting themselves in the foot. they are outdated, they clearly fail to understand their rapidly evolving market and their resorting to lawsuits is a last ditch effort to maintain their control. pretty soon artists (and companies who enforce DRM like microsoft, because they fear they'll lose potential markets by having the music industry shun them if they don't comply) are gonna realise that they don't need the industry, in fact there's a fair few examples out there already. again, Radiohead are one.

if the woman was proven to have been selling the downloads then fair enough she deserves some sort of action. but if she was just engaging in filesharing, while she may have been infringing the letter of the law she's done nothing morally wrong in my opinion.

Edit:
oh and Firetrap, its not the musicians organisations who usually pursue these matters, it's the phonographic ones. in Ireland its the [URL="Http://www.irma.ie]Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA)[/URL]. they've been launching suits since 2005. their proudest moment it seems came a couple of months ago when they got a conviction of 6 months for seeing counterfiet CDs and DVDs at a market.

limklad

leninbenjamin wrote:

the music industry espouse such bull**** in these matters.

one, the figures they produce tend to be highly questionable. there has long been questions of dodgy accounting practices on their part to relieve musicians of some of their due royalties. in fact the only reason we havn't seen this verified or properly refuted is that no individual can afford to foot the bill for an audit.

it is up to the Musicians to audit the companies to prove this.
It should be part of their contract. But In this case the musicians is suffering too fr lost of income.

leninbenjamin wrote:

they have lost earnings over the past decade or so, and they would like us to believe that this is fully from illegal downloading. i've read a number of independent studies though that maintain that in reality the loss as a percentage of potential income is in single digits, no higher than 8%. the rest of this loss in earnings comes from the industries own incompetancy, reasons such as their failure to invest in the new technologies of distribution, their failure to produce the talent the public want, marketing the wrong bands/musicians and so on.

Many studies are often bias or interpreted by many different points of views. It is always difficult to believe studies, unless repeated many times by completely independent people, who do not interact with each other. How the study is setup can have errors in it from the beginning. They have been studies into how studies been done. I have read that one study that if you eat pineapple regularly, that it will prevent knee pain. If that was true, we all be eating pineapple and the price of pineapple would go through the roof.

leninbenjamin wrote:

if the woman was proven to have been selling the downloads then fair enough she deserves some sort of action. but if she was just engaging in filesharing, while she may have been infringing the letter of the law she's done nothing morally wrong in my opinion.

File sharing is fine, provided it not copyrighted. Stealing is morally wrong no matter how you see it or who has the item you want to take. People can dress it anyway they like so it won't upset their own conscious, so they can sleep at night.
The Best known person whenever fact or fiction is “Robin Hood” Who stole from the rich and gave to the poor for free, but even he admits he stole and never hid it. Others have benefit from his actions. While you and most of the world would side with him as generally most people in the world who are poor would. His actions would make him popular and then justify stealing is right in this case. If you are poor and the rich are around you, Stealing is tempting to take from them (rich or perceive rich or detested rich) to have more items for oneself. Stealing from robbers is still stealing.

leninbenjamin wrote:

oh and Firetrap, its not the musicians organisations who usually pursue these matters, it's the phonographic ones.

Also the musicians who been cheated cannot afford the legal & investigation/surveillance costs to go after you for denying them the right to sell the songs for income, unless they are in cahoots with the Labels.

Fanny Cradock

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

That's the US of A,
where Kevin Weber got 26 years to life for stealing 4 chocolate chip cookies.

He was a career criminal. But, yes, ridiculous nonetheless.

leninbenjamin

limklad wrote:

it is up to the Musicians to audit the companies to prove this.
It should be part of their contract. But In this case the musicians is suffering too fr lost of income.

that's my point though, they can't foot the bill to investigate this.

limklad wrote:

Many studies are often bias or interpreted by many different points of views. It is always difficult to believe studies, unless repeated many times by completely independent people, who do not interact with each other. How the study is setup can have errors in it from the beginning. They have been studies into how studies been done. I have read that one study that if you eat pineapple regularly, that it will prevent knee pain. If that was true, we all be eating pineapple and the price of pineapple would go through the roof.

yeah. but any study i've read that blames file-sharing for loss in earnings has industry backing. not reliable either.

limklad wrote:

File sharing is fine, provided it not copyrighted. Stealing is morally wrong no matter how you see it or who has the item you want to take. People can dress it anyway they like so it won't upset their own conscious, so they can sleep at night.
The Best known person whenever fact or fiction is “Robin Hood” Who stole from the rich and gave to the poor for free, but even he admits he stole and never hid it. Others have benefit from his actions. While you and most of the world would side with him as generally most people in the world who are poor would. His actions would make him popular and then justify stealing is right in this case. If you are poor and the rich are around you, Stealing is tempting to take from them (rich or perceive rich or detested rich) to have more items for oneself. Stealing from robbers is still stealing.

in my opinion you're being very black and white on a what is a very grey area.
But i dont believe myself it can be fully labelled as such. the industry is still very strong, often there is no direct loss involved as people would have downloaded music they wouldn't have had the income to buy anyway. had the sharing not occured in many cases the industry would have been no better off... and there are so many different applictions of it. what about the user who finds out about the band from file-sharing, likes them, subsequently buys the record. he's still labelled as stealing in your opinion, but he's given back what's fairly due. or what about the person who has the music on LP or had a CD destroyed. they already own the rights to listen to the music, so there is no theft involved. my point, you apply the same logic to all instances. not every incident of it is stealing... what's legally wrong is not just morally wrong every single time like you suggest.

limklad wrote:

Also the musicians who been cheated cannot afford the legal & investigation/surveillance costs to go after you for denying them the right to sell the songs for income, unless they are in cahoots with the Labels.

well, again it's not so simple. the musician can exist without the copyright but the company can't exist without it. the argument is that primarily the companies who are the one's who would accrue from any such action, not the musician so it wouldn't be worth it for them to pursue it.

thefinalstage

Em, the drop in cd sales comes from the rise of video gaming. That is all.

Lemming

thelastangryman wrote:

Em, the drop in cd sales comes from the rise of video gaming. That is all.

I posted about this a few years ago on boards.ie, and it has precious little to do with video games or anythign else.

The "slump" at the start of the 21st century in CD sales? The RIAAfia had overproduced stockpiles, and cut back on production to clear those stocks. Thus appearing like a slump.Of course, they conveniently didn't make this very publically known since it served their purpose during the whole Napster debacle.

Combine that interesting little nugget of information with the added fact that they have, over the last ten years, focused their energies on a single market - 12 - 16 year olds ,thus alienating everyone else. Most of what has been released has been poor quality dross that isn't worth buying. They aren't investing in artists any more, merely cash cows.

MooseJam

Lemming wrote:

They aren't investing in artists any more, merely cash cows.

Thats a bit of a sweeping statement, what about Britney !

Fanny Cradock

thelastangryman wrote:

Em, the drop in cd sales comes from the rise of video gaming. That is all.

You what? I cant see any parallels.

Capt'n Midnight

Fanny Cradock wrote:

He was a career criminal. But, yes, ridiculous nonetheless.

Apply the same logic to this part of the world and how many junkies who pay for their habit by a bit of burglary ... could we afford that many prisons ?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/05/riaa_wins_first_music_sharing_jury_trial/

US District Judge Michael Davis ruled the labels did not have to prove the songs were transfered for Thomas to be held liable. The act of making the songs available is enough to constitute copyright infringement, he said.

Davis instructed the 12-member jury the range of the fine was $750 to $150,000 per song.

Hands up anyone who has bought all the music they wanted ?
Back in the 80's we did up a list of artists, not albums or songs, that we would like to have and most of us had to agree before anything went on the list. The list was 4 foolscap pages long and growing, each line representing maybe a one hit wonder, but usually several albums. It would have cost the guts of $22,000 to buy that in record shops.
IMHO most people just buy a tiny fraction of the music they would like to because their disposable income won't cover extortionate prices.
Do people like music ?
Almost all radio stations worldwide play mostly music.
So if prices were dropped then people probably wouldn't spend much more money but they certainly wouldn't spend a lot less.

the_syco

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/05/riaa_wins_first_music_sharing_jury_trial/

US District Judge Michael Davis ruled the labels did not have to prove the songs were transfered for Thomas to be held liable.

"This is what can happen if you don't settle," Gabriel said.

So, let me get this straight? Not only do they not have to prove it, but they're saying that unless you settle out of court, ie: not in a court of LAW, they'll charge you a lot more? Bully boy tactics, imo.

thefinalstage

Fanny Cradock wrote:

You what? I cant see any parallels.

People only have so much time and so much money to spend. Since gaming has taken off as an easily accessible alternative some of that money is used to buy games and some of that time is used to play the games. Thus sales on cds will fall.

leninbenjamin

thelastangryman wrote:

People only have so much time and so much money to spend. Since gaming has taken off as an easily accessible alternative some of that money is used to buy games and some of that time is used to play the games. Thus sales on cds will fall.

nah, the gaming industry is having a much greater impact on the film industry than the music one. you'll find anyway that a lot people will still listen to music when they play games.

and in general the rise and impact of the gaming industry on other markets is being vastly overestimated.

Xcom2

So do the 22 artist's in this case get a check or a bank transfer for the $10,000 each that they are entitled to?

Fanny Cradock

thelastangryman wrote:

People only have so much time and so much money to spend. Since gaming has taken off as an easily accessible alternative some of that money is used to buy games and some of that time is used to play the games. Thus sales on cds will fall.

You seem to be drawing conclusions based on no actual facts. I could easily claim that the increased sales in motorbikes or aftershave is crippling the music industry.

It doesn't take a whole lot of insight to see that sales in CDs are falling because of their greater expense in relation to their legally downloadable versions and because it is so damn easy to download stuff illegally. I still prefer to pay for something that is tangible (including the inlay card), but clearly I'm in the minority there.

As an aside, I wonder could anyone clear up the whole ambiguous legality (if it is that) of music blogs. In my experience, you can go onto a music blog aggregator, type in a band name - it will list all blogs on their database that have stuff by said band/ artist - and start downloading. Usually there is a link that will take you to Itunes store or some such, but surely this is only to placate the record industry. Are music blogs with downloadable content tolerated simply because nothing can be done about them?

Manic Moran

where Kevin Weber got 26 years to life for stealing 4 chocolate chip cookies.

Though I'm not familiar with him, can I presume this is under the Three Strikes Rule? In which case, I guess the theory is that if his first few convictions didn't teach him good moral values, it was simpler just to take him off the streets for a good stretch.

So, let me get this straight? Not only do they not have to prove it, but they're saying that unless you settle out of court, ie: not in a court of LAW, they'll charge you a lot more? Bully boy tactics, imo.

It's a standard procedure, also used in plea bargaining. You don't -have- to settle, but the advantage to doing so is that you can get away with less punishment than what may be expected after going through the whole legal process. No court fees for starters. This costs/time issue applies to both sides, so settling is generally preferable. If you choose to fight it, then you can find yourself liable to the full extent of the law. In other words, it's not a case of the courts charging you a lot more, it provides an opportunity for you to accept being punished by being charged a lot less. Consider it a 'guilty' plea without the hassle of court appearances. The courts do not look down on you for not settling.

NTM

Lemming

Manic Moran wrote:

It's a standard procedure, also used in plea bargaining. You don't -have- to settle, but the advantage to doing so is that you can get away with less punishment than what may be expected after going through the whole legal process. No court fees for starters. This costs/time issue applies to both sides, so settling is generally preferable. If you choose to fight it, then you can find yourself liable to the full extent of the law. In other words, it's not a case of the courts charging you a lot more, it provides an opportunity for you to accept being punished by being charged a lot less. Consider it a 'guilty' plea without the hassle of court appearances. The courts do not look down on you for not settling.

The problem with this standard procedure MM, is that in the case of the RIAAfia, they aren't applying due care to whom they "select" for threatening behaviour, and their investigative (to use that word incredibly loosely) methods could be bettered by a 10 year old child. Thus, there are many people who are completely innocent being coerced and intimidated, i.e. extortion is taking place. And now, given what this incredibly f*cktarded judge (whom I suspect has a hand in the pocket of certain .. "lobbying" organisations), even if you are innocent you cannot contest these cases because you are guilty until proven innocent and the courts aren't listening to what you have to say.

As a result, I would love to see the RIAAfia strung up by the balls in a federal court on serious RICO charges.

Cormster

seems quite a high amount - probably a bit unfair but it certainly sets an example.

Capt'n Midnight

Good.
Now that it's been established that the fine for copyright infringment in the music sector is just under $1,000 per incident,
when can we expect SONY & First4Internet to pay for LAME open source software that was pirated and put on millions of CD's ??