Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the thats-a-lotta-legal-fees dept.
este writes "According to an article in the Inquirer, if the RIAA maintains its rate of lawsuit issuance, it will take more than two millenia for them to sue evey P2P file trader. The author accounts for many additional difficulties facing the RIAA in this daunting task."
Re:Why even try?
by
KReilly
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This is assuming that A) They actually maintain this level of lawsuits, they could easily step up the amount. B) All file sharers remain online, I read a while back that their has been a dip in kazaa usage since the start of the lawsuits.
They never intended to sue everyone that uses p2p, they are intending to scare everyone out of using p2p. Put simply, if they sued half, I could almost guarentee the other half would stop. Thus cutting their time to 1 millenia
Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.
by
dlur
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The fines aren't between $750 and $150,000 per offense. These people are being sued for that amount in civil court cases. The vast, vast majority of these cases aren't criminal cases, they're civil. Huge difference. If they were criminal cases you'd pay a fine and go to jail for a while, but you'd also get a court appointed lawyer if you couldn't afford one and have the option of a jury trial.
In a civil case there's not much for a limit on damages and no governmental checks and balances on what those limits are. So basically the RIAA can almost literally sue the pants off you for doing something that doesn't physically hurt anyone and just has minor monetary effects on their being. Isn't America great?
Slashdot Mirror
This is assuming that
A) They actually maintain this level of lawsuits, they could easily step up the amount.
B) All file sharers remain online, I read a while back that their has been a dip in kazaa usage since the start of the lawsuits.
They never intended to sue everyone that uses p2p, they are intending to scare everyone out of using p2p.
Put simply, if they sued half, I could almost guarentee the other half would stop. Thus cutting their time to 1 millenia
The fines aren't between $750 and $150,000 per offense. These people are being sued for that amount in civil court cases. The vast, vast majority of these cases aren't criminal cases, they're civil. Huge difference. If they were criminal cases you'd pay a fine and go to jail for a while, but you'd also get a court appointed lawyer if you couldn't afford one and have the option of a jury trial.
In a civil case there's not much for a limit on damages and no governmental checks and balances on what those limits are. So basically the RIAA can almost literally sue the pants off you for doing something that doesn't physically hurt anyone and just has minor monetary effects on their being. Isn't America great?
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.