UK Record Industry Starts Suing Filesharers

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has the story that the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has started a first set of lawsuits against UK file sharers. 23 people paid £50,000 to settle out of court. This is the first time people in the UK have been fined, and probably won't be the last. From the article: "We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."

Comments

Re:OMG OMG

[mythosaz]

You know, the problem is that too many of us have an attitude like the parent poster. Already the people who've posted "Good, they got what they deserved" have been modded trolls and flamebait.

We're going to have another day where people lecture about that it's not "stealing" because it's merely "copyright infrigement" instead of actually being strong enough to regognize that it's still WRONG.

These people broke the law, and they should be punished for it.

Re:OMG OMG

[_Potter_PLNU_]

Well, if it helps you sleep at night by rationalizing your unethical stealing of copyrighted property (assuming you do from your sarcastic statement), then by all means keep thinking like that.

Re:Before the whining starts

[EllisDees]

>*sigh* Since when did taking someone elses work without their permission and not paying them for it become acceptable?

When the ability for anyone to do so in the comfort of their own home with zero chance of getting caught became public knowledge.

Besides, nothing is taken if nothing is gone.

Re:Ouch

[Rei]

That ignored the premise. The premise was the case, under which the vast majority of file sharing falls, that the person who downloads the file would *not* have purchased it otherwise. I asked for who is the victim in such a situation.

You are postulating a different situation: the far rarer "person would have bought the album, but chose to download it instead" situation. I have trouble believing that the number of those people is significant enough to cause any notable decrease in seller property value. Things like every so often suing someone who file shares seems to be enough to keep this crowd to a minimum.