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Cuban Says RIAA Damages Should be $5 Per Month
Thomas Hawk writes "Mark Cuban is arguing over at Blog Maverick that with the introduction of Yahoo!'s new $5 per month music service that this needs to become the new de facto 'damages' that the RIAA ought to be able to claim when suing kids. After all, when the kids could have paid for the music via Yahoo! for $5 a month it makes it hard to say the music loss is worth more than that. 'The RIAA can no longer claim that students who are downloading music are costing them thousands of dollars each. They cant claim much of anything actually. In essence, Yahoo just turned possession of a controlled music substance into a misdemeanor. Payable by a $5 per month fine.'"
The RIAA doesn't sue downloaders. They sue people who upload music. Yes I know, some programs upload what you download by default, but that change what they sue people for. You can't get the right to upload music for $5 a month. Even if you could, the RIAA can always sue for statutory damages, which are a lot higher than $5 a month even for downloading.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
Wow.
This guy is about as bright as a 5 watt bulb.
It is like he does not even understand the reason that the RIAA is able to sue for thousands. The premise in court is (right or wrong) that the Music Industry is losing thousands per filesharer, for a specific reason. That is, each song available for download is being downloaded by thousands of people, and each of those downloads costs the RIAA membership the sale of a CD. Thousands of downloads * CD sale = mucho cash.
Again, this is the premise that would be followed in court.
Changing the price of a music from $CD_PRICE to $DOWNLOAD_YAHOO_PRICE simply means that someone making files available, would be liable for $DOWNLOAD_YAHOO_PRICE now. In other words, $num_of_users_downloading * $DOWNLOAD_YAHOO_PRICE.
How is this ruining the RIAA in court? It only reduces the amount of damages per COUNT of people downloading.. that's all....
Put another way, the RIAA is not suing because you did not buy music. It is not suing the people that downloaded music. It is suing the people that _shared_ music, and setting the price accordingly.
Again, right or wrong, that's what happening. It's almost like this guy thinks people are being sued for downloading. They aren't. If they were, the RIAA could only sue for what they had lost in revenue, and that would be the cost of the songs the sued downloaded.
No, they sue from a much bigger angle. They sue with the claim that file sharers have cost them thousands of CD sales...
That is like saying the most a person can be fined for stealing a shirt from WalMart is the price of the shirt.
After reading the title I was wondering why the RIAA would care what someone in Cuba thinks.
I like that standpoint. I've agreed all the way thru that the RIAA is suing people for way too much, and it is rediculous.
Let's see if this new Yahoo! pricing helps at all.
Who do those Cuban people think they are, telling American companies what to do!?
This makes perfect sense. Why should they be able to sue for more than the "damages" would even have been?
I always knew slashdot was a little left-leaning, but using Fidel Castro as an article source is going a bit too far I think...
The main people the RIAA are going after are the SHARERS - the people who have hundreds, dare I saw thousands of songs in their shared folder, and are on a high-speed connection. 5 dollars per month per each individual person who downloaded from that one person is probably a little more what the RIAA would be after, if they had to affix something like that to the cost.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Point, Cuban.
Though I think, legally, that violations before this would still be valued the same as they were (although iTunes prices could be the check for that at a buck a song or thousands of dollars of damages instead of hundreds of thousands...) (Though I could be wrong about that.)
That's an interesting point. Although I admit the RIAA would still probably jump at the opportunity to sue for thousands of dollars, the lawyer might try and pull that card in court, which might set a precedent, which would be cool.
I'd pay the RIAA $5 a month just to piss them off. I think it's a bit of a utopian idea though.
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
Wait until the RIAA hears about this!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
So, if the kid gets sued when he's 18, then lives to be 80, that's 62 years * 12 mo/yr * $5 = $3720.
This seems comparable to their current settlement amount.
Unknown host pong.
Mark Cuban is arguing over at Blog Maverick that with the introduction of Yahoo!'s new $5 per month music service that this needs to become the new de facto 'damages' that the RIAA ought to be able to claim when suing kids.
That's a nice sentiment, but I'm afraid the law doesn't work that way. Part of the damages are punative, and part of the damages are intended to offset losses from a chain of piracy started by the individual. i.e. Because he didn't pay his $5, now hundreds of others won't pay their five dollars, and may even incite others to not pay their five dollars.
I'm not saying that the current laws are good (the music industry did make their own problem by not responding to market pressures), but they aren't as cut and dry as suggested either.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
1. You have to take into account everyone that could have gotten the file from someone when talking about lost revenue
2. The purpose of the fine is a) to recoup lost revenues and b) to discourage people from breaking the law
While the value of 2a might have gone down, that doesn't really affect 2b.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
The RIAA couldn't manage a Dairy Queen.
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
If the taking first and only paying when forced to do so is allowed to be equally cheap with paying first, then there would be no incentive to pay first whatsoever. Such a low-balling of the damages is no less silly than the high-balling that RIAA does.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
...and you'll have to wait some more
So this brings up the question, who's not willing to pay 5$ a month for music and will insist on downloading it still?
I wish all this energy and enthausiasm expended on "rights" over or to music is at least partly expended to more essential matters such as food, medicine and shelter; there's much poverty in the world and there are attempts to practically euthenise the poor and cut off their pittance through fabricated social security crises.
Some peoples lives are just so unfullfilled ;-P
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
If you follow Cuban's argument through, the RIAA could easily claim that it is due $5 per month from you and everyone who got a copy of a song from you illegally . Which puts the damages back where the RIAA wants them.
Personally, I buy all of my music from a Russian company myself...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Since Yahoo charges $5 per month per user, the RIAA would by the writer's logic, sue for the same. So if Joe Shmoe uploads a large amount of songs and 1000 people download at least one of them within a month, Mr Shmoe owes $5000 to the RIAA.
Of course the RIAA could also look to Apple and say they're worth $1 per song per user. In which case Mr Shmoe would owe $1 * 1000 * number of songs downloaded.
This assumes that the uploader tracks the number of users and downloads and can verify the information to the satisfaction of the courts. This is why the RIAA and MPAA sue for generally large piles of cash. It's a very rare pirate that tracks their user base as well as Apple and Yahoo and every other legitimate music downloading business. The pirate is then at the mercy of the courts to decide how much they owe if they don't just settle with the RIAA.
Work Safe Porn
According to the RIAA's statements, they are pursuing those guilty of piracy, not distribution. If distribution were the case, couldn't everyone just claim they were a form of radio webcast and just pay the fee mandated by the Library of Congress for each song uploaded? Even at $.30 per song, I can't see is being too much. Going after them for piracy is much more profitable. They can say a CD has 8 songs and costs $16.00, so each song is worth $2.00. Cuban is saying the most anyone could steal is $5.000 per month, based on the going rate of the music (on Yahoo), and I tend to agree.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll wipe out the species.
[Insert here a long, tired speech about the differences between copyright infringement and theft.] Nevertheless, all penalties for stealing something are far in excess of the value of the goods. Otherwise, every shopper would walk out of every grocery store without paying every time. Why pay first when you can safely wait until after the seller complains?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
...and take it in the ass RIAA. Stop trying to bullshit people. It might have worked at one point but now, people are rebelling against buying CD's for the rediculous prices that they are set at. 100 pack of CDR's for $15. Don't tell me you have to sell them at $25 a disc. And the artists? Well, I've heard some of the shit that is going to platinum and you can't tell me that you recorded the main chorus from the singer and just put it on repeat. They sure didn't work hard to get that on the album. All computers, no talent.
ogg
Black cat, searing pain, flames...? I must be in Heaven! - Homer Simpson
Since you can get swill like Miller Genuine Draft or Red Dog in any college town for $5 all you can drink from 9-1, Guinness should be available at a bulk discount as well.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
after all, we don't really want to encourage theft. I'm all for burning riaa but kids really should be stealing music. I'm discusted when my classmates (the ones driving a brand new lexus or suv) say things like 'I paid for the ipod, i deserve the music for free' and use that as justification for stealing thousands of songs.
-Tim Louden
I thought subscription based services like Rhapsody and Yahoo were just streaming. If you want to acutally download the song and listen to it from somewhere else than your internet-connected computer, you had to pay an additional fee ($.79/song in Yahoo's case) I mean, if I could actually DOWNLOAD an unlimited amount of music and listen to it on all my PCs, on an mp3 player, and burn it to CD to listen in a car, for $5/month or even $20/month I'd jump at the chance. But I'm not going to pay $5/month for the privelege of listening to music and the ability to pay more to buy it.
Free MacMini
Yahoo is not selling DRM-free tracks. It says nothing about the value of ripped music that Yahoo is renting crippled music for $5.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Me - if I'm forced to use their DRM, and only allowed play paid for music on their approved hardware.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
I am not defending RIAA, neither in favor of RIAA destroying students just because of some downloaded MP3, but at this $5 price, Yahoo only allows DRM'ed WMA's that are illegal to convert to MP3 or to burn to Audio CD's. The price for burnable music is $0.79/music... still a high price for people who hold libraries of more than 500 MP3...
There should be caps on this sort of thing anyways. Remember the kid who made a search engine for his University and when the RIAA found out that people were using it to search other people's shares for MP3s they sued the kid for $10,000 which he paid out of pocket from his college fund. Fortunately for him he has since recovered his money thanks to an internet fund raising drive, but $10,000 is an awful lot to sue for when someone has not caused you any sort of monetary damages directly. I could only imagine the world of hurt the poor kid would be in if he didn't have the funds to just simply settle.
This is chilling precedent. What's to stop the RIAA from one day hacking into my machines and finding some MP3s (actually, they will find a LOT) and deciding that I am distributing them or that I do not legally own all of them? Can I afford to pay some schmuck lawyer to help me defend myself against this tirade? I can't, as I am unemployed currently. Could I afford a $10,000 "fine"? Probably not. People put other people's lives at risk with drunk driving, but when they are caught, they face only a $3,000 fine here in good ole Pennsyltucky. Aparantly putting the lives of people in danger is only worth $3000 to the state, while saying that stealing some music from a corporation that owes a multitude of its artists money and does its best not to pay is ludicrous is worth $10,000 is totally ludicrous.
The government doesn't need to get involved in this sham either. Hasn't anyone read the news? Record sales have been up. I guess the piss poor economy has had a lot more to do with sales driving down than some college kids who wouldn't have bought the freaking album new anyways.
For the record, 90% of the albums I've ever bought were from the used bin. It would be safe to say that I never supported the artists in the first place. KRS-One has this great line about how "if you downloaded the album, come to the show." I'm sure he makes a lot more from ticket sales at shows than he does from his albums. Maybe more people need to get out and see shows and maybe more shows need to start costing less than $50 a seat!
Is Dave Matthews really worth $100 to go see with your girlfriend? (assuming one has one here)
zosxavius photography
Sure, the damage might only be $5. But in some states with three-strike laws, the third time you break the law, even if you steal something worth just $5, they put you in jail. Like marijuana, stealing music is merely a gateway to something worse.
It is completely absurd to suggest you can break the law all you like for just $5 a month.
Cuban is an idiot if he thinks that the fine should be equal to the cost of the goods copied. There exists something called penalty.
I don't know if you realize, but that 5 dollars per month has to be paid EVERY month. Once you stop paying, the collection is worthless. On the other hand, with P2P songs you get to keep them forever.
Second, they will not play on iPods, only certain Microsoft backed "Play for Sure" devices.
Third, free is still cheaper than $3000, assuming you're 20 and live another 50 years.
Fourth, P2P files are unencumbered with any DRM. Thus, you're getting more value for NO money.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
This simply does not compute.
Firstly, right or wrong, is the RIAA not sueing the fileSHARERS, not the downloaders?
Subsequently... if I steal a 50 cent chocolate bar, should my "punishement" be... paying 50 cents?
The entire "webcasting" fee structure put into law under the Library of Congress Copyright Office was based on Yahoo's purchase of Broadcast.com, including their music publishing licenses. In one of the most simpleminded accounting scams of the entire Bubble, CARP (representing copyright owners) basically divided the sale price (in maximum Bubble-inflated shares) by the number of songs, arriving at 0.12 cents per listen. Nevermind the rest of the value of the sale. Nevermind the totally inflated share price. Nevermind the transaction let a license pay for itself with a few listens, perpetuating the markup. The single transaction established the base "value" of a webcast song listen.
Even the LoC didn't exactly buy that formula, but arbitrarily cut the fee to 0.07 cents. But allowed minimum charges of $500:year, excluding hobbyists and underfunded public broadcasters, including schools.
Now we see the actual value is $5:month, at most (including the rest of the operation). The great irony? Cuban sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! Now he's using the money he got to fund the correction of the fee to a rational level. This is all so selfreferential that it almost seems like the bubble never popped.
--
make install -not war
It's not that simple, as everyone knows the $5 a month that isn't going to Yahoo, goes to fund global terrorism. Some of our finest thinkers have concluded this:
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1011727157.html
Napster was the cause of 9-11. Think about it, all that rampant thieving of peoples copyrighted thoughts that occurred during Napster was bound to result in something terrible.
Without the DMCA anti circumvention clause, Terrorists would have Neutron bombs by now!
Al-Qaeda was a direct result of pirating Weird Al Yankovic songs.
So its not the $5, its what you do with it. You can't let teenagers keep $5, or they'll only do drugs, blow up stuff or go undermine democracy with it. Duh!
In Soviet Russia, 5$ damages YOU!
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
I'm not. Yahoo! music won't play (as far as I can tell) on my Archos Jukebox. It won't play in any of three existing Flash-based MP3 players. So, there's several hundred dollars worth of electronics I'd need to replace to use Yahoo! music. And, I have no guarantees whatsoever that I'll be able to play the music I purchase 5 years from now. Technological obsolescence happens; I've seen it too many times. It's in a proprietary, poorly-supported format. If the market decides to switch to a new format, this one will be left in the dust. /frank
And the worms ate into his brain.
Really, BFD.
Some guy has a theory on a blog...
Stop the presses!!!
Mark Cuban smokes a big crack rock.
Seriously. Why not just argue that he recorded it off the radio? Then it's free!
http://www.virtualrecordings.com/communism.jpg
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
If I sold my Mustang to you could I get sued by Ford for it? If not, why not?
The first sale doctrine applies in both patent law and copyright law. Ford can't sue used car dealers for patent infringement because the first sale of a patented article to the public exhausts the exclusive right to resell that article. Likewise, you have the right to resell a lawfully made CD on which copyrighted works are recorded.
orin hatch, very conseravtive senator fronting for an industry which in no way helps his state, which is overwhelmingly liberal. yeah, money talks, but why hatch? sure he's on the judiciary committee, but doesn't this really fit into trade and commerce, or maybe communications. he's on neither committee. isn't there some irony here.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Can I set up a new cable network that broadcasts all of the Maverick's games if I pay them the cost of a season ticket? Sounds fair to me.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Until then it's all threats and scares.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
IANAL but I went to an information session held by my school regarding this very subject where copyright lawyers held a talk.
Basically, they said copyright infringement lawsuits are pretty much "the sweetest" ones someone can sue for, as there is no need to prove actual damages, just that infringement has occurred. This is because copyright law has in place automatic fines that come into play (see DMCA). It doesn't matter what it _really_ costs if someone shared copyrighted music, just that it occurred (as far as the law is concerned).
K, I'll give you Gwen (recently anyway) but Cher and Madonna? Not exactly "flashes in the pan".
...RIAA automatically deletes you!
I've been wondering if any individual, when faced with a law suit, has actually taken RIAA to court rather than settled out of court. I would think that the whole idea of this is just a threat by the RIAA and I wonder what would happen if someone actually took them up on their offer to test the legality of their actions in court.
SIGFAULT
As far as I know there is nothing wrong with _possessing_ music, whether you buy it from Yahoo or in a record store and compress it yourself. The _sharing_ is wrong (at least according to the RIAA). Methinks it doesn't matter where you got the source from...
At $5 per month, that's $60 per year. Given that Aubrey de Grey figures we can live for 500 to 1000 years, it seems to me that a $12,000 fine is cheap, although RIAA is requesting the money up front.
mahnahmahna
20 bucks for an H. Upman? Ridiculous!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The argument doesn't hold up.
These pay-per-month services are rentals: you stop paying and you no longer have access to the music (though I suppose its only a matter of time, if it hasn't happened already, before someone cracks the DRM in these rental services). With iTMS you own the track you've paid US$0.99 for. It's yours.
People forget this, or don't think about it. Hilary Rosen's recent drivel makes the same mistake when she complains about iTMS lockin while saying how great Rhapsody or Napster or Yahoo! or whatever is. Of course, you're locked into those too. Anyway.
Surely if you pay a fine covering the cost of your stolen music collection until the end of your life, then you can keep building your collection (unless of course you exceeed the 1M songs Y!MU has)
Can you download music in .mp3 format if you're already on a subscription service? I'm on Yahoo's unlimited service for a year, but my mp3 player, a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra, doesn't support 'plays for sure'. According to Creative, they were supposed to release a firmware update a month or so ago that would give it DRM10 support.
In the meantime, is it ok to download from a torrent site if I can legitimately acquire music that I pay for? I just want to be able to listen to it on my Mp3 player, and would probably end up deleting the content if/when the firmware update is released. If i can listen to it anyway, why would it be bad to listen to it on my Mp3 player?
Do you guys think that this is OK? I don't want to be stuck to my PC when listening to music.
Due to financial difficulties, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
That is like saying the most a person can be fined for stealing
Copyright infringment isn't stealing, it's copyright infringment. Next bad analogy?
[after the obligatory discussion over copyright infringment and theft differences...]
I can rent a car for 50$/day.
So I guess I can steal Mark Cuban's car and if I accidentally get caught after a week I simply owe him 350$, right ?
No, they sue from a much bigger angle. They sue with the claim that file sharers have cost them thousands of CD sales...
So why not $sue_for = $ESTIMATED_LOSS / $NUMBER_OF_FILE_SHARERS... that way, everyone they sue is paying the $50 or so that number should come out to...
But if you take that $5 per month, multiply it by 12 months. Then multiply that by 10 years of downloading music ($1200), then multiply that by 100 kids, and now you have $120,000 missing. I'm not defending the RIAA in anyway. I think mark Cuban is a pretty ingenious entrepreneur, however I don't think you can relate these apples to those oranges so to speak.
"When they invent bitch slaps that can go through a monitor you better f'ing duck" --deft (253558)
Can someone get caught with millions of songs, delete them, and just pay a 1 month ($5) Fine? or does a 15 year old get caught with 1 song have to pay $5 for the rest of his life ($4,200 assuming a 85 year life span)?
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
I think 99% of people who get music off file-sharing would pay $5 just for peace of mind and trust me no one will give a shit about the 'principle' - if $5 a month buys you legal insurence against the music industry then people will do it, i guess thats what Yahoo is banking on. they'll certainly get my money, even if it's DRM'd, in fact DRM will just die off at this rate because it just won't be worth it any more. Obviously this is all a pipe-dream, Yahoo isn't really selling unlimited music for $5 a month - if they are then it will only be for a limited time or will be shut boycotted by the RIAA or only for the first 1 million customers or something stupid. Everyone go pinch your-selves.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
$5/month/downloader
or possibly a bit more. Since yahoo has an agreement with RIAA then so they have negociated a contract with them.
-- Tim
TKrabec Pahh
If uploading is what hurts the RIAA, and Yahoo wants people to pay for downloads, then shoulnd't Yahoo be able to claim that every uploader who doesn't charge downloaders at least $5/month is costing them customers?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
AFAIK, the RIAA has yet to actually obtain a judgement in any end-user lawsuit. That they can successfully sue at all is far from clear at this point. Indeed, with the exception of the Napster suit, the RIAA has yet to prevail in a single hearing, much less a trial. So far, people have settled, or the suit has yet to reach trial. To date, the RIAA is batting .000 in court on end-user lawsuits.
Cuban may well be right about the proper amount for damages, but that assumes judgement. At the start, anyone can sue anybody for any sum. For example, SCO's multi-billion dollar suit against IBM. I think we can all agree SCO won't get billions. Likewise, the RIAA would probably get less than they are asking IF they won at trial, and IF a judge agreed to impose damages. Both of those eventualities are speculative at this point.
It's not what the customer pays the RIAA, it's what Yahoo pays the RIAA, really.
For example, suppose for a minute (I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air) that Yahoo pays the RIAA $1 per song, having decided that they average about 4.5 downloads per month per customer. If you downloaded 100 songs, it still costs you $5, but the RIAA would make $100. Thus the RIAA could claim $100.
You could make a case for the damages being whatever Yahoo pays the RIAA, but I think it's up to a jury / the judge to decide if that'd work or not.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
If RIAA ran Walmart it wouldn't have shoplifters prosecuted for theft, it would launch ridiculous civil suits against them.
If you stole a shirt from RIAA's Walmart, it would sue you $14.95 in loss/damages plus $1.5 million for pain, suffering, legal costs, etc.
I agree that Cuban's logic is flawed, but I might amend the argument. RIAA has tried to sue for silly amounts, somewhere along the lines of $2500 per song. I believe that the defendant could argue that since there is a legal $5/month service from Yahoo that a more resonable assessment would be $5 * number of months known to offend * a reasonable estimate of the number of people who got songs from your PC in a given month. It is that last factor that is different from Cuban's argument--unfortunately what a reasonable estimate is debatable.
So instead of these dumb multi-million lawsuits against teenage girls and grandparents that do nothing but make bad PR and settlemsnt at a small fraction of the original amount you'd do something like this:
$5 * 6 months * 500 USERS (not songs) uploaded to in a given month is...$15000. I'd bet that in most cases it is much less than 500 unique users who get all or part of a file from your machine when logged into P2P. In any case $15K is mcuh less ridiculous than millions but still enough to remind the offenders that it is wrong.
BTW, comapring copyright infringement to shoplifting isn't really accurate either because despite what RIAA says, violating copyright is NOT THEFT. When you steal a shirt you are denying the victim the use of said shirt. When you download music the artist (or more likely the publisher) still owns the rights and paying customers can still hear the music. Just to make it clear...
DOWNLOADING MUSIC IS *NEVER* STEALING...
HOWEVER...it IS violationg copyright... AND VIOLATING COPYRIGHT IS ALSO WRONG.
The problem is that RIAA et al want to prosecute people for copyright infringement much more harshly than deserved--more than what some people get for things like theft, assault and rape. A reality check is required for people all around.
If you buy 100 cds at $15 a pop, then you'll have an investment of $1500.
If you invest that $1500 at 4% then you'll get a return of about $60/year which is exactly what Y! costs.
Keep up the good work! Allah will be pleased
i never download pop music, if you stop downloading pop music you stop urself from bein caught, and i never listen to any of that crap legit except when on the radio to see if one of my favourite rock bands has released anything.
It's pretty obvious that the music industry wants subscription services to succeed because they'd LOVE to have us buy the same music over and over again.
But I'm making a prediction that those services will fail. They all use the same DRM backed by Microsoft. (AKA, Play for Sure) One day someone will find a way to bypass the DRM and free all those songs. Suddenly, those hundreds of thousand of songs you've downloaded will be yours permanently.
Of course, they'll "fix" the problem but it'll happen again and again. Eventually the music industry will tire of being screwed and they'll make you buy the music outright. At least I hope so.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
is partly determined by how many people steal. So I wouldn't base fines off of that. Also, there can be a punative nature to the fine.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
When I first read this article, there seemed a locgically, but linear, point of view. The poster simply connected one fact to another, with no real support. It is logical, but not practical.
What is really strange, is how people are responding to this post. Many are simply ignoring the fact that services, Napster, Yahoo etc. are providing an unlimited amount of music, with small compensation.
They provide a service as cheap as a magazine subscription. Many people simply argue past the $5 a month of damages, others argue about the DRM, uploaders, but when it comes down to it, the RIAA is trying to play both sides.
They are trying to prevent piracy, and advocate cheaper "better" resources. They sue for thousands and sell their CDs for $10-$20, but yet offer for $5 a month all the music one can hold on a personal MP3 player.
What is next when the sales of box office movies to torn apart by a $5 subscription of online moves? Will there be more controversy?
$sig$
Interesting point, but that's like saying to a car thief "OK, we can throw you in jail, or you can just pay for the car and be on your merry way." Sorry, real life doesn't work that way. Posession is 9/10ths of the law, and if you posess it without legally owning it, my friend, you stole it. Making things right after the fact doesnt change the fact that it is stolen to begin with.
That doesn't mean I don't think that the money being asked by the RIAA is outlandish. But the principle he is presenting is flawed.
-everphilski-
Thus, you're getting more value for NO money
No, you're getting more of something at someone else's expense. If there was no money involved, a whole lot of expensively produced recordings would be produced in the first place. And gee, I don't think that the people getting massively pirated here are the little indy recording artists who are desparate for attention to their work. Opportunity cost is not free.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Although Mr. Cuban's argument is interesting and does make sense (to a certain extent), he is leaving out some key things.
1. Yahoo's $5/month fee is based on a business model that we can't see
2. The actual costs to Yahoo are substantially larger than $5/month and are made up on volume
3. The licensing agreements that the $5/month fee covers are also based on a certain volume that Yahoo has to cover until the service reaches a break even point
4. To argue that $5/month should be the punishment, although justifiable on a per-user basis, would not hold a lot of water in court
I don't disagree with Mr. Cuban, but I think he is stretching it a bit beyond what the courts would uphold.
When I used the pronoun "you," it referred to the P2P users getting songs without paying any money. In other words, that user got something of value for no cost. That does NOT mean that others didn't lose value. In fact, I agree that others do.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Cuban is saying the most anyone could steal is $5.000 per month
... oh never mind. Let's just hang all those murderous copyright infringers! Arrr!
Actually, stealing means physically taking someone's possessions away from them without their permission. If you infringe a copyright, you are not depriving anyone of their own copy, so it is not stealing.
According to the RIAA's statements, they are pursuing those guilty of piracy
Actually, piracy means
I'll probably be modded down for this...
My upload bandwidth is roughly 1/3 or my download bandwidth. So if I can download as much music as I want for $5/mo and people can get files from me at 1/3 that rate aren't the actual damages $1.67/ month? All hypothetical of course.
I am not defending the RIAA or their actions. I do believe people have the right to make off their ideas and thus, I respect copyright. I believe the technology grew too fast and majority of consumers haven't related to the ethical problem yet. Thus, I believe the proper response should be education first then punitive action. However, with punitive action, $5 for every month of infraction is too low. With P2P and torrent, the downloader becomes the uploader. With desktops and always-on broadband, these programs could run for days at a time. Take a one person with 600 pirated songs, he has $600 worth of music. If a hundred people download just %10 of his collection, he just distribute illegally $6000 worth of songs. I would guess this could happen in just a few days. Imagine, how many songs he distributes in the course of a year. Thus, $5/month is too low and would be ineffective if punitive action is being used.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
If distribution were the case, couldn't everyone just claim they were a form of radio webcast and just pay the fee mandated by the Library of Congress for each song uploaded?
Webcasters operating under a section 114 compulsory license cannot operate an "interactive service" (that is, play songs by request), and they need to use some technological measure to prevent listeners from making digital phonorecords of a broadcast.
There are two obvious ways to charge for uploads - charging the first uploader for all the subsequent downloads (because if that person hadn't uploaded the file, it wouldn't be there), and charging _each_ uploader for the number of copies they've uploaded. So if the basic cost is $1/song, and a song gets downloaded by 1000 people, it's "fair" to nail the first uploader for $1000 and maybe triple-for-damages, and/or it's fair to nail the person who uploaded 15 copies for $15 and triple-for-damages. In practice, of course, it's really hard to identify the *first* person to upload a file, and most P2P clients and file-sharing networks probably don't track uploads in a format that's usable as evidence in court. There are techniques that can help nail people - continually watch the trackers for changes, and identify the people who are offering uploads when they first appear. And if you're the RIAA, you find the first person you can prove uploaded something and nail them for the whole lot, especially if they are fairly active, easy to find, and have enough money to nail them but not enough for a really aggressive defense lawyer.
BitTorrent is much fuzzier, because except for the first seeder, individual clients aren't uploading and downloading entire files - they're uploading and downloading small chunks, so rather than uploading 5 copies of a 1GB movie, one to each of 5 people, you might have uploaded 5GB of total stuff spread out over 25 people. Clients and trackers do have more information about what they've done, though again it's not necessarily reliable enough to use in court.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you follow Cuban's argument through, the RIAA could easily claim that it is due $5 per month from you and everyone who got a copy of a song from you illegally . Which puts the damages back where the RIAA wants them.
Uh, no. Lets define
D = n*s, where
s = amount of money sharers would have spent
n = number of sharers who downloaded a shared song
Before unlimited $5.00/month subscriptions existed, s was arguably $17.00 or so times the number of CDs required to cover all of the songs downloaded. Now that you can legally download all those songs for a flat $5.00/month subscription fee, s equals $5.00, not some hypothetically (and always inflated) value of $17.00 x a whole bunch of mostly-rotton one-hit-wonder CDs.
That makes D = n*$5.00 instead of n*$17.00*(whatever big number the RIAA wants to make up).
In other worse, D just got a whole lot smaller, and a whole lot more rigorous in how its defined (you can only multiply by the number of unique downloaders you identify, not that plus a gob of CDs).
So, while $5.00/month damages for a big uplaoder might be wrong, $5.00/month/downloader is correct, and a whole lot less than the $millions/downloader the copyright cartels are currently getting judges to buy into.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
the fine should be greater than $5 times X number of people I allowed to download songs. The RIAA sues uploaders
Vote for Pedro
Cuban is no idiot. He knows that the way to change things is to control the structure of the argument. The music industry has managed to paint their struggle for continued control as a fight between them and "evil music thieves," and now Cuban is reframing the argument so it revolves around the music industry's pricing policies.
Anyone who forms their opinion about music filesharing's effect on the music industry and on creativity solely on the basis of Cuban's comments is a bit dim. But that doesn't diminish the worth of what he's doing by shifting the argument. He's using the broad reach of his blog to re-think the big picture.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is just one row over from "controlled literary substance" and one column up from "thought crime." Though, that last CMS I tried left my ears all numb and tingly. That was some good shit! (Another CMS wasn't much good for listening, but it killed all the mice in my house.)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
No, you mean incandescent.
This is slashdot, after all. Please spell your technological terms correctly. I'm not even going to comment on your punctuation.
The argument is ok so far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far at all.
Regrdless whether the plaintiff suffers any damages at all, and regardless whether the defendant obtains any unjust enrichment from the infringing content, a plaintiff may still elect to obtain statutory damages. The jury gets to determine the amount of statutory damages, but that determination can be no less than $750 PER WORK INFRINGED.
This exceeds $5 per month.
I think just about everyone with enough technical know-how to download music in the first place understands this basic free-not free equation and can see that one leads to a loss of $20 from their pocket while the other alternative does not. I'm betting on most people keeping the $20, but I suppose I could be wrong.
I know when it comes to other things like software there are really very few people that decide to register shareware (5% at best) and the number of people running out to buy a copy of Windows XP after trying a pirated version is about zero. Maybe even slightly negative.
While I dislike the RIAA/MPAA just like the next /.'er, I wholly disagree with this story writers pricing assessment. Part of being sued and penalized for doing something bad is paying a penalty fee. For example: If a company wronged you and you were injured. You do not just sue them for your medical bills (boy does the health insurance industry wish this was the case) - you sue them for more money above and beyond.
So while we hate the stupid prices, and the DRM's - I at least cannot say it is morally right to give the music I bought to strangers on the internet (or to download them).... As such when they sue - yes they can sue for more. I do not know how much is more valid - but $5/month is not an acceptable price.
Though the RIAA/MPAA is suing uploaders, not downloaders.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Once audio, video or print is turned into little ones and zeroes, it becomes impossible to control. You can wrap those ones and zeroes with some DRM pixie dust, but there's always some smarty-pants who can un-DRM them again. There are those still in denial about this, like the RIAA and MPAA executives, but history has proven this out in the last decade or so. Increasingly draconian laws have a short-term effect, but only postpone the inevitable shift to a different model.
Personally, when I get music or video, there are people I want to see paid for my privilege of enjoying the work. The writers, composers, musical artists and actors are at the top of the list, and also the professionals who capture and refine the work. Without them, there wouldn't be content to enjoy, so I want them to be paid. They need to be able to make a living.
Currently, though, a HUGE percentage of the money lines the pockets of people who have little part in the creative process. I don't care to pay them. They are not doing me any good. In fact, they often do me harm, screening thoughtful or poignant content out of the mix because it will somehow make them less money.
So, two problems - (1) we can't effectively control content in exchange for license fees in the digital world, and (2) we want to pay the right people and jettison the baggage. I propose that to solve these problems, a new economics of entertainment content must emerge.
Better, more informed and creative brains than my own need to noodle on this, and we need to quit wasting time arguing about the current, doomed paradigm of entertainment commerce. Of course, thoughts like these will threaten the barons of the entertainment industry - they are slow to move, and have no vested interest in seeing things change. But the status quo can't last forever, and is already on it's last legs.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
If a kid gets sued for $10,000, this implies that Yahoo ought to pony up ($10,000 - $5)*(duration of ostensible piracy sited in lawsuit) per subscriber. Interesting.
It brings up that question only if you leave out most of the details. For $5 you get: to use the music in very specific ways in very specific places. When you stop paying $5 a month you lose everything.
Related topic: be careful with Yahoo's new music player. The MP3 and AAC tag format it uses is incompatible with iTunes. Installing Yahoo Music engine and pointing it at my iTunes music folder resulted in corrupted tags:
(1) It destroys track and disk number of AAC files (none of my MP4 files have track numbers anymore), and it renames them all in the process (stripping the track number from the filename).
(2) It destroys total track count of MP3 files.
(3) On playing an MP3, it overwrites the comments with binary metadata (probably the number of times the file has been played).
It basicly trashed the organisation of almost 4000 of my music files. Files are, fortunately, still playable and it's only their tags and filenames that seem to be damaged. I uninstalled, went back to iTunes and am now trying to repair the damage it did.
And besides the tag mess, Yahoo Music Engine is not as polished as iTunes. It may support more formats, but I dislike the slow user interface (it literally takes a few seconds for the menu to appear when right-clicking on the taskbar icon), and that it tries to sell you music at every turn (including the obnoxious start screen you can't turn off).
iTunes is a media player at heart that happens to have a storefront attached, whereas YME is a storefront posing as a media player - and it appropriately fails to grasp how a decent media player ought to behave. I've never bought music online (and I don't intend to), but for simply organising your own music files, iTunes works far better for me than YME.
"To date, the RIAA is batting .000 in court on end-user lawsuits."
Well, yeah, but they're also batting 1.000. They've won every case that's gone to court!
--
RumorsDaily
He's an attention whore who wishes he was a pundit and a respected journalist. Instead, he's just some guy whining to the people who matter least (i.e., slashdot users). Hey Cuban, why don't you just get a life, stop trying to impress people, and actually *do* something impressive? Oh wait, that's because you're an incompetant clod.
Ya know, at that price ($5/month), it'd cost, what, 260,000,000 * 5 * 12 dollars per year and the ENTIRE UNITED STATES would have access to Yahoo Music Unlimited. That's, let's see, um, around 16 billion dollars a year. Sounds like a big number and it is pretty big, but heck, we're spending like 10 times that in Iraq and Afghanistan every year, seems like we could handle 16 billion a year to give every living human being in the country access to Yahoo's 1 million+ song library on their computer and on their (compatible) MP3 players. I wouldn't view that as a waste of taxpayer money, personally. Heck, for such an enormous package deal like that, and guaranteed income of at least 16 billion dollars annually, they might even throw in CD burning as part of the deal.
I acknowledge all the above posters who say that Mark Cuban is an idiot 'cause he ignored statutory damages.
However, has this argument ever had merit? I skimmed all the UMG v. MP3.com opinions; I imagine the argument (that the actual damages are far lower than the statutory damages) would have been made there.
Anybody have something relatively definitive that I could read about this actual v. statutory damages for copyright conudrum. (diligent google searches and not-so-diligent Lexis searchs haven't yielded anything)
After all, CD's only cost $12-15 each. It would take a lot of CD's to add up to the $100K these folks are supposedly asking for in their suits.
(IANAL)
6. Audible Alarm (not shown)
-from a Cuisinart product owner's manual.
If I download a file, I haven't copied anything, as I've got the one and only file which I've ever had - the original, as far as I am concerned. The machine which sent me the file most likely copied it - reading a file from disk and then sending me bits. It may have also removed those bits from the hard disk when it sent them to me, and hence _not_ copied the file, but I have no way of knowing.
The deeper question is: what's protected? Is it the bits which represent information, or the information itself? If it's the bits, then (except for fair use) simply playing a CD would be copying, since the bits are read from the CD and copied to RAM and then copied again to a DAC. Is it not equivalent "fair use" to let someone else play a CD I own, whether through loan of the CD itself, or by FM broadcast (using FCC legal levels), or by bits sent via network?
If it's the information, then it begs the question - if a CD plays where no one can hear, does it make a sound. i.e. Can the information exist separate from human experience, and if not, can not any number of "bit copies" exist as long as only a single one is producing the copyrighted information (sound) at any time?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's like burning a copy a CD, destroying, the original, and saying, "This one isn't a copy, I don't have the original any more."
Making a backup is also making a copy. Are you meaning to say that I don't have the right to use my backup if my original gets destroyed? Next you'll be saying that I can't make a backup of that backup, even after the original is destroyed.
The symbol for copyright should be a burning candle with a cage of barbed wire around the flame, symbolizing that though you could light your candle at mine without diminishing mine's light, I'm still not going to let you copy my fire.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I'm not a lawyer, but I haven't heard of any law that would make downloading music a fine. SERVING music downloads, though, is a different matter... and with peer-to-peer you're serving when you're downloading unless you're leeching.
If there's an actual case where they went after someone PURELY for downloading, not serving, I'd appreciate a correction.
So, anyway, the crime the RIAA is going after them for, really, is unrelated to how much it costs them to download music from Yahoo. It's how much all the people who downloaded the music FROM THEM would have paid... and if you're on a filesharing network that can be thousands of people... which even at $5/month comes to thousands of dollars.
you could make the same argument for radio. hey, it's FREE to listen to the radio, so the maximum RIAA damages should be $0.00 right?
Haven't you heard? It doesn't matter anymore if anyone downloads it. Just having it available to be downloaded by the public is enough.
To change infringement to theft, it is like saying if your CD collection is stolen and you didn't keep it behind a locked door, you're liable for the theft.
And there is no uploading in P2P. It's all downloading and serving. They are going after the people who are serving.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If I steal a $5 object from a store and I get caught, it doesn't cost me $5. There is a penalty above what it would have cost me to purchase it because there is a chance that I won't get caught. In fact, logically the penalty should be the cost of the item times the inverse of the chance of being caught. So, if there is a one in one-thousand chance of getting caught and the cost is $5, the penalty should be $5,000.
Now, I don't think the penalties should be that harsh, but if someone downloads songs illegally, they have to pay more in penalty than someone that purchases songs legally ahead of time just as the criminal who steals an object from the store pays more in restitution than the person who legally purchases it.
0 / 0 is undefined in most systems.
What kind of nerds are you.
I agree that the penalty phase of punishment is being ignored by the writer. But the current penalties and settlements are far out of line with the economics of the 'crime' and the economics of the accused.
For example, being sued for $150K per song is absolutely ludicrous. Settling for $20K for the whole charge is still ludicrous. Basing a fine on a percentage of a persons annual income and credit score is a better idea. If a person cannot afford a $150K per song fine, or a $20K full fine, than the fine will not be paid. But a fine on 5% to 25% of a persons annual income would be realistic. It would allow the person to know that s/he is being punished without needing to put her/him through bankruptcy and/or forfeit of property. Possibly even taking that person out of the productive workforce.
Fines and penalties in this country have for too long been out of proportion of fitting the crime to the criminal. Basing fines on a percentage of annual incomes would bring penalties to a social fairness.
Sure, the RIAA can charge an "uploader" $5/month for the equivalent upload as I might download from Yahoo. Given the average 40K/s crippled upload cable modem speed, the average "uploader" will be able to push out about 1/100th of what I might get out of Yahoo. The low price of music really does make the actual "damages" low as well.
Music heard on the radio is to music what toilet paper is to literature and should be valued accordingly.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
ourPod
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I just did some research (what a concept) and found out that radio stations do NOT, today, pay royalties.
I just remember my Dad talking about it, decades ago, when he was program director of a major commercial radio station, which is why I was so confident I was right. But decades have passed, so have the way music is marketed and funded, and I was wrong.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
There is a non-zero chance that the downloader owns an actual copy of the CD. Or if not, can easily go purchase the item in case if they get slapped with a lawsuit. Creating a backup copy is considered fair use and it would be hard for the RIAA to prove the date of purchase of the copyrighted material. I am sure they would go after downloaders themselves if it wasn't for this "loophole".
However uploaders can be easily shown not to have a license to distrubute the copyrighted works.
Blah Blah Tacos
If anyone bothered reading the Yahoo service description it isn't a blanket $5 per month for a million songs. You can only download the songs to your media player. If you want to burn the songs you still have to pay 79 cents per song to do that. I don't know how many times you can burn it either. It may be a burn once situation. I can't find any information on that. Also, there is a very limited selection of music players that you are allowed to download the songs to. Otherwise you are stuck listening to them on your PC. This is really not adequate for what most people want and do. Especially those who get the songs from a p2p program.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
Napster-2 did this already.. For a slightly higher price.
Besides, no one is suing people that download, so the whole idea is sort of moot at this point..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How about re-selling MP3's?
Or AAC's? Or WMA's?
cna i download a song of iTunes, decide I don't like it - and sell it to my friend for 80c?
Why not?
A bunch of music for five bucks a month?
Where do I sign up?
Hmm. No Canadians allowed. No problem, I'll just lie about my address. It took it?! GREAT!
Okay, now how the hell do I play the tunes? Apparently, you need a special player. Which works on neither Linux nor Win98.
This service just got unbearably expensive. Anybody have a workaround? A Linux player would be ideal.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Not if they ask for statutory damages - $750 minimum up to 150K for willful infringement per work. Think the RIAA will ask for actual damages instead of this? Not likely.
It's good to be the content owner.
Of course, this is only true if Yahoo has everything the RIAA has copyright for. Which is not the case, I'm sure.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Everyone is so comfortable with placing intellectual properties laws ahead of fair use rights.
We calmly infringe on basic human rights for percieved financial statutes.
SONY, RCA, etc have made it clear they want to imprison people for using techology to replicate their media - and at first the USG will support the (highest-bidder) media conglomerates.
But the RIAA and the current "total control model" enjoyed by media conglomerates will decay like some outdated church who has alienated it's congregation.
How many citizens are prepared to see other citizens imprisoned for digital replication???
Encryption is strictly to keep the participants from getting caught or eavesdropped on, or to help them only upload music to their friends and/or customers, or to help them make sure their customers pay them before they get to see the movie, or similar auxiliary functions. It can help the legitimate content possessors get money from customers or share contents with their friends without illegitimate access, or it can help illegitimate content possessors avoid getting caught by the Content Police.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The question I have is, if he wins, will the rest of us see some benefit from it as well? Sometimes it's handy when big business interests compete with each other, because even though Interest A isn't necessarily fighting Interest B out of a desire to help humanity, the end result can be helpful for us lowly commoners.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
they sue people who host/distribute files so if anything, X uploads times $5/month. So share files with 10 people for a year and the damage is 10 x 12 x $5 = $600, and as many people are being leached by others for many gigs of mp3 per month, you could say that the usual $3000 damages claim may be a cheap way out.
sorry, I don't have any sympathy for thieves or idiots.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
The author of this idea obviously didn't think it through more than five seconds.
As with Napster, the $5 a month is a subscription fee; the music is only playable while you stay subscribed. This isn't true of music that has been pirated over P2P networks or via another source.
Perhaps it would be valid to say the penalty would be $5 a month for the rest of your life. Payable in advance, of course.
Next, if you swap music via P2P, you're not just downloading, you're uploading-- you're contributing to and enabling others' infringements. The industry may well choose, instead of going after each download, to go after every upload. So if one hundred users downloaded a single song from you (or any combination of songs) then your penalty would be $5 a month for the rest of your life, times one hundred.
If you're twenty, and you expect to live until eighty, that's $360,000. Not millions of dollars, to be sure, but not anything that anyone would want to have to pay.
Oh, and burnable downloads? That costs extra. Since every pirated track is burnable, they'd probably try to assess that, too.
"beyond reasonable doubt" -- which, I admit, is often interpreted as "shadow of a doubt" since "reasonable" differs so much from person to person -- but other than that: Spot on.
1. Create a stack (about 100) large MS Word documents, all around the 3MB mark in size. If you like, you could fill the documents up with text such as: "RIAA, a bunch of fools" or whatever floats your boat!
2. Rename all files to something like: Britney - One More Time.mp3 or Greenday - American Idiot.oog and then place all files for FREE download from your website.
3. Wait for the RIAA to send you threatening letters, because we all know they will NOT check the actual content of the files...
4. Sue for deformation/slander (or whatever you can).
The goal of this exercise would be to teach those people the dangers of assumption! or something like that ;)
Dr Evil
$5 a month for the rest of your life? That is $60 a year, and say it's a college student, he's got 70 more years of life to go -- $4200, which is still larger than the average settlement (which I believe is somewhere around $3000).
Why is 150k per song ludicrous? They are breaking the law...and who knows - maybe they are estimating they gave out each song 100 times (not too unreasonable) and there are penalty costs.
Basing a fine on a percentage of a persons annual income and credit score is a better idea.
No I do not think so. First this can be so abused. Second what if the person doesn't have an income or they are making 10k a year. What they are supposed to pay a few hundred bucks? And, not to mention, our society legal system does not work that.
You are trying to protect the criminal here - and I hope you are not saying it is OK to upload/download songs that are not public domain music.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Netscape sells the service for $5/month, but if you read the fine print you will see that among the many limits is the fact that you will lose access to the songs you downloaded unless you keep up your subscription. If you want to keep and burn the songs, it is 79 cents/song.
So, if you are going to use Netscape as a marker for damages, the amount would be 79 cents per downloaded song or $5/month for the rest of your life.
Assuming you are 20 years old and live to 80, that's 60 years, or 720 months of paid subscription. At the steady rate of $5, the damages come to $3600 - right about (or more than) what the music industry is settling for these days. This is assuming you pre-pay in one big lump for the rest of your life and that there is no inflation in price over 60 years - for ease just let those two cancel each other out.
In other words, frankly this new "argument" is dumb.
No I do not think so. First this can be so abused. Second what if the person doesn't have an income or they are making 10k a year. What they are supposed to pay a few hundred bucks? And, not to mention, our society legal system does not work that.
I am just suggesting a solution that would seem to be more economically sound than our current fixed rate system.
Giving a $200 traffic fine to someone driving a $70K Hummer-2 with a family annual income over $200K doesn't make sense. It will not be a large enough penalty to discourage further offenses. Giving a $200 traffic fine to a single mother on welfare driving a $1K Yugo (if that) might mean some foodless days ahead and/or suspension of license (risking jail) for failure to pay the fine. In the first example, the fine is like a bug bite - small and of little consequence. The last example, the file is too large - you might as well have hacked off an arm and broken a leg.
You are trying to protect the criminal here - and I hope you are not saying it is OK to upload/download songs that are not public domain music.
I am not trying to protect any criminals nor condone any criminal activities. I am merely suggesting that fines should be based upon the ability to pay; the rich should pay enough to feel the fine, the poor should feel like they have been fined but not cause extreme personal financial problems.
I am not trying to protect any criminals nor condone any criminal activities. I am merely suggesting that fines should be based upon the ability to pay; the rich should pay enough to feel the fine, the poor should feel like they have been fined but not cause extreme personal financial problems.
In this society, those would be discriminatory laws and not allowed. Because someone is rich they have to pay more then someone who is poor? That is unfair and absurd in our way of life.
Now half the battle of a lawsuit is getting the money. So you may sue a family for 100k and win, but if the family does not have that money they can't pay it - and you don't necessarily go to jail because you CANT pay, you go to jail if you refuse to pay. Also, judges sometimes adjust monetary penalties on a case-by-case.
In the end, the person who did the uploading broke the law - and in cases such as this, I would safely say that almost all of us know it is illegal to upload music.
I would love to do a $15/upload but it is very hard, if not impossible, to tell how much a person has uploaded.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I sent them the christina aguilera album they popped me on....they were happy someone bought and dropped the case
You seem to have emitted the fact that the single mother on welfare shouldn't have been blatantly breaking the law if she didn't want a fine. In addition to this, the law states that you wouldn't lose your car if it's the sole mode of supporting ones self.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
In this society, those would be discriminatory laws and not allowed. Because someone is rich they have to pay more then someone who is poor? That is unfair and absurd in our way of life.
I do not believe a fine based upon a percentage of annual income would be discriminatory. A 5% fine could be applied equally. The person making $200K would pay $10K, a person making $20K would pay $1K. This would be less discriminatory than our Federal income tax system. This would also satisfy the purpose of fines for penalties - to discourage further offences.
This would be less discriminatory than our Federal income tax system
Your a Republican aren't you?
We are talking about penalties for breaking the law - i have no sympathy. It sucks for the person who has to sell his life - but he shouldn't have started an uploading fest.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
A sixteen year old is found in posession of 40K songs on his home server. There is no record the accused has uploaded or downloaded the songs, but with no physical data medium the accused has commited a copyright violation.
Using the RIAA's reasoning and iTunes pricing the plaintiff has infringed $40K of gross profit.
Accepting Cuban's reasoning, the defendant has reduced the plaintiff infringed's gross by $3840.
The average life span for a person in the U.S. is 80 years. The subscription fee is only $60 a year.
Non punitive judgements are often given based on the lifetime worth to the plaintiff had the unlawful action not occured. Under Cuban's model the plaitiff will typically receive no more than $5000 per judgement, and in that case, the infringer would have to download from the womb.
Under Cuban's model, unless a very large number of cases can be processed cheaply, or punitive measure's pursued forcefully, it's not worth the expense to file.
I got no problem voting with my feet.
I, for one, welcome our $5/month music uploading overlords.
Your a Republican aren't you?
I am an independent with progressive liberal ideals. The current administration causes me much grief over policies and laws passed & proposed, as well as the continued increase in corporate influence.
We are talking about penalties for breaking the law - i have no sympathy. It sucks for the person who has to sell his life - but he shouldn't have started an uploading fest.
I also have little sympathy for criminals - as long as the law that was broken was just, fair, non-discriminatory, placed citizen interests above corporate, and any punishment dealt be fair to victim and offender (except in certain cases, both victin and offender should be able to resume a fair life after the penalty phase has passed).
Copyright law in this country started out on the correct path, but has now been side-tracked onto a path of corporate/industry dominance. The time used for protection of works needs to be dropped back to original levels, and corporations/industries should be limited in copyright ownership. As pertaining to music, the individuals involved in writing the music, writing the lyrics (if any), studio performance, live performance, should own the copyrights and should have ability to license to corportations/industry. The actual people that are copyright owners should have control of their music, not corporations.
The music writers, lyricists, and performers should be going after these file sharers, not these corporate interests.
You seem to have emitted the fact that the single mother on welfare shouldn't have been blatantly breaking the law if she didn't want a fine.
People are only human and occasionally break laws by accident. Drivers can get caught up in the mad rush on the roadways and exceed speed limits because of conformity. Dozens of reasons exist for breaking speed laws, some offenders are blatant in their disregard, others are accidental.
In addition to this, the law states that you wouldn't lose your car if it's the sole mode of supporting ones self.
Yes, some/most states/communities have hardship clauses that an offender can use to continue driving. I was making a point and didn't see the need to stretch the verbage to cover all cases.
also have little sympathy for criminals - as long as the law that was broken was just, fair, non-discriminatory, placed citizen interests above corporate
I have a problem with this last part. The citizen interest over corporate. We are talking about a situation where a private citizen screwed over a corporate entity...Now it is easy to say "ahh screw the megacorporation" but that mega corporation employs people. In this case the law does not to consider the private consumer over the corporate - it needs to punish the private consumer for screwing over someone/thing else.
Copyright law affects everyone for good or bad. I can create something and copyright it JUST like a big corporation can. The law applies to me just as equally as to them. But without getting into an argument if copyright is right or wrong (and this is not the thread for it really) - presently it is the law and we are discussing penalties.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I have a problem with this last part. The citizen interest over corporate.
I am just stating my opinion that the law should not favor corporate interests over the interests of citizens. Corporations should not only provide income to itself and shareholders, but should also be responsible for any employees. Going further, corporations should be responsible for legal aspects of products & services produced and the local, national, & international environments it is affecting.
If a corporation breaks a law, the corporation should be fined enough to send a clear message to the CXXs and any shareholders that the offending behavior will not be tolerated. Far too often corporations are given small fines that do not discourage offensive behavior.
Copyright law affects everyone for good or bad. I can create something and copyright it JUST like a big corporation can. The law applies to me just as equally as to them.
At this moment and for the foreseeable future, yes. I would greatly like to see the copyright system changed as stated in the previous message.
But without getting into an argument if copyright is right or wrong (and this is not the thread for it really) - presently it is the law and we are discussing penalties.
I have noticed that I have wandered off-topic a bit here. My apologies.
I think we have both made our cases for penalty here, and I think we both understand each others position. Let me know if the case is otherwise.
Corporations should not only provide income to itself and shareholders, but should also be responsible for any employees. Going further, corporations should be responsible for legal aspects of products & services produced and the local, national, & international environments it is affecting.
:) I do that sometimes myself
Corporations do this. I work for a corporation and I get paid, i get benefits, etc. My corporation also donates to local organizations - many corporatons do this. Corporations are legally responsible for their products and services as well as the environment they affect. This is really nothing new so far.
At this moment and for the foreseeable future, yes. I would greatly like to see the copyright system changed as stated in the previous message.
As would many others, but there has to be a proposal that is equally suited for the corporations and private consumers. Corporations deserve laws that protect their interests just as much as private citizens. Why? Because corporations employee people, and corporations pay taxes - the taxes corporations pay is more then that of all the non-corp businesses. Again the laws swing both ways.
I have noticed that I have wandered off-topic a bit here. My apologies.
Thats alright
I think we have both made our cases for penalty here, and I think we both understand each others position. Let me know if the case is otherwise.
We both want things to be fair. Hopefully better laws will come about...i think many laws are made poorly - but I see other countries and realize ours is doing a better job, not perfect, but better.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Sure, Yahoo might sell music for $X dollars, but that shouldn't matter. I can grab a CD for $15, but if the RIAA sued me, I would have to pay a lot more than $15. The reason being, is that I could have distributed that content to 20,000 people, which means that the RIAA *potentially* lost out on 20,000 x $X. So what if Yahoo sells music for 5 bucks.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
Well, if that really is the value, then one could presumably make a lifetime subscription. If you invested $1800 at 2.9% (an entirely reasonable rate of return) you could take $5 a month from it for just shy of 70 years. Make that $1900 and you could do it effectively forever, in lifetime terms. I've spent over $1900 on CDs. As far as I can see that's a reasonable subscription price if the service is worth $5/month. Of course, what if the cost of subscription goes up over time? With a 6.5% ROR you can withdraw $10/month forever. Since you'd be starting at $5/month, I don't see why you wouldn't end up with a larger account in a few years - big enough to accept the eventual price hikes. In other words, it's entirely possible to figure out the value of a lifetime subscription, which is much lower than the cost the RIAA likes to use.
I'm suprised how people think I'm being serious. Don't you get the reference? Please to visit the Wikipedia.
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
You have no guarantee you can play your CDs 5 years from now either. If one gets scratched or broken, you have to buy it again.
Give serendipity a chance.