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P2P Defendant Destroys Evidence, Case Defaults
neoflexycurrent writes "A court in Texas has thrown the book at a defendant accused by the RIAA of file sharing. The court determined that she had intentionally wiped her hard drive clean, so it entered the most severe sanction possible — default judgment against her. The record companies now just have to ask the court how much they want in damages."
I'm still impressed by what can be considered copyright infringement under the US law, and how exaggerately high the compensation for damages can be.
If they were to be fair, I think they should charge with $1 for each Mp3, since that's what it would cost her to buy them through iTunes (or maybe $2, or $10, since she could make copies, but nothing near $150,000), and the costs of the trial.
My 0.02 cents
If copying a copyrighted song counts as theft, does deleting the evidence count as giving it back? Shouldn't that warrant a reduced sentence?
I think copyright infridgement should be just that: I infringed someone's copy rights. I think it should apply when I'm trying to earn money using someone's work without their authorization, or when I'm trying to claim the copyright on something ilegitimately.
I think those concepts should be clearly separated from "getting a song at no cost from some other peer". Maybe you'd like to claim it's also ilegal, but I don't think "Copyright infrigdement" can apply to both.
PS: The difference? The money involved.
My 0.02 cents
In order to prevent a crime you must make the penalty equal or greater than the gain divided by the chance of getting caught
But for the justice system to be perceived as fair, you must make the penalty commensurate with the crime. Otherwise you end up with a situation like this, where people are punished very severely for crimes that are so trivial that the authorities do not usually bother to investigate them.
A similar phenomenon could be seen before the establishment of modern police forces, when criminals would be hanged or transported to Australia for trivial thefts. At the time, this was justified in the same way, but looking back on it now, we regard it as barbaric.
She "stole" 200 songs, yes? Say 15 albums. What do you think the punishment is for busting a store window and stealing 15 albums? I'd wager it's far less than $150,000 per song. If the record companies are going to oversimplify things and call it stealing, they should be forced to accept the same penalties as judgement.
I think you mean the majority of the people under 18. Most adults would consider it theft whether they'd do it themselves or not.
In my experience - rubbish.
Large numbers of adults of all ages are copying music to each other, especially using more traditional methods such as tape/CD copying. These same people would consider it abhorrent to steal something.
For most people, saying "Would you like this CD? I just nicked it from the shop the other day" would be unthinkable, but offering a copy of a CD, even to someone who disagrees with any form of copyright infringement, is considered okay.