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White House Lauds MN RIAA Win, Analysis of Victory
cnet-declan writes "The Bush administration's copyright czar says the RIAA's $222,000 recent jury verdict against a Minnesota woman shows copyright law is 'effective' and working as planned. C|Net's coverage has comments from Chris Israel, the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement. Israel is formerly a senior Commerce Department official appointed by President Bush in July 2005 who previously worked for Time Warner's public policy arm (Warner Bros. Records is one of the plaintiffs in the RIAA case). The site also features an interview with Rep. Rick Boucher, no fan of the RIAA, on whether Congress will change the law, an analysis of why U.S. copyright law is broken, and four reasons why the RIAA won."
Before simply emoting over incomplete detail's of Ms. Thomas' problem, first try not to be played by the media and review the FACTS of this case: FACT1: Ms. Thomas wasn't in court for "only 24 songs" - in fact, her Kazza computer files contained 1,726 copyrighted pieces of music illegally downloaded. FACT2: Ms. Thomas was offered a settlement by the RIAA of a fine of $4,000.00 TOTAL - Ms. Thomas refused and decided to take her chances with a trial. FACT3: The 24 illegally downloaded items were the focus of the trial as Kazza computer records showed subsequent illegal sharing with 110,481 other illegal downloads. As technology changes it allows us to do things never before possible - just because we CAN do these things doesn't mean that they become legal by default. Q1: Do you support the right of persons, groups, companies and corporations to own intellectual property? Q2: If yes to Q1, do you then agree that these entities are entitled to determine the use and distribution of their property within existing commercial statutes? Q3: Of what value would the commercial statutes be if they weren't backed by force of law? Q4: Should the laws be applied differently based on a person's socio-economic status?