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Considering a Fair Penalty For Illegal File-sharing
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt, following up on yesterday's announcement of the 1.5 million dollar verdict against Jammie Thomas: "This week a federal jury handed down the verdict in the third file-sharing trial against a Minnesota mother of four who has been fighting against the charges brought by the RIAA since 2005. Understandably, a lot of people are outraged by this verdict and while reading through comments about the fine on some online forums, I saw some interesting opinions on how these fines should be assessed. The point that $62,500 per song is excessively high seems to be something that everyone can agree on, but what actually is fair seems to be a big point of contention."
Let the convicted turn over the proceeds from their crime to the victim. Problem solved.
flat fine for non profit use sharing. Its enough to make people think twice and not destroy their lives.
Now, if you are selling advertising, or songs making a profit in any way, it should be based on the specific event. Fox using a song in a movie should be fined more then a person who sold a song for a dollar.
Only for distribution, downloading can not be make illegal. You can not expect consumers to be responsible for the crimes of the merchant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thats not the way the justice system is supposed to work: the punishment must fit the crime. For example, one could mandate the death penalty for something like littering in order to deter even the rich from littering. This would certainly meeting the criteria of being equally unfair to everyone, but it isn't justice. Justice is about being fair to everyone - not the opposite.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Choosing any amount will allow those rich enough to simply ignore the law.
You have inadvertently re-invented the US judicial system. Bad AC, bad!
not based on a per-song basis. charge what the songs cost on a retail (or equiv) basis. there shold NOT BE A MULTIPLIER EFFECT going on.
that's the problem people keep missing.
remove this multiplier crap. that does not work and there is no 'pay a higher pentalty' for having an album's worth of songs vs just 1.
if the act is wrong, punish the act.
they don't lock you up for shoplifting based on how many POUNDS of material you stole. or what its square yardage is. why are people so willing to accept the per-song penalty multiplier?
songs cost what they cost (lets save that for another debate). if I 'stole' 10 songs and they go for a dollar each, that's $100. and yes, for a regular person, that's a lot of money and will make them think twice about doing this again (or rather, getting caught). but it will NOT ruin them for life with lawyer bills and riaa bills.
no multiplier for songs. get that solved right off.
the actual penalty is a fixed amount. I don't care what that is, but at least its the same amount and one that can at least be rationally discussed.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
What is a download? Is a $0.99 song a download that would be OK to "pirate?" What about a video game that cost a company $50 million to create? If it was legal, why would anyone buy it instead of "pirating" it? Who would pay for its production? What incentive would there be to create any but the most trivial digital content?
Has it occurred to you that you are proposing the destruction of the value of human labor on a massive scale?
What if I make $100 per song selling your songs, and you lose $500 in sales because I undersold you? Still $50/song then?
So someone who accidentally shares their music library for a couple days...
Should not be in court at all, since there is no intent to commit a crime or violate copyright.
Is showing an explicit intent to both violate copyright by copying AND distributing, and since it is torrent, is probably profiting in some other way (getting files in exchange that he would otherwise have to pay for).
Because taking 10% from me is nothing like taking 10% from a minimum wage earner. I would put less in savings or go out less, he might not be able to eat.
Community service is far more fair.
Um, no, rich people are rich because their parents are rich, and their friends are rich, and they get lucky. Poor people are typically poor because they don't know any rich people they can get rich off of.
Like, say you live in a shanty town in Kenya. How are you supposed to get rich by "valuing your time" more than everyone else?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Why would anybody go through the trouble and expense to create quality movies, tv, music, books, software etc if it's legal to just take the end product without paying? Sure, some people will pay out of principle, but if it's perfectly legal most people will just take it. Without funding, I'm sure there will still be hobby projects, but nothing on the scale we currently enjoy.
People who desire such works will continue to pay for them. If there aren't enough people willing to pay, some things won't get created. And that's OK. If people aren't willing to pay for it, then they don't value it highly, so it's no loss if it's not created.
To effectively prevent piracy the penalty has to be such that PenaltyAmount * ProbabilityOfGettingCaught > SavingsByPirating. Right now the chance of getting caught is quite low, so the fine has to be quite high.
See, this is the problem. Any sane system of justice has the concept of proportionality. i.e. the punishment must fit the crime. In the Judeo-Christian ethic, it's expressed as "an eye for an eye". If you start taking a head for an eye, you degrade respect for the entire system of justice. That hurts everyone.
Perhaps the problem is actually that the *IAA isn't suing enough people. If ProbabilityOfGettingCaught was close to 1, the PenaltyAmount could be quite close to the actual value of the item pirated
The only way to approach a 1:1 chance of getting caught is to track every single bit of data that goes over the network. This would be worse from a civil rights perspective (4th amendment) that we'd be better off just banning computers entirely. Either way, without computers, or burdened with an incredibly costly surveillance infrastructure we'd be at a significant economic disadvantage.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
No monetary figure will be fair because it is sound. Sound is naturally free. The music industry has finally hit the wall of nature. Good!
Song is the reward you get for writing music.(Also natural) Performing music is work and should be rewarded fairly. This assures worthy musicians a chance to make a living.
No industry is required for this scenario. A parasite clinging to musicians and sucking the life and music out of them while holding the world hostage to the artificial taste of music derived by its ability to be sold by the current marketing dweebs is not natural.
Nature is killing the music industry. The only humane thing to do is to euthanize it by cutting off its flow of income. Carry on , as you were.
In any revolution, there are casualties. Perhaps organizing a little off the books fund to help this family get new identities and escape an undeserved fate by legalese.
Meanwhile others will suffer while we allow this monster to live.
Quit paying for music. Period.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I would tweak this slightly, and say that we should legalize (or at least make non-actionable) otherwise infringing behavior when it is non-commercial and engaged in by natural persons, but aside from that, I agree with you.
And let's all remember that there is solid proof that this is viable: Until 1710, and then only in England, copyright didn't exist, people could copy works freely (assuming that the state didn't engage in censorship of those works, a separate issue), yet plenty of creative works were created. All the works of classical Greece and Rome, all the works of the Renaissance, all the plays of Shakespeare (which were themselves almost all unauthorized adaptations of earlier works, and subject to piracy), were created without the benefit of copyright.
Copyright might be useful, but it is not necessary. And if it ceases to be useful -- that is, if it ceases to provide a greater benefit to the public than the harm it causes -- it should be fixed, or failing that, abandoned.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This is the main point. Copyright infringement is not a crime. Repeat after me: "Copyright infringement is not a crime". It is a civil matter.
There should be no automatic court imposed penalty because it is not a crime. It is a civil matter. If the complainant wishes to sue for punitive damages then they can. Otherwise, the court should award based on damages. How those damages are calculated is dependent upon the suit.
The problem here is that the RIAA's team of lawyers successfully argued that their damages were in the $1.5 million range. I don't agree with them. Many people don't agree with them. But the court decided otherwise. It's too bad.
Should we have a cap on damages? Hell no! Why would we? If you burn down my house, but you are an otherwise nice person I should still be able to sue you to replace my house. Even if you did it by accident. Burning down my house by accident is not a crime. I'm not punishing you. I'm trying to replace my house.
Copyright infringement that is done by accident can also create damages. You *should* be able to sue for those damages. If I am an author and send a book to a publisher then I can reasonably expect to be paid. If in some incredible fluke of the universe the publisher distributed my book by accident but didn't receive any money for it, I *should* be able to sue them -- even though it was an accident. There shouldn't be one law for businesses and another for ordinary people; even if those ordinary people are very nice people.
It is reasonable to assume that someone seeding a file for a few hours does less damage than someone seeding at high speed for a year. IIRC though, the RIAA has argued that the distribution of one file is equivalent to the distribution of multiple copies -- because then others can further distribute the files. This is a ridiculous argument -- I can be held responsible for my own actions, but not for the actions of others. I think this is the basis for the huge award and it is just as wrong as having a cap on the award.
Arguing for a cap on penalties runs right into the arms of the RIAA. They *want* to make copyright infringement a crime so that they don't have to pursue damages themselves. They can sick the police on people instead. Creating a fine based system enables their logic.
hitting a road worker in a work zone is a MAX fine of like $10,000 so how can file sharing HAVE A FINE THIS HIGH?
Ah, see, here's your problem: that road worker forgot to donate millions of dollars to legislators. A common mistake. Better luck next time.
You're suggesting rich people should be penalised [sic] more on the abstract basis that they happen to be more wealthy?
Isn't there already a precedent in the United States Tax Code for this?
On first look, progressive and even flat-rate taxes can appear to punish the wealthy and award the poor.
However, wealth is generated from society. Those with the most wealth have not only benefited the most but consumed the most. If you own your business, you benefit from a good local state-ran school because your employees, customers and suppliers send their children there. If there were no state-ran schools your employees would demand greater remuneration, your suppliers greater profits and your customers would buy less because they would have the additional expense of schooling. The quality of the school in the past has also affected the quality of your workforce and the incomes of your customers.
To do what you are saying, to eliminate the market for my work through government fiat, is to commit a crime against me.
No. The market for a work is governed by how well received the work is, basically. An unpopular work has no market, regardless of copyright. A popular work has a big market, regardless of copyright. All copyright does is act as a funnel, diverting most of whatever money there is to be had to the copyright holder. The actual amount of money that can be funneled depends on the work's reception, though.
Anyway, the only reason you have a copyright to begin with is by government fiat. Copyrights don't exist naturally. Authors are not naturally entitled to prohibit third parties from making copies (an exercise of their freedom of speech). Copyright is entirely artificial, and exists for utilitarian purposes. If the people, in a legitimate democratic society, want to abolish copyright, that is their right, for they are the same people who created it to begin with.
I'm sure I speak for literally everyone in the world other than you, when I say that we'd all be happy to voluntarily, temporarily, give up part of our natural right of free speech as applied to your work, so that you can charge monopoly prices to in order to try to support yourself. But we're only going to do it if the loss we suffer by doing so (i.e. not being free to do as we like with it, having to pay monopoly prices) is outweighed by the benefit we receive by doing so.
Feel free to offer a convincing reason why it is in the public benefit for us to deign to have the governments which our consent empowers give you a copyright. I think there are good reasons, and I support the overall idea of copyright, but I'd like to hear you make your case.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.