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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."
No monetary figure will be fair. Choosing any amount will allow those rich enough to simply ignore the law.
The only fair way to make it is if anyone (person, organisation or company) commits copyright infringement they are
financially ruined and bankrupted. That is the only way such a law can be equally fair to everyone. Yes its unfair but
it is equally unfair to everyone and not just the poorer people.
Let the convicted turn over the proceeds from their crime to the victim. Problem solved.
Any more stupid questions?
Maximum of $50/song with a maximum total cap of $50,000. And there should be a sliding scale based on the actual amount of data transferred. So someone who accidentally shares their music library for a couple days doesn't get the same penalty as someone who seeds torrents on their company's 100mbit tube for a year.
I rest my case
Abolish copyright. Problem solved.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Gaybies?
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
This is the fairest method I can think of:
1. Find out how many people obtained the song from that source
2. Find out that given a set of X people, what percentage would have purchased the song - this is the difficult part, but I'm sure you could aggregate data from online purchasing sites or something. Or even better - grab a bunch of people from the street - give them a pre-decided price, ask them whether the song is worth X dollars.
3. This person pays for the copies of the people would have purchased it otherwise. If its one of those 99 cent songs on itunes, then he probably won't be paying much.
That is pretty much how much they cost when buying from Amazon or iTunes. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
The fairest penalty is no penalty. We need to end the war on sharing by legalizing noncommercial copyright infringement. I know this is not a popular view. But this stalemate can't last forever. One side has to win. Either piracy or anti-piracy will win.
Given a choice between the two, I choose piracy. Because if anti-piracy wins, the resultant changes to internet policy and enforcement would be something straight out of dystopian science fiction. All data transmitted across the internet would have to be monitored and checked for copyright violations. It would require aggressive internet filtering and surveillance on a scale that makes the Great Firewall of China look like child's play. 1984 was not supposed to be a guidebook...
Moreover, there's plenty of evidence that it's possible to run a content business on the internet without charging per digital download. Plenty of people do it. In short: yes, you can compete with free.
Legalize file sharing by legalizing noncommercial copyright infringement. It's the only way.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
For adults doing it for personal use who can't be bothered to pay for what they buy:
I would go with a civil penalty of 1x the retail cost of the songs, along with a no-jail-time misdemeanor criminal penalty at the discretion of the prosecutor for 2nd time offenders and those who are clearly doing it as a means of civil disobedience. Criminal charges would only work if prosecutors were protected from pressure from the record companies. Otherwise the criminal justice system becomes an arm of the recording industry, which is far worse than the current practice of suing people into bankruptcy. Civil disobedience only works if there is a price to be paid and you are willing to pay it.
For adults who knowingly leave their computers open for anyone to copy an substantial number of songs and who aren't extremely naive, I'd probably start with a no- or weekends-only-jail-time misdemeanor offense plus stick them with a civil-penalty bill for any downloads by people who were outside the reach of the courts. I wouldn't throw someone in jail unless the actual civil damages - at about $1 song/download not counting the exclusions below - were well into the 5 figures. I would not bill them for downloads by others who downloaded them only for the purpose of sharing them or downloads by police or plaintiffs, as those clearly do not represent lost sales by any stretch of the imagination.
For those who make their "warez" available on a commercial scale, I'd up the ante to a jail-time misdemeanor and possible forfeiture of their computers on the first offense.
In any case, the record companies shouldn't get any more than if the person bought all the songs on the open market, plus reasonable attorney's fees. In other words, they wouldn't make any profit.
For teenagers and very young adults I'd probably go with a more creative approach: Write an essay on the history of copyright law and its positive and negative effects on the creative arts, and garnish a reasonable portion of their wages for a year or until the civil judgment is paid off whichever comes first. Only in rare cases - usually ones where parents actively encouraged the copying knowing it was illegal - would I make the parents pay the bill.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I should point out that I am an American citizen and have served on juries before. My comments are specific to the US legal system and may not be applicable to that of Canada, the UK, and other countries.
Having served on a couple of US juries I can assure you all that juries can contain people who are technologically illiterate. The last time I served on a jury, which was 5 years ago, I was shocked when 3 or 4 guys on the jury basically got into a contest to see who could claim to be the stupidest when it came to technology. I have never seen anything like this in my life, but these guys took turns trying to top each other and convince everyone on the jury that they were the stupidest person there was when it came to technology. There were exactly 2 people out of 13 (1 was an alternate) who had an IT background and I was one of those.
So on top of having people with weak to non-existent technology skills you may run into these people who see the world in black and white and want to punish evil doers. We had one of those on my jury. They tend to always be biased against defendants and want to apply the harshest sentence possible. I've read about this woman's various trials and she has had very poor lawyers and on top of that, jurors reported that they were sure she had lied in court and was completely guilty of the charges. I think she's a nut job who thinks she can beat the charges. So considering all of that, I can't say I'm surprised she got screwed with a fine she can never pay. Her life will be ruined as even thought the RIAA knows they'll never get the full amount, they can garnish her wages forever.
Illegal upload, just charge a flat 1000 per song, which is enough to deter most illegal uploaders.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Don't distribute copyrighted material on the internet without permission?
When you do, don't purger yourself and destroy the evidence after you receive a subpoena.
When you lose, but there is another offer on the table, seriously consider taking it; particularly if you've puregerred yourself and destroyed evidence.
Don't claim your innocence and disregard your responsibility after you've puregerred yourself and destroyed evidence.
Based on the MPAA marketing that piracy is theft, then the punishment should obviously be what it is for stealing a copy of that item.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
From the article:
The fines would become even more complicated when you consider how much money a record label is actually losing for the illegally-shared songs.
Another fine example that shows how pre-conceived people's notions on file-sharing are. Where's proof that file-sharing is actually making a record label lose money? It might just as well be that it makes a song more popular, to the point where people go out & buy the media. I'm not saying that's the case, but the opposite isn't true beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt either. P2P activity vs. sales plots may show correlation, not cause. More likely it depends... on what song, what band, when it was shared, where it was shared, etc. And varying with time - at some put it may hurt sales, other times it may help sales.
Personally I think that laws should result from obvious findings (something that everyone can see & agree on). Preferably combined with cold, hard math. In the absence of such obvious / irrefutable facts, we should just cut the red tape & scrap those laws. Or limit their scope to the point that we can (accurately!) measure their effect.
I think we can all agree that copyright infringement to make a profit needs high damages. People who are copying a video and then selling those copies on the streets deserve a high penalty to offset all the in-gotten-gains and compensate the copyright owners for the lose of sales (since people actually bought the item, possibly thinking it was legit). I think those damages can actually stay were they are to be honest with you. However, for personal use, and non-profit, it should probably be capped at 10-20x the actual value of the item infringed upon.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
My suggestion would to be to
1) Estimate how much the average person spends per year on the type of entertainment infringed on as a percentage of income.
5.4% of income is spent on entertainment, and 3.4% of entertainment budget is on music. So 5.4*3.4 = .2% of total income is spent on music.
http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-the-average-us-consumer-spends-their-paycheck/
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/video-games-score-5-of-u-s-household-entertainment-budget/
Then take that number times the individuals income. So say 25,000 for the average individual.
25,000*.002= 50$
So that is the base amount for that individual. Now that can be multiplied times a penalty factor for willful infringement, etc.
The RIAA stops suing people, but continues keeping an eye on filesharers. People who are found not to distribute files get loyalty incentives like early listens to new albums, a couple free tracks every month, front-of-the-line privileges for concert tickets, all that kind of stuff. People who the RIAA does see distributing aren't punished, but they're locked out of all these cool little freebies.
It's a clearly imperfect idea, but while we're brainstorming here, why not consider an option that's all carrot and no stick? File sharing isn't going anywhere, astronomical damage awards or not. Maybe they can win back a few customers with the kind of rewards program every major retail operation has used for years?
No possibility to sue, put a small levy on blank media. Problem solved, works good pretty much everywhere in the world it's done.
Om, nomnomnom...
Over time, I could see the percentage claimed back from sharers rising, as copyright owners eschew traditional sales channels and rely more on infringemnt-prone web based channels, until all songs are distributed "virally" and (somehow) everyone pays the few pennies each that actually goes to the writers & performers - and the record companies become irrelevant and fade away.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
But, if the material that has been copied is a cover version, then the damages should go to the original author, not the person that recorded a cheap, easy knockoff.
If I am caught shoplifting, do I have to pay for the goods I took? No I return those goods, and then pay a fine to the government. For a larger scale crime, I return the goods, and am sent to jail. Why is it that when it is digital suddenly the music industry gets to turn a huge profit? If someone tries to skip the bill at my restaurant, can I suddenly sue them for millions of dollars? Go ahead and fine the folks who download songs. Maybe cut them off from the internet after a few strikes. Maybe issue them a fine like we do with people who run stop signs. But they owe nothing to the RIAA.
How about $0.00 per song downloaded and/or shared? Now that would be a fair penalty for what he did.
The song penalty should be about the same as the record companies are hit with when they rip off their artists.
Since there is no accurate way (not even remotely) to determine how many lost sales there were from sharing a song I'd say it's utter nonsense to base a fine on that.
A fixed fine per song seems the most fair to me. Considering I can purchase songs online for a dollar or less I'd say the fine per song should be somewhere in the lines of 2 to 5 dollar tops.
Both the industry as the legal institutions have to get out of their caves. The world has changed, movies, albums, songs don't have the status anymore they had 20 years ago.
Even the most casual music listener has thousands upon thousands of songs in their libraries. A mp3 hardly has any value at all anymore.
It sucks for the big boys in the industry, multi billion dollar profits down the drain for two reasons.
1. Technology ripped their monopoly to pieces, the multi billion profit days are over, forever. Suck it...
2. They missed the boat when they had the chance. They should have looked at Napster as a new market, not the root of all evil.
They laughed at Steve Jobs when he was trying to get iTunes store from the ground. Look who's laughing now. He has the music industry by it's balls. They could have done that themselves but didn't.
It's their own fucking mistake, common citizens shouldn't have to bleed for that.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
The fine for DUI is less and that is with all the fess added together.
even 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?
Hell you can shop lift cd's and pay like a max fine of $500
they don't do it by pounds
there sure as shit do it by value of goods
my state for example
value of goods- law charged
0-200 dollars of value- it's misdemeanor shoplifting
200-500 fourth degree
500-75 thousand, third degree
shoplift 75 thousand or more, get second degree
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
A summation, for all different instances of infringement: The number of total data bits uploaded in this instance of infringement DIVIDED by number of bits in the actual file being uploaded TIMES number of tenths of a second of audio or video in the file DIVIDED BY total number of tenths of a second of audio or video in the file TIMES the proportion of perceptible copyright content during that time duration TIMES the greater of $1 or the minimum price the publisher ever sold or licensed at least that many tenths of a second of that work for on the market PLUS A penalty capped at 10% of the greater of the infringer's Gross income and the parent's gross income, if a parent is responsible calculated as ( fixed dollar penalty for infringing activities TIMES the number of overt intentional acts of infringement )
Where each overt intentional act must be proven, intent must be proven, and there must be at least one intentional act of infringement to warrant a penalty.
An act of infringement is an act of infringement taken with full knowledge of the human TIMES the number of infringements they will have knowledge of in advance. For example, uploading a file, placing a file on someone else's anonymous FTP server is one act of infringement. The uploader has committed one infringement.
Sending an e-mail to 3 people is 3 acts of infringement. Even if two of those 3 e-mail addresses is invalid, and the message never gets delivered to anyone, or generates bounces and gets delivered to a bunch of admins, with the infringing content.
Downloading a copyright file using Bittorrent is 0 acts of intentional infringement, if the downloader is unaware of how the protocol works, or it cannot be proven they uploaded copyright bits.
Seeding a file on Bittorrent is an overt act, and a number of infringements to be calculated based on their upload ratio TIMES the percentage of the file they downloaded. For example, assuming the infringer downloaded the entire file, an upload ratio of 0 is 0 infringements, a ratio of 0.5 is 0.5 infringements, 2 is 2 infringements, etc.
Offering a file on a Peer to Peer network is an overt act.
I read ""A weak federal jury" instead of ""This week a federal jury "
I think three times the retail cost of each song/movie proven to be distributed. 2/3 the fine goes to the plaintiff (to recoup their "lost" money including court costs) and the other 1/3 as penalty paid to the court. That will keep judges from taking cases where the plaintiff can only prove they distributed a song or two because they downloaded it from them.
We need tech juries or at least a 3rd party tech guy to help the jury out look at terry childs there was only like 1 IT guy on the jury we need more then 1 and we need people who have worked under conditions that range from by to book to do what is needed to be done to get the job done even when it means by passing clueless upper management to get it done.
The terry child case is just 1 of many cases where most of the jury has no idea about tech cases.
The Constitutional limit is 10x actual damages. If the record companies make $0.70 per song, this works out to a $7.00 award per song downloaded. Any greater amount is illegal.
For every song that the person is suspected of sharing detonate a 1.2 megaton nuclear weapon in their home, up to a maximum of 100. They will be forced to be present during the detonation to "observe". Another option is detonate the nukes in the nearest major city. If a million lives are lost for every song they share, surely this will discourage them from continuing to engage in this heinous anti-corporate behavior which is the equivalent of genocide anyway.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
If you did not attempt to profit off of your sharing or induce harm upon others, they should charge you the cost of the song and like a $100 dollar fee for having to catch you in the act. For people who actually try and profit from infringing, I would say probably 10x the amount lost in profits. But this would mean I want a concession from the copyright holders that they will only go after people for infringing upon something that they have in good faith to actually be using said copyright.
The same as it was for mix-tapes.
IMO, the problem with deciding a "fair" penalty is that "fairness" is a poorly defined term; any definition of "fair" can be justified on a logical grounds if you are insane enough.
I can imagine that people from RIAA are convinced that they only want a fair (in their eyes) compensation for their (perceived) damages. Their vision of world is a cold, sociopathic, driven strictly by profit regardless of the consequences; within such a world, their concept of fairness is pretty consistent with the rest; it is logical in the same twisted, abominated way.
Other people have other concepts of fairness, probably driven more by mercy, empathy, and human collegiality, which is definitely more normal - but how to decide what is the "best"?
Maybe the question of "what is fair" is itself incorrectly stated. What we really want to know is, what is a *constructive* solution - one that would bring most benefit to all parties.
The "fairness according to RIAA" is definitely antisocial; if everyone behaved like RIAA does, the society would destroy itself within a few months.
From this point of view, I believe the fair fee would be zero. The poor woman did no damage and did not intend any damage, so any punishment is antisocial.
A flat fine in case of non-commercial infringement, like this family; say 5-10 times more than the local jaywalking fine?
In case of for-profit infringement (like selling the stuff to others) the illegal gains + punitive multiplier (IIRC punitive damages as triple of the gains is usual)
Yes I do agree that in a trial you need expert-witnesses. But the problem you have is the very basis of your system... your civil judges. These are per definition non-experts on anything important in any case they have to sit through. Let me add, imho ;)
Multiply the number of times the song was downloaded from her by the nominal wholesale price of the song in the marketplace.
That's compensatory. It's all the actual revenue the record company lost.
Triple it to get punitive. That's an arbitrary rule that courts use, but it seems reasonable and customary.
This horseshit about tens of thousands of dollars per incident is a ludicrous abuse of the legal system, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Jammie Thomas is just the new Jesus from the 21 century. They without sin may throw the first stone. PS I used something I learnt in church... (FAIL) on a ICT site... (DOUBLE FAIL)
Even if the court decided to assess punitive damages, what would be the likelihood of punitive damages reaching 62,500 times the value of what I stole?
Only its repeal can make it otherwise.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Sharing is not a crime, it's merely against the law.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Sounds a lot like an unpopular tax.
I'm just going to stick with what I said before. Pirates logically don't take anything from anyone or do any harm whatsoever.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
This very special kind of insanity is only possible in America - and I urge you to consider why it is so.
The point that $62,500 per song is excessively high seems to be something that everyone can agree on
Three juries were more than willing to hammer Jamie Thomas into the marble flooring. That ought to be wake up call to the geek who thinks he has the masses on his side here.
By the numbers:
A few weeks ago,video delivery favorite Netflix made headlines with an amazing statistic: twenty percent of all downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America.
Impressed? Now consider this: Netflix has managed to account for 20% of the North American internet's collective broadband without a streaming-only subscription service. Though one has just been introduced at a lower price, the 20% number was achieved without one... in the coming months, it'll doubtlessly grow more, especially as cheap devices like the $99 AppleTV make Netflix streaming mainstream.
Now consider this: that 20% of all internet traffic? It was accomplished by a mere 2% of Netflix's subscribers. Netflix's streaming growth might be too much for the Internet to handle
Music happened when there wasn't IP law which was most of human existence. If music is free it will STILL happen we don't need corps generating formula bands and promoting them on radio in the payola scheme we have today.
Movies, well those may be severely hurt. Wouldn't do us much harm if we had less movies. Games probably as well. If they are hurt to the point of going out of business people would have to learn to support them or have no market - the "good apples" would have to support the industry or it wouldn't be considered worthwhile enough for enough people to support it. Simple enough. Do we need to impose a forced scarcity and limit liberty to protect an established market?
Just some things to think about. But NEVER think that all art, culture, music, plays, books, will DIE merely because we do not have a massive industry backing them! With the internet and cheap distribution the overhead is tiny - no industry is required. Artists working DIRECT may make a living at around the same levels as they do now -- possibly more will do better and some big (promoted) ones will not be as rich. Yes, in movies and games the overhead is large - so those could slow considerably... But for me, the loss of blockbusters wouldn't be a problem - a good story doesn't need high production - it can be a stage play requiring some audience imagination... (Shakespeare comes to mind.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
15 Euros per song - or, maybe, $ 25. If it is good enough for Germany and the EU, it is good enough for the USA.
I am likely late to the game/thread, but this whole situation stinks of big-money shilling. There's no way that this could have continued past 3 appeals and still have come up with 7+ digits in settlement. As far as I'm concerned, this smacks of the Jammie case being a corporate shill in order to further the RIAA/MPAA agenda. Using such an example they can prove that a relatively innocent individual can be found guilty of 5-digit-per-track-$ infringeemnt, while still appearing to have undergone 'due process'.
It stinks, it's rotten, and it smells.
I'm not sure why anyone is buying this?!
(well, outside of corporate US funded media / astroturfing / shills that is....)
You can't claim 'there is going to be no RIAA in less than 5 years' without proof here dude.
They've been railroading mothers, grandmothers, children, and politicians for the better part of a decade without pause.... Other than wishful thinking, what makes you think they'll suddenly curl up and die the horrible painful death they deserve - within the next 5 years?
Ohshit wait.... $10 says the person I responded to is an RIAA/MPAA astroturfer!
That is the revenue they missed out on, that is what they should get. I understand this isn't a deterrent, but even $5-20 per song is a 500%-2000% penalty. Quite enough in my book.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Some base amount like $500 to $5000 depending on the severity and circumstances and whatnot, but other than that, just make them pay for what they 'stole'?
Okay, maybe that's an oversimplification... After all, we're talking about people SHARING files, not just downloading... So they have to make up for the people who downloaded FROM them... But there's no real way to determine how many people did, or track down any of them. So, what? Ten times what the item would have cost? Well, maybe not, that still seems like an un-payable amount for many people... But you get the idea.
I mean, that's the whole point, isn't it? The **AA complain that they're losing money because people are stealing product. Make the thieves pay for it. Because the way things are now, it's just goddamn stupid.
The payouts they want in these cases are so ridiculously large it might as well be the death penalty. It'd take the average person a couple lifetimes to pay off even if the economy weren't circling the toilet bowl.
Of course, I'm talking about the average middle-class internet user who downloads songs or movies, and then knowingly or unknowingly shares them with others.
I'm all for stiff penalties for people who rip or leak the stuff in the first place.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
The copyright infringement statutes were meant to be used against ORGANIZATIONS which profit from copyright infringement, not individuals. Examples of this would be a piracy ring selling bootleg copies on the street.
The concept of FAIR USE is supposed to apply to exercise of free speech of "INDIVIDUALS". Outright sharing by individuals should be legal or at least not considered anything worse than a traffic ticket.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
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.
Put all of their personal details online -- address, SSN, mother's maiden name, first school. After all, information wants to be free...
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
It should be like speeding, sure most speeders don't get caught, but the occasional few who do face a penalty offsets the possible damage done to road infrastructure, insurance companies, and human life/lives/suffering that is incurred by disobeying the law. I think the damages done by sharing a song should be higher $50-100 per song x number of songs, which would offset the lack of policing force that the music company has to find those violating their copyright. Also if someone running a site which has been serving copyrighted material is caught then a stiffer penalty should be dispensed because the crime is heavier, like drinking and driving would result in loss of driving privilege, fine, and possible jail time. But lets be reasonable $65,000/song is atrocious, after all lets also consider the fact that the music companies denied users the convenience of purchasing legit copies online (especially the access to a diverse library of music) for over a decade thus contributing to this horrible mess of piracy in the first place, in essence they gave the "black market" the opportunity to thrive and did jack all to offer the growing online community any better alternative, except bitch and wine and hit people with these disgusting lawsuits. There has to be some give and take on this issue, especially where the music companies (not to mention movie and game companies) are concerned. With smaller penalties they'd probably find it easier to enact more lawsuits, win them and by doing so curb the amount of piracy people are willing to risk. If you are more likely to get caught it is more likely that people will generally pirate less, no?
Actual damages. That's good enough for patents and it's good enough for copyright (Note that it's damages, not fines). Fines are punishment paid to the government. Damages are court-ordered payments to the plaintiff intended to make him whole.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You get out a here Loche Ness Monster!
If tens of thousands of dollars per song has failed to deter people, why would a fraction of that deter anyone?
The real answer is to ask, "What is the damage done to society by an individual person who uploads or downloads music?" If you take a good look, you will find that we have no shortage of new music, movies, or art, that celebrities are still wealthy, that non-celebrity artists are just as not-wealthy as they were before, and that the companies that are claiming to be suffering are actually turning profits -- enormous, record breaking profits in some cases. P2P users are not causing any harm to our society, so why are we treating them like criminals and ruining their lives?
Palm trees and 8
How is this different than any other crime? really, what is the value of what is stolen? $1 each? How many were stolen? 24? so $24. What is the typical penalty? double damages. $48. Criminal record? yes. probation? yes. pay court fees? yes. ( lets say that you get a class which has fees, court fees, fees for being served paperwork etc, probably $1000 in total )
how many people downloaded the song? lets say 1000. So how much is your fine for that? $0. Who is fined? the 1000 people, for $48 + probation + criminal record + court expenses.
Make an example out of people you say? bull s h i t. Punishment fits the crime, not punishment fits the example you like to make. Should punishment be a deterrent, yes. But theft of a $1 item, even two dozen $1 items, should not functionally force a person into perpetual poverty. $1.5M in fines is not just excessive, it is fascist. It reeks of corruption. It is every penny the average person will earn for nearly 50 years. How might a person conceivably pay this? Is this our path back to indentured servitude? yes.
The fact is that these products have a one time expense. Actual losses? If this is a product that is on the hit charts and has active marketing then there is likely some loss of sales and I admit that it would be difficult to actually determine if the thieves would have purchased the product but in contrast, these things are available free-to-hear on radio can be recorded from there as well, so that must be taken into account as well. If someone downloads 1982's Violent Femmes self titled album then actual losses are likely immeasurable.
I, for one, believe that an artist should get paint for the art. What I mean by that is a painter should get paid for selling a painting, not when people view the painting. A singer should get paid for singing a song, not for a speaker playing the song back. Make your money in concerts. The culture of celebrity(at least how it exists today) is tiresome and vampiric to society. The RIAA and the entire process to producing music after is unsustainable in such a well connected world.
Get the hint record companies, we are beyond caring about album art and fancy packaging for music, we can get that on google. We dont care for a pressed CD, we use iPods, Zunes. We arent willing to pay $15 for these things. As sales decrease, which they will, you will see that people are completely unwilling to pay $1 for a B track, making artists skip them and release only singles. Less product, less money period. The movement away from the RIAA to sources where an artist can sell their tracks for less money but make more profit per has already begun.
We will be buying our music in the future and it will be reasonably priced. There will always be piracy, because some people wouldnt pay a dime for a song if they could pay nothing, start targeting people who care about music and want to keep artists in business. Some of us would pay the $1 for the hit song and $.2 per B-Track(bundled up as an album, sure!). I would. 16 tracks please. $4. or just the single for a $buck.
I wonder if the RIAA has ever considered that trying to sell to customers is better that suing people who aren't customers? When has this tactic ever EVER worked. never.
I don't see why the fine shouldn't be $1 million per song. The RIAA will collect that just as fast as they'll collect the $62,500 per song they were awarded in this case.
People download for free what they could pay for, in this case music. now there are 1,000's of people downloading freely copyrighted material every day, yet i can't think of one artist being broke because of it. not one. all i smell is bullshit from labels.
http://chimpbox.us
...but at least we don't have punitive damages. The victim can at most get compensatory damages for the actual loss. On top, the offender faces a fine that falls in the pocket of the State. Not a small one, but at least it's predictable because the maximum is written in the law. And it means the plaintiff has less incentive to sue beyond reason, because he's mostly working for Marianne's pockets (Marianne is to us what Uncle Sam is to US citizens).
This principle holds true for every kind of offense, and isn't limited to file sharing.
$1.5mil isnt going to be paid. So being ordered up for this amount is tantamount to ordering up to paying nothing, except now the copyright cops take yet another bad pr hit and we move ever so closer to removing their copyright protection at all; at least for non-commercial infringement.
And $0.10 of that should go to Apple for losing the sale.
Apple Records, or Apple the computer^W iTunes company?
a fair penalty should be up to, but no more than 10 times the amount of what one would purchase said item for at cheapest retail location (including secondary markets. perhaps using the lowest priced copy from an amazon seller?) multiplied by the number of verified 100% complete downloads. no interpolating what that might be. the file must be playable as is, for the average person, so no partial files should be counted. if no verifiable data can be found, the case should be dropped and the companies in question should have to pay up to $100,000 or do up to 5 years in prison* per wrongful litigation or whatever the current draconian penalties are.
* the prison term to be served by randomly selected board member. i'd even be a lenient as to let up to 5 board members split the time.
...
how about billing $1 per song per PROVEN download by another person, since ~$1 the price on itunes.
and if that one song can be PROVEN to have been downloaded to 1000 people, it would cost a pirate $1000. if 1000 songs were downloaded by 1000 people, that's $1,000,000. But only if you can prove that actual harm was done - that those songs were actually downloaded by those people
The burden of proof should be on the RIAA; citizens should be judged as innocent until proven guilty.
Our courts (and juries) are complete fuckheads if they think a single song is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
What do governments usually do when they decide that a substance corrupts the society and influences people to commit crime? They ban that substance and device laws that give harsh punishments to the sellers of that substance. Like banning narcotics for recreational use and punishing their dealers with long multi-decade sentences. The analogy I am drawing to piracy here is that it's the MP3 players made by mega-corporations such as Apple and Sony that drives people to download music illegally. Say, an 80 GB ipod costs 200 dollars. So if each song takes an average 4 MB of space, then your ipod can hold 20,000 of them. Something which was unimaginable before you could store your music on a hard drive. This would need you to shell out 13,800 dollars at 69 cents per song. So if we just ban the sale of these MP3 player, our primary motivation to piracy will be gone. It could also serve as a good precedence for the future if the makers of these MP3 players are told to pay billions of dollars in retrospective fines for the losses they have caused to the music industry.
a gratuitous description of the copyright violator as a mother of four, grandmother, unemployed welder or other descriptors designed to illicit sympathy. Who cares! This type of description might be relevant if the perpetrator is an IT professional or involved in music business. It serves no purpose other than to vilify the victim of the crime. From s business perspective, under the existing laws, the recording company would be failing to act responsibly if they did not as they do. If the laws are bad and we need to make our legislators change them.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Seems fair to me.
See that "Preview" button?
$62,500 per song. I saw somewhere that the artist gets less than 60% on iTunes, so let's say 60 cents per song. let's say 5mb per song. She would have had to upload the song 104,000 times which would be 520 gb. For 24 songs that is 12.5 terabytes. My upload speed is capped at 1mbit. That would cap my upload limit for over 3 years with 2.5 million uploads. Statutory damages are supposed to be so that the copyright holder won't have to go through the trouble of calculating actual damages if it is difficult, not to onerously punish someone far outside the bounds of the actual damages. This is unjust. If there is ever a intellectual freedom party, sign me up.
I thought it was damages. The idea being that it's impossible to actually calculate how much a pirate actually costs the industry, so we apply a guess.
So - actual damages. We work on the assumption that one copy = one lost sale. It doesn't but that's a different argument.
So since we're looking at damages it should be the amount of damages actually sustained. Each file is uploaded exactly as many times as it's downloaded, so that means an average file is uploaded once per user. That means total cost of $1 per song. Now, this was deliberate infringement so we can multiply by a factor (say 3) to add a deterrent and to compensate for the possibility of not being caught. I'm sure Thomas has more than 24 songs and the RIAA just chose those as a sample, so the damages would actually be greater than $72.
However, in return it needs to be a lot easier to prove infringement. It's not fair that a company should have to pay thousands for a few hundred dollars penalty. Exactly how this is achieved needs more work.
Now, we also have to consider that Thomas lied and falsified evidence. In this case it should also be $3 per infringementWe should also add criminal prosecution for the other crimes, because they are different crimes.
you know, the ones that dominate the creative markets and force their prices and business models down the throats of people ? they are ripping off the choices of billions. where is their reparation ? that is even leaving out the fact that they are buying laws to crumple emerging technologies for their sake. then why didnt we let carriage producers buy laws to hamper auto industry ? well, i guess they didnt have a strong enough lobby ...
before any idiot ayn randist jumps in with 2 century old excuses : it doesnt matter how market domination is achieved. whether it is through fair means, or unfair means, when market domination happens, people's choices are ripped. its as simple as that.
Read radical news here
If someone is selling someone's else then I'm all for the ridiculous lawsuits awards but if the person only shares 24 songs then I don't think they should have to pay any more than say $50 per song.
Depends, are you in a Texascourt and the shopowner happens to have the same face and family name as the judge?
In many places, financial punishments are based on a percentage of annual income and assets. That way, you can achieve some degree of fairness.
Lets charge people the same way corporations are charged. Specifically: http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-30-cd-settlement_x.htm
So even if we could this part where they distribute CDs to non-profits which was obviously complete bullshit, they had to pay out 143 Million
They stole, by the estimate 480 million... which I think is a very very low estimate.
So they had to pay 30% of their ill gotten gains back in fines.
Even if we assume the the prices from their price fixing era, 16.99, the max fine should be $5.10 per song.
The rich will still be able to afford enough lawyers to make sure they never loose (sic) if they are ever sued for infringement.
Wealthy individual defendant is sued by wealthy corporate interest group. Magic 8 Ball says: "Outcome is anybody's guess."
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Justice is about being fair to everyone - not the opposite.
This isn't about justice.
Tort law is about activity that does harm to one party, but does not rise to the level of criminal activity. The law in these sorts of cases is not seeking "justice" in the Old Testament, evil-deeds-must-be-punished way. It's seeking redress for a harm that has been done, not assigning guilt. When Chemical Co. X dumps pollutants into the river in violation of state law and gets sued into making payments to the victims, unless the company was criminally negligent, the goal is to assign a dollar value to the harm and essentially fix the harm. Sometimes a harm is so massive (children born with birth defects, for example) that assigning a monetary value to it seems repugnant, but it's the only practical means of efficiently obtaining resolution.
Generally speaking, plaintiffs don't go after those who can't pay. That's why in an airplane crash or building structural failure or similar event you'll hear about plaintiffs suing everyone they can find. They do so so the harms done to them can be redressed by someone; they don't really care whom. Again, it's not about intent and affixing of moral blame. It's about distributing resources as efficiently as possible, so the aggrieved party can be compensated and future damage can be avoided.
The damages awarded to a successful plaintiff also serve a signaling function to other parties who might be contemplating the same noncriminal but harmful behavior. The goal is not necessarily to enrich the plaintiff (because, as in this case, the plaintiff will never collect the awarded damages), but to show those who might be tempted to follow in the defendant's footsteps that it's a bad idea to do so.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There used to be a time where even radio dj's told us " start the tape recorder, this is awesome "
Well in the digital age and using computers we kind of have a problem .
Streamripper is one solution and it works great. You just record a radio station.
At the end of the day you get hundreds of recordings and though the transition cuts aren't perfect
we still get acceptable results.
What's this got to do with piracy ?
First off , if we have this ability to record on the air broadcasts , we need it's digital equivalent.
Fair use is fair use and if recording a broadcaster is ok , so is the internet radio stations.
The use of a network connection or an antenna dosen't change the facts , There is fair use.
Now , the technology behind streamripper and other applications to record what we listen to is a bit too harsh for the casual listener , many people don't have a clue how to do this.So here comes the file sharing sites.People get songs there because they don't have a clue how to record their internet radio stations and turn to sharing software to do so.
Not everyone's a criminal trying to kill the majors.( They do a hell of a job themselves by publishing crap and attacking everyone.)
Just simple folks that dont understand technology and that dont know how to do this legally.Sounds about right for a single Mom dosent it ?
I like that idea, but allow me to play Devil's Advocate.
What does "fairly" mean, and who determines translation of that term into actual prices? Price it too high, and the government (or whatever body decides what is fair) is helping Big Media extort consumers. Price it too low, and the government is dragging down profits, thereby dragging down stock prices, thereby adversely affecting all of those organizations and individuals who invested in the various Big Media companies.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Then how do you explain open source? There is no financial incentive, yet works are free to everyone and they benefit society.
Open source licenses can be used in situations where the licensor wants direct monetary gain. Think of Red Hat distributing GPL'd software – customers pay Red Hat to take the hassle out of putting all the pieces together and making sure they all work properly. It's in Red Hat's interest to contribute to the GPL'd software they sell, because they directly benefit.
Open sourcing software also is used for indirect gain. Many contributors burnish their credentials by contributing source code, which helps raise their profile in the software industry, which helps them get better jobs, which helps them make more money.
Beyond these rationales, it's important to remember that open source licenses work within the copyright system. Copyright is what gives you the right to disallow someone else from distributing your work. It also gives you the ability to tell them how they can distribute your work, under conditions you establish. In a world without copyright, the GPL would also not exist, because you would not be able to form a contract around distribution of source code. No reciprocality could be enforced.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
My property is on a curve and my trees are hit about every 5 years by people that lose control. Some are drunk. My trees are harmed, some have been taken out. I miss them. A drunk driver in a truck took out a 150 yr old oak tree that cannot be replaced. What "fine" did he pay? Nothing. He didn't have anything and was bankrupt, but he could afford to get drunk.
What is a "fair" fine for that? I'm not the only one to miss that tree. The bird, the squirrels, and other creatures miss it much more than I.
A negative fine should be applied, i.e. the file sharer should be rewarded. 1/ for making backup copies using his/her resources, thus contributing to save culture: that's a contribution to save culture for later generations, by distributing it as widely as possible... which is especially true for rare and unpopular files. 2/ for benevolently making files available to people who would otherwise not be able to afford them: this is a kind of community service: think 3rd world countries where text books are not available at all or prohibitively expensive. Oh, and while we're at it: 3/ the so called "rights holders" should also pay the file sharer some money, because file sharers are contributing to marketing campaigns, helping some obscure artists and creators to fame.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Be fair and don't violate other people's copyrights. That is nice and fair right there.
If you HAVE to .. then charge her the cost of the song if you bought it from your average digital download 'house'. ( going rate is 99cent i do think ) and any profit she saw if she sold 'copies'.
But i still say nothing was stolen, and nothing was lost so its all just a scam and shows how screwed up things are.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The problem: ... being able to call anyone he likes, whenever he likes on whatever device he has available and as often as he wants )maybe once, maybe hundreds of times) or more exactly the price of a phone subscription nowadays.
(consumer) Wants to listen to whatever song he likes, whenever he likes, on whatever device he has available and as often as he wants (maybe once, maybe hundreds of times), i.e. wants to feel free. For a to him reasonable price (ranging from nothing to the equivalent of a comparable service - say
(industry) Wants to profit as much as possible for every single song, preferably wants people to pay the full-price even if they only ever listen to the song once. Want to control the consumer because they feel more they control results in more purchases.
Or in other words consumer demand and industry supply do not match. Until this is fixed, this remains the root of the problem.
Once that problem has been fixed, *then* you can think about punishments like: if you downloaded 1000 songs a month illegally, then you will have to pick up a subscription that allows you to do that legally for an amount of time proportional to your 'offense'. Sure it will cost you a bit, but you get something for it in return, something you were consuming already before anyways. Once you start paying for it you realize maybe that perhaps you only 'need' 100 songs a month, or 10 or none, and after you have paid your dues you can scale down your subscription again. I honestly believe this is the only way it is ever going to work.
It's not an easy task, for sure: it requires investing in infrastructure (cellular or broadband Internet) or facilities to 'charge' your iPod or other music at a local store or internet cafe, and maybe settling for a lower profit margin and less instantaneous income (as is the case when selling and single or album) because instead the money 'trickles' in. Of course playing your cards right could actually result in increased sales because people consume relatively more (it's easy and relatively cheaper). Rather than paying 50 bucks for 1 album to listen to over and over again, you can listen to to maybe 10.000 songs a month choosing out of an infinite amount of songs available. I know which option I'd pick and actually find reasonable to pay for.
How about $.99 per song pirated, both by the user and those downloading from the user? Seems fair. Add another couple thousand for legal fees as a penalty.
How about the fine for hitting a road worker while drunk after shoplifting some CD's?
The rule of setting the worst-case damages at three times the purchase costs would be pretty reasonable for your everyday private user.
Take the average torrent leecher as an example:
- The user has downloaded it once and uploaded pieces at the same time.
- For the sake of the argument let's assume that he took it from a tracker that requires you to upload as much as you download.
- Now the damages would be at twice the purchase costs
- Since some torrents are requested more than others and hence the upload ratio varies between 0.001 and (not often) over 1 in the time it took you to download the data, just lock it at three times the purchase costs and you're set.
Hell, if the BSA catches a company using pirated software they often just require them to buy the licenses retroactively plus a 0-100% premium.
Original intent was a balanced trade off. If you read what they actually intended, it was a limited artificial monopoly that benefited the creater, and then it was released to the public domain to benefit society. It was a win/win situation.
The original intent has been destroyed by Mickey Mouse and a lot of money.
I say steal them blind...after a limited time, of course! We are just taking our half of the deal back...by force rather than by law.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
i just think this whole issue is plain simple: freedom of culture.
People need art in their lives, even if they won't die of it, i believe it to be an intellectual boost needed for everyone who wants to be even remotely succesful in life.
And yes, I know there are tons of issues surrounding this, so this is NOT the ultimate solution, but taking into account all the issues surrounding the current model, it makes me wonder if it wouldn't be better to try and solve the problems from the artist side, instead of chasing every single consumer..
I for one wouldn't mind an "Art Tax".. it's way better than a 'Save Wall Street Tax'
Nope, you copy my car and, heck, I don't mind if you do it. You can make a copy of my car, or hundreds of copies of my car, still not a problem.
The problem with "copyright violation" and the prosecution there of is NOT the insanely excessive "punitive damages".
The problem is that THE INDUSTRY wants to HAVE ITS CAKE AND EAT IT TOO.
Sure we wanna prosecute copyright violation, BUT we also want to have extremely restrictive, relatively expensive, or even NONEXISTENT online sales of the same content.
You CANNOT pirate it, but you also CANNOT buy it online, or you cannot BUY IT ONLINE in YOUR COUNTRY (screw you, potential customer) or you CAN buy it online, but it costs AS MUCH IF NOT MORE THAN just "buying the physical format".
This is NEITHER fair nor reasonable.
If The Industry was both fair and reasonable, all their content would be available for purchase online, in *all* countries, at reasonable (specifically, "approximately equivalent" pricing everywhere, to anyone, via any system) pricing.Pricing which clearly reflects the fact that the costs associated with production and distribution of "physical format" content is *significantly* larger than the costs associated with digital-downloads.
Then and only then is it fair to BEAT SOMEONE WITH A LARGE AND HEAVY FINE when they still violate your copyright and pirate your content.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Let's compare copyright to R&D/patents. I'm trying to justify why, say, IBM cannot benefit for more than 10-15 years from invention, on which it spent hundreds of millions, when a song writer can have his sort of "patent" last for 100 years?
I'm trying really hard, but the only explanation that comes to my mind is: there is a strong RIAA/MPAA lobby.
Public consumption of art? Did you mean "money made on selling it"?
Wouldn't Tolkien write his book if his grandchildren wouldn't have right to get millions by selling right to make a movie based on it?
Why does this right last for a hundred years? Wouldn't 10-15 years (typical patent lasts that long) suffice?
So, if I understand you correctly, the many, many, many hours that typically go into a book (meaning the intangible story/textbook/whatever else you care to call it) is not to be considered in basic economics? That makes no sense to me.
Let's say you get paid minimum wage. I live in a state with a rather high minimum wage of $8.25 (might be why we're the second most in debt state in the union). Let's say that I write a story and it takes me 5 years of not constant, but moderate work to gather all my information, research my material, and edit it. Let's even be generous here and say I'm self-publishing, self-editing, and very wise in the ways of all things involved in this process.
Now let's say that I'm working on it about 10 hours a week, 20 weeks each year. Simple math brings that to 200 hours a year on it, for 5 years equals 1,000 hours. Now at my state's minimum wage, that comes to $8,250. Now let's factor in the cost of my research materials, and we'll say that that's a measly $200 a year, plus the one time cost of a computer at $500. This brings us up to $9,750.
So now I have to sell these ebooks at a price that will make back what I've theoretically earned. Let's say I expect the book to do decently and I'm of the mindset that selling it cheap is better for me and my book, so I'll sell it for $3 a pop. Means that I need to sell 3250 digital copies of it to make what I earned.
Now wait just a second, my server time isn't free, those point of sales systems aren't free. Let's say I expect it to take another 2 years before I make back what I've earned, and call me cheap but I'm only going to be paying $10 a month for a server. That puts me at $240 in server costs alone, and let's guess that it's $0.03/$1 for the credit card system that will be implemented. That $9,750 is now almost $10,000 with server costs included so I'm going to be lazy and round it up to that for the following math. If it's going to cost me $0.03 for every dollar I make, than that means that I need to now make $10,300, which roughly translates to 3430 copies of this story at $3 a pop.
Of course, as an author, I would want to make more than minimum wage for my writings, so let's say that I want $11/hr, now I need to make $13122.2 or approximately 4374 copies in 2 years or less to have made my work remotely worthwhile, by my standards. Now if I'm trying to make a living off of this, I'd have to be selling these at a lot more than $3 a pop, or I'd have to sell a lot more than 4374 copies in 2 years, try nearly 12000 copies at $3 a pop.
So I'm sorry if your claim that, "Basic economics" does not support things considered to be an art having a price higher than zero doesn't make any sense to me. Running the figures really makes a lot more sense to me than that.
And for the record, IANAEconomist, IANAAuthor, but I am a musician (non-recording, not profitable) and a recording engineer, and if you want to talk about that department, I have actual figures I can use instead of made up figures (only figures made up throughout this example is the amount of time put into production, I have no idea what the typical turnaround for a part time author is, but I would suspect that it's approximately 1000 hours worth of work for a decent length book).
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Anyway you look at this, it is trying to take the LAW to justify a business case.
These guys made money in the past, because they controlled distribution, they offered you a service of "recording" songs onto some sort of media, that you could use, such as records, tapes, CD's, etc...
Now there is no such thing as "media" (unless an iPod qualifies), and distribution is free and easily duplication. All this driven by consumer technology.
No they want to keep making money the old way, buy making stupid laws about it and extorting people on threat of punishment.
Its is all wrong. They need to come up with a viable model that works, not simply suing anyone into the stone age for not abiding to their old broken model of profit.
If you keep giving these people what they want, they will NEVER learn.
Bottom line, is these "middle men" distributors are not NEEDED anymore. They also make the MOST money, and have the most money. That is why there is a fight, these guys SHOULD be out of business.
Artists need to get paid. I have no quarrel with that. Some may wish to even pay for promotion. You should get something, some service for your money. That is the whole idea behind any monetary transaction. I see nothing wrong with iTunes type service, they give you higher quality, than you might find in the wild. Give consumers a reason to pay rather than just copy. Make it easy. Make it cheap. Make it searchable. Include all songs. Include bonus material. Do not DRM it. Present it in a good way.
I mean even what they are doing now, suing people, making stupid laws, is not a long term solution (even thought it has been going on for years now). Has it been working? Is there any evidence that it is working? I believe one definition of insane I have heard, is that it is doing something, and then doing the exact same thing again and again, and thinking you are going to get a different result somehow. All they are doing is slowing the inevitable change that is taking place.