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Actual Damages For 1 Download = Cost of a 1 License
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In Real View v 20-20 Technologies, it was held that the actual copyright infringement damages for a single unauthorized download of a computer program was the lost license fee that would have been charged. The judge, in the District Court of Massachusetts, granted remittitur, reducing the jury's verdict from $1,370,590.00 to $4200 unless the plaintiff seeks a new trial. Something tells me the plaintiff will seek a new trial."
If 10,000 people share a file, and you charge one person for "making available" 10,000 copies, then you cannot penalize those 9,999 other people. Either 10,000 people "made available" 1 file each, or 1 person "made available" 10,000 copies and the other 9,999 are innocent.
The way the studios have been arguing it, they'd be collecting fines on n^n copyright violations when only n copyright violations occurred.
Perhaps you didn't read the fine article.
The original owner would NOT have sold a license to the competitor. The competitor appears to have deprived the original owner of their LEAD TIME and possibly some sales.
The competitor allegedly downloaded the software illegally and analyzed it to produce a competing product.
This helped the competitor save lots of R&D time. And they sold many copies of the resulting competing product.
Think of it this way. While competitors catch up, you continue to extend your lead. If competitors cheat by illegally downloading and analyzing your software, then you instantly lose your lead which you obtained at substantial cost (possibly loss of income, taking out a mortgage on your home to pay for expenses while you spend a couple years overcoming problems -- and your competitor sees your sales, downloads your code illegally and instantly sees how you've overcome problems they would've taken a long time to solve.)
Actually, German authors made more money than British authors when Brits had copyright and Germans had no effective system. They also wrote more books, and the public had more books. Basically, in Germany, authors got paid bigger advances and their strategy was high volume, low margin. Getting to the market first was very important for them. In Britain, authors got smaller advances, and would depend upon royalties which would rarely if ever materialise, just like today. Books were more of a luxury item in that setting.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"The true crux is the immoral and illegal decision to take something without reimbursing the owner."
You have one measure for morality and legality, but others don't have to share it.
Gandhi didn't reimburse the legal (British) owner of the sole right to sell salt in India when he sold the salt he got from evaporating sea salt.
The members of the Boston Tea Party didn't reimburse the owners of the tea.
I'm not equating this case with those, just pointing out what happens when you have no flexibility in interpreting laws. You end up forced into untenable positions.