Judge Lowers Piracy Fine from Millions To Thousands

Am I in before someone makes a post that essentially says "If you dont do anything wrong, you've got nothing to fear?"

Originally Posted by Exavior

SNIP

Making an example out of someone to attemp to prevent future crimes might be considered cruel and unusual punishment (unconstitutional). In effect, you are punishing a single person for what many people *might* do.

The rape comments were pretty far off the deep end

Originally Posted by Exavior

It shouldn't matter if it is a meterial object or a digital object. When you pay for a CD you arent' paying for the plastic and getting the content for free. Somebody produced something be it a movie, music, or software and wants you to pay them $x per copy to obtain a copy. If you use a copy of it without paying them their money then they are going to want to come after you.

It does matter, however (or at least it should). Here's why:

Let's say Label X produces an album. Let's assume it costs them $2/unit to manufacture it. Let's assume they sell it for $15. Your local CD retailer buys this item for $13 (let's assume). They take $13 out of their pocket and pass it to the label (it's actually more complicated than that, but let's keep it simple here). When you walk in and steal it, you're depriving that retailer of the $13 they paid for that individual unit. This is attributable deprivation.

When you download that album from BitTorrent (or whatever), you are not directly depriving the retailer of that CD. It could be said that you're depriving the label and the means for the retailer to acquire the revenue they might have received if you had purchased it from them, yet you could also argue that no attributable deprivation took place. With respect to personal use, I would say the majority of people would find illegal downloading to be less morally objectionable than outright theft, and that's a perfectly reasonable position.

I'm a content producer myself, yet I see no particular issue with piracy or illegal downloading/sharing. My attention is focused on producing content that has value and that consumers will pay for. There are many who could get it for free, but I find that acceptable. Digital piracy is just an element of the marketplace at the moment, and it can't possibly be suppressed. The smartest guy in the room is going to upload the torrent to popular trackers himself (or run his own tracker) rather than fight it, because the content is freely available anyway. You may as well use that to your advantage to build loyalty from your target audience for you and your brand.

Originally Posted by Exavior

...the point of the fines are to stop people from doing it.

And they seem to be largely ineffective. Maybe we should think of another way to manage the situation, don't you think?

$100 a song would be reasonable. That would get the message across.

This is not reasonable, it's just more reasonable that 80k / song.

Originally Posted by LeninGHOLA

Making an example out of someone to attemp to prevent future crimes might be considered cruel and unusual punishment (unconstitutional). In effect, you are punishing a single person for what many people *might* do.

The rape comments were pretty far off the deep end

How is it crual and unusual punishment? They aren't making an example out of anyone. The FBI warning on movies has told you for years that you can get fined up to $25,000 and 3 - 5 years in prision for copying the movie and for distributing it. Laws were set to protect the content, if you choose to ignore the laws then you are just being punished, you aren't being used to make an example anymore than people on trial for murder are being used to set an example to keep others from committing murder.

Originally Posted by Exavior

How is it crual and unusual punishment? They aren't making an example out of anyone. The FBI warning on movies has told you for years that you can get fined up to $25,000 and 3 - 5 years in prision for copying the movie and for distributing it. Laws were set to protect the content, if you choose to ignore the laws then you are just being punished, you aren't being used to make an example anymore than people on trial for murder are being used to set an example to keep others from committing murder.

The point is that $2,000 dollars per song is still ridiculous. They're saying that by downloading the song, you've just cost them $2,000, which makes 0 sense. Even if they shared it with some people, I doubt that it was more than a handful. I think the few should be at most, $100 per song. When you start charging ridiculous amounts of money in fines, that people can't even afford, they just end up declaring bankruptcy. Fines need to be set that people can actually pay.

Originally Posted by MisterSparkle

Am I in before someone makes a post that essentially says "If you dont do anything wrong, you've got nothing to fear?"

Until the laws get changed and you find yourself in violation. Mark my words, DVRs that can skip commercials will be illegal in 3 years or less.

Originally Posted by phide

It does matter, however (or at least it should). Here's why:

Let's say Label X produces an album. Let's assume it costs them $2/unit to manufacture it. Let's assume they sell it for $15. Your local CD retailer buys this item for $13 (let's assume). They take $13 out of their pocket and pass it to the label (it's actually more complicated than that, but let's keep it simple here). When you walk in and steal it, you're depriving that retailer of the $13 they paid for that individual unit. This is attributable deprivation.

When you download that album from BitTorrent (or whatever), you are not directly depriving the retailer of that CD. It could be said that you're depriving the label and the means for the retailer to acquire the revenue they might have received if you had purchased it from them, yet you could also argue that no attributable deprivation took place. With respect to personal use, I would say the majority of people would find illegal downloading to be less morally objectionable than outright theft, and that's a perfectly reasonable position.

I'm a content producer myself, yet I see no particular issue with piracy or illegal downloading/sharing. My attention is focused on producing content that has value and that consumers will pay for. There are many who could get it for free, but I find that acceptable. Digital piracy is just an element of the marketplace at the moment, and it can't possibly be suppressed. The smartest guy in the room is going to upload the torrent to popular trackers himself (or run his own tracker) rather than fight it, because the content is freely available anyway. You may as well use that to your advantage to build loyalty from your target audience for you and your brand.


And they seem to be largely ineffective. Maybe we should think of another way to manage the situation, don't you think?

No laws, punishments or fines are going to stop 100% of crimes. People still commit murder, people still sale drugs, people still rape, people still steal....

However not everyone does it, so it does work to some degree.

I bet the RIAA is FURIOUS!!!

All that time wasted to track down 1 dude that stole 24 songs and now they can't fucking pay their own salaries with the court rulings. Poor bastards.

worlds tiniest violin ----> p

Laws are not made of reason but rather wealth. Thus many laws are morally wrong.

America exchanged physical property for intellectual property as a source of income, thus the laws to protect intellectual property are extremely unjust as they need to protect one of their last forms of property.

things will not change for a long time but things will change.

If I got a letter saying pay up X million dollars I would likely book a flight to a non-extradite country within the next 30 minutes.

Originally Posted by Exavior

How is it crual and unusual punishment?

Millions in fines for a few songs downloaded, jailtime, more punishment than the rape situations you are talking about make it cruel and unusual.

Clearly, since you can get off easier by commiting violent crimes than sharing files, it is making examples of the people who do it. RIAA and MPAA officials have even said as much.

Judge Davis also indicated that he found even the reduced amount to be "harsh" and that, were he -- rather than a jury -- deciding the appropriate measure of damages, the award might well have been even lower than $54,000. But he felt that since the jury had determined the damages, it was his province to determine only the maximum amount a jury could reasonably award.

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blo...from-192m.html

Originally Posted by Exavior

No laws, punishments or fines are going to stop 100% of crimes. People still commit murder, people still sale drugs, people still rape, people still steal....

However not everyone does it, so it does work to some degree.

Is the only thing stopping you from stealing and raping the fact that there are laws against it? For most people, I would say no, not at all. The vast majority of humans don't do these things because they find them morally objectionable to outright evil.

I have my doubts about the judge and his verdict. I think he was pressured into lowing the fine hoping that it would be acceptable because the RIAA would have no way of controlling what would happen if it went to the Supreme court. As long as the case doesn't go to the Supreme Court and it looks like that is where they didn't want it to go, then they still can bullshit their way around, continue to function the way they have, using extortion, and payoffs.

Laws that protect society are good, laws that protect business in-spite of society are bad.

Personally I think laws and punishment should fit the crime ala. Law of Hammurabi, I also think laws and punishments should be public, when you see someone getting their head cut off it makes a bigger impression on you that murder is bad.

Originally Posted by LeninGHOLA

Is the only thing stopping you from stealing and raping the fact that there are laws against it? For most people, I would say no, not at all. The vast majority of humans don't do these things because they find them morally objectionable to outright evil.

Not all of us are "good christian types" who do good because its good, laws are useful as a means of deterrent in the case of things like murder and theft. Had I my way this world would be short two assholes that I doubt a single person outside of their family would miss, but they still walk because of the odd sense of justice the law asks for.

Originally Posted by Exavior

No laws, punishments or fines are going to stop 100% of crimes. People still commit murder, people still sale drugs, people still rape, people still steal....However not everyone does it, so it does work to some degree.

To some degree, yes. Still, I think the proposition of overhauling the system such that a deterrent to illegal filesharing is unnecessary is pretty intriguing. You download an album; you pay for it and you're made aware of the terms of the license for that album you downloaded.

That's what I'd like to see happen eventually, and a system like that would make quite a bit of sense.

If someone fined me 54K for stealing 24 songs, I would pay that money back by selling hard drugs to their kids.

Originally Posted by Tytalus

Says who? Break the law and pay the price. If you are a parent that follows what your children do online (and in their life/lives) then this isn't an issue, as you either know the child performs illegal acts while on the internet or you are assisting the child in performing illegal acts on the internet.

There really is no middle ground here, so far as I can tell. Seeing the fines reduced in this way is a nice start.

That's like saying we should execute speeders. These laws are designed to punish business who are making a large scale profit on someone elses' IP. Applying it to infringement for personal use is absurd.