Judge Lowers Piracy Fine from Millions To Thousands

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.

Do not think so fast about the Supreme court. With their ruling yesterday being VERY in favor of Big Business.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22donate.html
 
Why can't they just charge the amount of money it would cost the downloader to legally buy the music in the first place *3 or *4.

Isn't that scary enough? Or are they just so greedy?
 
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.

Yes, laws that prevent or punish crimes can be very good. Laws that abuse the system or the citizens 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.

The problem with that, in America at least, is we would have to burn the Constitution before we could consider it.
 
Question is where are they getting jurors from, what information are they supplying them with, or what's their basis that makes them go for such ridiculously high fines?
 
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.

It isn't. Read the amendment - there's an "excessive fines" clause.
 
Question is where are they getting jurors from, what information are they supplying them with, or what's their basis that makes them go for such ridiculously high fines?

Ever see the movie Deliverance:D. Need I say more.:D
 
How about a federal flat fee per song for pirated music, or at least a cap. These judgements are such bullshit and everyone knows it.

But that would take the fear out of it. I'm sure the RIAA et al wouldn't want that.
 
The problem is the law is fucked up. $2000 in damages per song is ridiculous. The $750 minimum is ridiculous when applied to a case where a song is being shared once.

This is where these absurd numbers come from:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000504----000-.html

Realistically if you think about how bittorrent works, on average any file being uploaded has been uploaded, on average, <1.0 times per person. The profits from a single song being sold are way under $1, so 24 songs ends up being <24$ in damages.

That is all the damages she caused, simple as that. They have no reason to believe she is not a typical file sharer.
 
Oh yeah and this doesn't exactly apply but if you want to keep in mind what is considered 'fair' for punitive damages:

"In response to judges and juries which award high punitive damages verdicts, the Supreme Court of the United States has made several decisions which limit awards of punitive damages through the due process of law clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In a number of cases, the Court has indicated that a 4:1 ratio between punitive and compensatory damages is broad enough to lead to a finding of constitutional impropriety, and that any ratio of 10:1 or higher is almost certainly unconstitutional."

If you want to add punitive damages even at the high end (10:1) she should only have to pay $240 or so to be 'fair'.
 
Lack of uniform sentencing in criminal matters and lack of uniform penalties in civil matters = justice is but a joke.

The only extenuating cirumstances are the judges making the ruling.
 
Sadly most of you guys just don't get it. The statuatory damages are not for actual losses. It is for the infringement. The double damages were for perjury and wilful infringement findings by the jury. The RIAA can always take the $54K for these 24 songs and take her back to court for the 3900 songs she uploaded.
 
Sadly most of you guys just don't get it. The statuatory damages are not for actual losses. It is for the infringement. The double damages were for perjury and wilful infringement findings by the jury. The RIAA can always take the $54K for these 24 songs and take her back to court for the 3900 songs she uploaded.

Wouldn't it be great if she committed suicide (I guess I mean faked it but got away with it making it seem a legit suicide). Imagine the public outcry if there was a note saying, "I can't afford anything anymore, my credit is destroyed, I can't get a job and I am in hundreds of thousand dollars of debt now, my life is ruined. What's the point of going on?" I'm not saying it would end this but it would definitely make people think.
 
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.

QFT
 
I agree with the majority, it should be lowered ...

what everyone here is missing is they will re trial, they don't want to waste too much lawyer costs :rolleyes:
 
Sadly most of you guys just don't get it. The statuatory damages are not for actual losses. It is for the infringement. The double damages were for perjury and wilful infringement findings by the jury. The RIAA can always take the $54K for these 24 songs and take her back to court for the 3900 songs she uploaded.

Statutory damages SHOULD be for actual losses that are too hard to quantify... oh wait it is. In this case though its pretty easy to estimate the damages she caused, its bout $24. If they want to use statutory damages as punitive damages they should follow rules of punitive, eg not be excessive.
 
I don't know if anyone has had much expierence with the legal system, but i would
say between all the court appearances and the emotional rollercoaster this woman has been on , that should be punishment enough.
 
the point of the fines are to stop people from doing it.

Why are there small fines and large fines then? Why is there any fine less than one trillion dollars then? Fines are proportional to the crime, just like prison sentences.


Maybe they should change the law where if a guy rapes a woman and doesn't get her pregenant or hurt her too badly then he isn't charged. After all he did was have sex with her. Why should he be put in jail for it? That doesn't seem reasonable that a guy should go to jail just for having sex with a woman.

...
 
If I had Dr. Manhattan -like powers then I'd forcefully do something about the situation (and still allow fining pirates double or triple the msrp of what they allegedly stole up to a certain limit).

However in the real world... things may change eventually...

During which time someone can setup a donation advocacy group for these victims to help pay their fees. I'm just not sure if this would simply encourage more cases and larger fines...that'd suck and the donation system would then fail (assuming it worked in the first place).

I am supporting piracy to the extent that... for instance... if I were to release a movie on a 700mb CD, or music below 192kbps, it had better be a free sample. I actually think that if the content doesn't approach lossless quality, then it isn't the same content, and the cost should be scaled accordingly WRT fidelity.

Still... I'm a buyer, and piracy has increased sales for myself and the majority of my friends. W/O piracy, we wouldn't be able to demo as much content, and we definitely wouldn't purchase content w/o any available sample.

I'm going to be REALLY pissed if I ever get pinched. I have no qualms with what I'm doing (because of the way I'm doing it, and the people with whom I share), but perhaps I'll look into VPN anonymity as a preventive measure.
 
Sadly most of you guys just don't get it. The statuatory damages are not for actual losses. It is for the infringement. The double damages were for perjury and wilful infringement findings by the jury. The RIAA can always take the $54K for these 24 songs and take her back to court for the 3900 songs she uploaded.

Sure and then they can charge her 102 million for the 3900 songs. If your one of the upper crust that make 100 million as a bonus for the year, 102 million wouldn't seem enough, they would be in court shouting at the judge to throw the book at her.:D
 
Do you still buy a little/some/most/all of your music though? I'm comfortable with grabbing music illegally every now and then (a hard to find album or two a year, on average), but I wouldn't be at all comfortable with the idea of getting all of my music for free.

I have virtually no budget to buy music from due to my personal situation and my music preference is the kind of stuff which is not easily available around here, even in webshops (mostly Japanese/East-Asian music), so I don't have more than a few CDs.

AFAIK CD sales have dropped worldwide because people decided to spend more money on games instead. Digital music sales have risen, however. I think it's actually much like the situation in the US. Physical CDs are becoming a thing of the past. Digital sales of music rose with 40% from 2006 to 2007 in the Netherlands: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/51502/muziekverkoop-via-internet-en-gsm-stijgt-met-veertig-procent.html

Software downloads are illegal here, though, and these dropped from 64% in 1994 to 36% in 2001 according to the BSA: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/27434/so...and-daalt-van-64-procent-naar-36-procent.html

So all together our own RIAA doesn't really have a way to claw itself into the law system too much. All these sale numbers make it darn hard for BREIN to convince politicians that there even is a problem :p
 
As long as you're better off physically stealing the disc from a store, then it's still not appropriate.
 
I still dont get it. steal 2 cds at stores = couple hundred dollars fine, maybe one or two PMIA in prison...

but 50k is crazy
 
I still dont get it. steal 2 cds at stores = couple hundred dollars fine, maybe one or two PMIA in prison...

but 50k is crazy

The whole thing is of course not about whether or not she was downloading songs, it was about 'distributing'. Supposedly each song she (unwittingly) may have shared is guesstimated to have been downloaded N times by other people and thus she has inflicted N * number of songs * penalty for commercial copyright infringement dollars in 'damage'.

Of course, the RIAA has not and can not prove that this woman was actively distributing any songs, let alone that she had any financial or other interest in it. The case is complete hogwash and an affront to the 'Justice System' in the US in as far as it exists. If some vague handwaving and guesstimates can lead to a citizen having to pay what amounts to 1-2 years of full pay for a civil infringement, then that isn't justice any more.

All this because the RIAA and kin are afraid to lose the iron grip they have had on the entertainment market since basically the dawn of civilization. They are the dinosaurs of the digital age and instead of adapting into furry little mammals they stay blissfully ignorant of the meteor hurtling towards their brainless skulls.
 
Well the math supports the 57k.

3900 songs (going for the full amount here not solely the amount tried) / 10 avg songs per CD = 390
390 * $20 per CD = $7800. Double the fine for damages and you have 15k and then triple it for perjury and you have 45k which is pretty close. This has left out any fees for "prosecution" which often get tacked on in cases of this sort.

Given the size of the crime, the amount listed is pretty close to normal. Bounce 3900 checks and you'd see prison time and a fine in the several hundred K range. Steal 400 CD's from a store and you'd be up on grand theft and also facing jail time as well as recompense for damages and legal fees.

It's painful to see on someone so poor, but it's not far off the "normal" mark.
 
I will amend that to say that in cases where the recipient is of small means, sometimes a modest lump sum is determined that varies somewhat between the aggravated amount and pure payment amount. So you could see someone just paying the $7800 as if they had purchased the material and the 45k as the aggravated amount.

What's hard to take into account is her behavior in court which will be factored in by the judge. If she lied (and it sounds like that's the case) or other types of behavior along these lines, the court can come down much harder than normal. That's a hard thing to see from the outside really, where we just see the facts and figures.
 
Given the size of the crime, [..]
It's not a crime. It's an infringement. We're talking about civil court here, not criminal charges.
 
Last year some time I decided to download the movie Quantum of Solace (just before the movie was released) off a torrent site. This was in fact the very first time I tried to download a movie for free. The copy I downloaded had sound issues so I couldn't even watch it. About a week later I got an e-mail from my ISP telling me that they received a complaint from the movie studio with my IP address stating I downloaded this movie without the permission of the studio. I was amazed by this. I couldn't believe I got busted for the very first movie I tried to download. My ISP gave me a warning and that was that. I have never tried to download off a torrent site since.

But to add to this, I do download DivX movies from DivX-Crawler and this is perfectly legal, at least they claim it is. So my question is: Is all torrent sites illegal?
 
Torrents, and the sites in and of themselves aren't illegal. Plenty of stuff can be torrented or file shared legally. Content is the issue, not the means in which you obtain it. A linux torrent is a perfectly legit way to get your favorite distro, or firefox or a multitude of other apps/content. I use torrents all the time for various things (I keep a healthy amount of BSD/Linux Distros on hand) and they are all well within the bounds of the law. Of course the RIAA/MPAA would just as soon crush torrent's, but it's actually a very handy system for obtaining software.
 
Last year some time I decided to download the movie Quantum of Solace (just before the movie was released) off a torrent site. This was in fact the very first time I tried to download a movie for free. The copy I downloaded had sound issues so I couldn't even watch it. About a week later I got an e-mail from my ISP telling me that they received a complaint from the movie studio with my IP address stating I downloaded this movie without the permission of the studio. I was amazed by this. I couldn't believe I got busted for the very first movie I tried to download. My ISP gave me a warning and that was that. I have never tried to download off a torrent site since.

But to add to this, I do download DivX movies from DivX-Crawler and this is perfectly legal, at least they claim it is. So my question is: Is all torrent sites illegal?


No but if you read torrent freak they explain that with torrents you are still physically downloading from another person not a server or site. Studios pay X company(yes its an actual company) in California to seed crappy rips of movies and then monitor IP's that download them. Then they send a cease and desist or to the ISP hosting that ip address.
 
stupid plain and simple u could shoplift $999 of goods 10 times and u would never face more then a slap on the wrist in most states. But you take the equivelent of maybe $30 dollars and your life is over.

just stupid.

hell its cheaper for people to get a DUI or 2 in most states then it is to have a few pieces of data that compose music on your pc.
 
Last year some time I decided to download the movie Quantum of Solace (just before the movie was released) off a torrent site. This was in fact the very first time I tried to download a movie for free. The copy I downloaded had sound issues so I couldn't even watch it. About a week later I got an e-mail from my ISP telling me that they received a complaint from the movie studio with my IP address stating I downloaded this movie without the permission of the studio. I was amazed by this. I couldn't believe I got busted for the very first movie I tried to download. My ISP gave me a warning and that was that. I have never tried to download off a torrent site since.

What pisses off the studios the worst is a telesync released before a major movie appears in the studios. A telesync looks and sounds like crap because they're pointing a video camera at a movie screen. So not only did you get and distribute a movie before it was supposed to be seen - you saw and distributed it in a form far worse than the studio intended it to be. Studios probably care far less if you download a DVD rip of a movie from 2000 that has been on regular broadcast television.

But to add to this, I do download DivX movies from DivX-Crawler and this is perfectly legal, at least they claim it is. So my question is: Is all torrent sites illegal?

LegalTorrents certainly is not illegal.
 
Last year some time I decided to download the movie Quantum of Solace (just before the movie was released) off a torrent site. This was in fact the very first time I tried to download a movie for free. The copy I downloaded had sound issues so I couldn't even watch it. About a week later I got an e-mail from my ISP telling me that they received a complaint from the movie studio with my IP address stating I downloaded this movie without the permission of the studio. I was amazed by this. I couldn't believe I got busted for the very first movie I tried to download. My ISP gave me a warning and that was that. I have never tried to download off a torrent site since.

But to add to this, I do download DivX movies from DivX-Crawler and this is perfectly legal, at least they claim it is. So my question is: Is all torrent sites illegal?

Here in the Netherlands you can download everything off Torrent sites legally aside from copyrighted software. In the US copyrighted music and movies also can't be downloaded legally.

Torrent sites in themselves aren't illegal, however. Only some of the content they link to may be.
 
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.


You really can't be dumb enough to think downloading 1 song should give you that kind of punishment. Identity theft is what we should be worrying about online. That victimizes the innocent and ruins lives. Be realistic, be compassionate, be a better human being.
 
Lack of uniform sentencing in criminal matters and lack of uniform penalties in civil matters = justice is but a joke.

The only extenuating cirumstances are the judges making the ruling.

Thanks to the Mechanics blog at Gapers Block, here are seven crimes that will get you smaller fines than file-sharing:

1. Child abduction: the fine is only like $25000.

2. Stealing the actual CD: the fine is $2,500

3. Rob your neighbor: the fine is $375,000

4. Burn a house down: The fine is just over $375,000

5. Stalk someone: The fine is $175,000

6. Start a dogfighting ring: the fine is $50,000

7. Murder someone: The maximum penalty is only $25,000 and 15 years in jail, and depending on your yearly salary, would probably be far slighter a penalty that $2 million.

http://www.prefixmag.com/news/seven-crimes-that-will-get-you-a-smaller-fine-than/32033/
 
No but if you read torrent freak they explain that with torrents you are still physically downloading from another person not a server or site. Studios pay X company(yes its an actual company) in California to seed crappy rips of movies and then monitor IP's that download them. Then they send a cease and desist or to the ISP hosting that ip address.

This happend to me then sigh....

So why is it legal and ok to download DivX movies from there site and not get into studio problems?
 
This happend to me then sigh....

So why is it legal and ok to download DivX movies from there site and not get into studio problems?

If they're commercial, theatrical releases, it isn't legal. The only way it's legal to download them is if the producers/owners decided to release it for free.
 
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