Thinking about downloading music perhaps this will put you off $1.9 million fine

Hey, I want to get paid over and over again for work I did years ago too. (stupid musicians, stupid entertainers, ha)

I haven't spent a dime on music for over 12 years now, and it's not because I download it either. I just don't have a NEED for any of it. If I want to listen to music, I can listen for free by turning on the radio (okay, so XM radio costs me a little bit every month, but that's all I spend on THAT).

Originally posted by PokeyJoe
If she walked into Best Buy and jacked 2 CD's, would she get fined 2 million bucks?

In feudal Europe, if you were caught stealing bread you would be whipped in public, placed in the stocks, or run out of town.

But if you were caught stealing bread from the King you would be executed.

I guess we now know who the "King" is in a corporate socialist state.

Jon

Originally posted by GuyverUnit I

Originally posted by TheComte
No different than borrowing your friend's albums and making some tapes. Only, you've got thousands of friends with thousands of albums. Everything on the internet was purchased legally by someone at some point. It just gets shared around. No way that should be illegal.

.
Except that borrowing from your friend to make a tape is illegal.
That's why they call it COPYrights.
You do not have the right to COPY that cd.
Only the holder of the copyrights has the right to make and distribute copies of that song/movie/book/etc.
If you want your OWN copy, you must purchase one.
[edit on 19-6-2009 by GuyverUnit I]

And that is exactly why I don't give a rat's butt about downloading music the same as I don't give a rat's butt about copying an album. Besides, that is a grey area because originally copyright law prohibited copying for the purposes of reselling and profiting. Now, I'm sure they changed the law by now to mean any copying, but who gives a rat's butt? It still shouldn't be a law. It is just greed by the music labels, who pass on only a tiny amount of the profits to the artists anyway.

Originally posted by PokeyJoeWhat happened to cruel and unusual punishment? If she walked into Best Buy and jacked 2 CD's, would she get fined 2 million bucks? I think not.....so what is the difference here?

But that begs the question...
Wouldn't it be easier to just walk in to Best Buy and jack that cd?
But you don't do that. That would be stealing.
So what's the difference there?

But I do agree. The punishment is a bit outrageous.

EDIT: When you steal from best buy, only best buy is out money. That cd is already paid for. Only Best Buy will press charges. When you download illegally you are stealing directly from the record label. And you are hurting their ability to sell cds to stores because the demand has dramatically reduced.

[edit on 19-6-2009 by GuyverUnit I]

Originally posted by GuyverUnit I
When you steal from best buy, only best buy is out money. That cd is already paid for. Only Best Buy will press charges. When you download illegally you are stealing directly from the record label. And you are hurting their ability to sell cds to stores because the demand has dramatically reduced.

If company A loses $20 to theft they get nothing for it and the person is charged with misdemeanor shoplifting and fined $400.

If company B loses $20 to theft they get $1.9 million in "damages" and the person is charged with felony copyright infringement.

I thought we were a country founded on the principles of equality in all things?

Jon

reply to post by TheComte
Peolple say...
"Record labels only pass on tiny amounts of profit to bands, so it's OK to illegaly download the song" in one breath
and then say "It's ok, the bands make money off concerts, so it's OK to illegaly download the song." in another.

Well which is it?
Musicians don't need the money from record companies
or
Record companies need to pay more money to musicians





[edit on 19-6-2009 by GuyverUnit I]

[edit on 19-6-2009 by GuyverUnit I]

Too cheap to pay that $1 for a song?
Oh, wait, I get it. If illegal downloaders actually paid a dollar for each song they've downloaded, they couldn't possibly afford the music collection they now own.

By blaming the "industry" for being greedy you are lumping many separate companies into one stereotypical category to demonize them in order to justify immorality.

Why is the company to blame if millions of people want download their copyrighted material? Are they not allowed to earn a return on their investment?

Are you suggesting there be a limit to what a company is allowed to earn?

Sounds Marxist to me.

It's outrageous.

1.9 million?

WHAT THE FRASCHIZZLE?

That's outrageous.

Something needs to be done.

This is too much.

The woman is a single mother. She downloaded TWENTYFOUR songs.

Looks like these music companies are trying to make money off of her that they lost to the rest of the illegal-music-downloaders worldwide.

It's crazy.

She's going to go into debt for the rest of her life. She can't pay for her four children's school and college.

This is, again, outrageous.

P.S. And for those of you who support this punishment, THINK. 1.9 million is TOO FAR OUT. I would understand $190.00. Maybe $1,900.

But this is a SINGLE MOTHER OF FOUR. Think about how YOU would feel if u had to pay $1.9 million. What does the judge expect her to do? Sell her children to Angelina Jolie?

Originally posted by GuyverUnit I
Too cheap to pay that $1 for a song?
Oh, wait, I get it. If illegal downloaders actually paid a dollar for each song they've downloaded, they couldn't possibly afford the music collection they now own.

By blaming the "industry" for being greedy you are lumping many separate companies into one stereotypical category to demonize them in order to justify immorality.

Why is the company to blame if millions of people want download their copyrighted material? Are they not allowed to earn a return on their investment?

Are you suggesting there be a limit to what a company is allowed to earn?

Sounds Marxist to me.

PART I

You are not thinking clearly.

It sounds philosophical-political to you. And that's all you're concerned about.

1.9 MILLION DOLLARS.

It's not about the profit or whatever. I get it if she's told to pay $1,900.

But 1,900,000?

It's not possible.

It's STUPID.

Nothing to do with Marxism or Calvinism or Confucianism or whatever ism you want to bring up. This is downright RIDICULOUS.

And you CANNOT argue around that fact.

PART II

There are some independent artists who use P2P sites to get their material out, by the way. Instead of SHUNNING "piracy" as these companies have done, they have EMBRACED it and used it to MAKE MONEY.

It's these companies that are rigid.

itunes, for example, allows material to get out over the Internet through payments of credit card. That's where so much of revnue for the industry comes from now, anyways.

Why can't P2P sites track the servers of these downloaders - as they did for the woman - and charge them the price for the album instead, to be paid in the Internet bill?

Sometimes it's NOT about the money, it's about the bulkiness of the CD and the trouble it takes to go out and purchase it.

This is something the industry needs to learn: IT NEEDS TO ADAPT.

[edit on 19-6-2009 by KarlG]

Is it a criminal suit or a civil suit?

AFAIK the winner of a civil suit isn't necessarily guaranteed their money.

There is an old saying:

'Owe a £1000 and the bank owns you...Owe £10 billion and you own the bank'.


So if each song is worth 80 grand.... and if a person had for example 20, 000 songs (and I now a lot of people with a lot more...) ..well lets do some maths (please correct me if I'm wrong...its late and its been a long day)


20,000 x $80,000

=

$1,600,000,000

It only take a a few pirates at that rate to own the entire monetary worth of the planet lol.

So welcome you new overloards..the music pirates (Although I've a feeling the movie pirates would have something to say about that lol).

In a way the music industry is reaping what is sowed a long time back. People were happy with records and casettes. Then by slowly stoping selling the records and casette tapes then eventually the hardware they FORCED people to buy entire collections again.

Did it occur to no one at any stage that maybe as you dealing with a digital medium that it would be possible to make lossless copies of it??? Surely it must have crossed someones mind at some point? They became victims of their own endless greed, as they not happy to charge what would be a fair price, they ramped up prices again and again.

They continualy lie about the impact of piracy on the music industry. They feed the MSM news stories that give inflated figures and totaly miss out the fact that many many people for the old napster days would find they liked whole new types of music and then go out and BUY it as a result.

What I see is corporate greed of the sort that got us into the current economic problems in the 1st damn place.

So I say again ....welcome you new overlords of the planet..the music pirates. (They can't do a much worse job of the world economy can they? lol.)

I've wrote songs for over 12 years and always put my music out for free to all. You either want to make music for the love of it or to make lots of money. The moment you involve the suits...your screwed.

Wayne...

Quick point... she may only have 24 songs on her pc, but how many other people downloaded from her? She can be held responsible for every user who connected to her pc to download them.

Anyway...you may have missed it, but I already have agreed that the 1.9 mil is outrageous. Astronomically outrageous for one person.

Obviously they wanted it to make the news so everybody would be scared. But I don't think the "lesson" they are trying to teach will be well received. Its obviously only pissed you guys off.

Piracy isn't theft
Theft is if you take something that doesn't belong to you and the other person doesnt have it anymore.
That last part is crucial!

Originally posted by GuyverUnit I
Quick point... she may only have 24 songs on her pc, but how many other people downloaded from her? She can be held responsible for every user who connected to her pc to download them.

Obviously they wanted it to make the news so everybody would be scared. But I don't think the "lesson" they are trying to teach will be well received. Its obviously only pissed you guys off.

GuyverUnit, i will do my darnedest to change your mind as you sound like a (dis)info agent for your music bosses...

You say "she can be held responsible for every user who connected to her pc to download them", can you prove that? How can she be responsible for their actions?

Also you completely don't understand the way torrents work. Data is disseminated into packets and torrents are just small files that contains metadata about the files to be shared about the tracker.

Basically, the very fact she may have a 3MB MP3 available in her torrent upload folder, doesn't then mean someone on the other side of the World can then download that very same MP3 in all its entirety onto their PC from her machine alone!!! The download is facilitated by a connection of millions of PC's where the metadata details the packets of data and it is assembled on the downloaders PC. The download happens in chunks and not from any one place, so how can she be responsible?

You also say "Obviously they wanted it to make the news so everybody would be scared." You fail to realise how any publicity is good publicity. The more these cases happen, the more people will realise that torrent technology exists. The next generation of web surfers will think nothing of using torrents to get content...IT'S THE NEW WEB, like it or not!!!!

I find your posts extremely archaic and Draconian.

Edit: Typo

[edit on 20-6-2009 by PrisonerOfSociety]

Ever heard the phrase, "You can get it for a song..."

This punishment does not fit the crime.

This is a warning so to speak.

I love the sentiment posted earlier...White collar criminals
steal billions of dollars and get a slap on the wrist, but
Joe-citizen steals a song and gets life...(life=more money than a life of work).

We are slowly becoming a two-tier society

...and the top tier is very small

...very small indeed

@GuyverUnit I

Forgot to mention, but anyone downloading content, can do so in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of the Copyright Act, for the purposes of Comment and Criticism by that person under the [Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C § 107].

Why pay $20 for a piece of plastic that contains mostly crap. Downloaders have every right to assess content and criticise it accordingly.

If you download the music and leave that music in a public domain folder (shared folder) it IS copyright infringement. If you immediately remove the music from the shared folder it should be considered for "Personal use". The onus should be on the person distributing the illegal content listed in their shared folders. Even still when those songs retail for a few dollars a song the outrageous amounts the RIAA are asking for are unrealistic. I could see fining someone that much if they had multiple thousands of songs being shared but not 24 songs. They expect the people to pay 500x the cost of even producing the song to begin with...I say BS. How can they prove that you did not in fact download a virus? There must be ways to beat this easily.

[edit on 20-6-2009 by Ellirium113]

Originally posted by PrisonerOfSocietyGuyverUnit, i will do my darnedest to change your mind as you sound like a (dis)info agent for your music bosses...

You say "she can be held responsible for every user who connected to her pc to download them", can you prove that? How can she be responsible for their actions?

She is illegally distributing copyrighted material.

Also you completely don't understand the way torrents work

Well now I wouldn't say that.

Basically, the very fact she may have a 3MB MP3 available in her torrent upload folder, doesn't then mean someone on the other side of the World can then download that very same MP3 in all its entirety onto their PC from her machine alone!!!

Actually that is not entirely true. For one, if you know the IP you can set up a direct download from that one pc. Also, a file has to originate somewhere. Someone has to be the first to seed that torrent. Therefore, every torrent at one time was dowloaded in its entirety from a single pc.

The download is facilitated by a connection of millions of PC's where the metadata details the packets of data and it is assembled on the downloaders PC. The download happens in chunks and not from any one place, so how can she be responsible?

She is still responsible for every bit of data that was taken from her pc. They are all responsible. She was just the unlucky one who got singled out. And if they can prove she copied the file from a cd and seeded the original torrent... how many pcs now have that file?

You also say "Obviously they wanted it to make the news so everybody would be scared." You fail to realise how any publicity is good publicity. The more these cases happen, the more people will realise that torrent technology exists. The next generation of web surfers will think nothing of using torrents to get content...IT'S THE NEW WEB, like it or not!!!!

I agree. Their "lesson" didn't translate well.

I find your posts extremely archaic and Draconian.

[edit on 20-6-2009 by GuyverUnit I]

reply to post by GuyverUnit I


Thanks for replying

Will you atleast admit the *IAA's are hanging onto a dead business model?

They need to sell high quality MP3's, BluRay, Merchandise, etc for a nominal fee, perhaps introduce charges tethered to ISP's and users bandwidth profile and give away promotional content via torrents.

If i want to download the latest ColdPlay single, then i can do it for free. The torrent would be a low quality bitrate and more importantly it would be originated from source so i know it wouldn't contain some hidden virus, which is a big danger with torrents. If i liked the single, i could then buy a high quality MP3 from Amazon, iTunes, etc.

Suing single mothers, OAP's and unborn babies will be a thing of the past and they will penetrate a much larger audience and more importantly GET ON SIDE WITH TORRENTERS!

I despise *IAA's purely for the fact that the ORIGINAL content creators are bent over a barrel with ridiculous contracts and they are lucky to see 1% of any profit. Get rid of these middle men and let musicians create torrents so they can sell their own content/merchandise for 100%.

This is another revealing account reflecting on the common sense of judges in our court system. This case should have been either thrown out, or fined $100. How the heck this stuff gets so far out of control boggles my mind. Our judges have no common sense, and do not judge righteously. For example, I know a child protective services court case in my family where nothing was wrong, they took the children, and now a year and a half later, four trials, tens of counseling sessions, huge tab for taxpayers, and nothing absolutely nothing happened to warrant it. The original judge should have thrown out the case.