Graduate Student Fined $675,0000 in Music Download Case

A Boston University grad student was fined $675,000 for downloading music. He said he was thankful the fine wasn't in the millions.

www.nytimes.com...

A jury decided on Friday that a Boston University graduate student who admitted to downloading more than 800 songs from the Internet between 1999 and 2007 should pay $675,000 in damages to four record labels for copyright violations, The Associated Press reported. The student, Joel Tenenbaum, right, testified Thursday in federal district court in Boston that he had downloaded and shared hundreds of songs by artists including Nirvana, Green Day and the Smashing Pumpkins, and said he had lied in pretrial depositions when he said friends or siblings may have downloaded the songs to his computer. The record labels involved in the case have focused on 30 songs that Mr. Tenenbaum, 25, downloaded. Under federal law they were entitled to $750 to $30,000 for each infringement, but the jury was permitted to raise that to as much as $150,000 a track if it found the infringements were willful.

if you steal something you steal it. what happens if someone walked into your house violated your property took it and benefited from it? just because the record labels make huge profits does n`t make it right. I`m an atheist though and through but the bible had it right at least once, you shall not steal.

Deserves what he gets however untenable the ultimate punishment is

If you really want your music for free use zillatube, you can download any video off of youtube. It saves it as a proprietary file that you can then rip the mp3 from. You can save the video also as an mpeg.

Originally posted by cassini
if you steal something you steal it. what happens if someone walked into your house violated your property took it and benefited from it? just because the record labels make huge profits does n`t make it right. I`m an atheist though and through but the bible had it right at least once, you shall not steal.

Deserves what he gets however untenable the ultimate punishment is

He didn't steal $650,000.00 worth of music though .....that is the issue.....and the problem......I bet the artists are not the ones even persuing this and if it were up to just the artist they would make him pay for the price of each cd he downloaded......which would be fair...


IT's the slimy cheesy Record labels that are greedy and using this to their advantage while they still can....

They will do ANYTHING to make money......

Unless the kid is crazy rich he's going to have his wages garnished for the rest of his life. This plus his student loans. He can forget about ever owning a home. He would be better off just working illegally or just becoming some vagrant drunk with no income.

What's the point of doing anything productive anymore when any fruits of your labor are already gone?

He may just become another ward of the state spreading his fine out to every taxpayer.

if you break the law and cross the line you have to prepared for any consequences that come with it. Who cares how much he stole? If I stole $100 from your wallet would you not want me to be punished?

reply to post by cassini


atheist? k, good. glad we could clear that up.
I do have a slight problem with people getting charged with coming into my house and taking things when I say go ahead and come into my house and take things.

Originally posted by cassini
if you break the law and cross the line you have to prepared for any consequences that come with it. Who cares how much he stole? If I stole $100 from your wallet would you not want me to be punished?

I agree that this person should be punished for what they done, but you can't compare downloading music to stealing cash from your wallet. It's more like buying a CD from a music store, making a copy, then retuning it for a full refund. Somehting I'm sure many of us have done in the past.

$675,000 is just insane. I feel sorry for this person. The court is just trying to make an example of them, and now their life is ruined.

reply to post by cassini


Seriously, the guy downloaded 800 songs. That's about 80 CD's worth of music and if you figure them at about $15 a pop, that's only $900 worth of songs he "stole". So they just ruined this guys entire financial life.

How does 800 songs come out to be $675,000? That's $843.75/song. We'd all be paying about $8,437 a CD if that's how much they were really worth.

This is ridiculous.

Its quite pathetic !

The fine is absolutely huge compared to the amount of songs he "stole".

He shouldn't even be prosecuted first hand because those who are responsible are the websites that enable downloading copyrighted material.

They just try to scare the internet users, but it is a lost war as billions of songs are being downloaded daily.

Interesting to see that they went all the way back to 1999. Were they tracing his piracy for that long? If so, why did they let it go for so long? The slimeball record companies try DRM and it ends up being a total failure (as someone that lost a couple thousand from can attest to), then they try suing the pants off anyone that shares the music, and they continue to play out a really catchy single from an album while the rest of the album is the epitome of imaginative bankruptcy and ask for $20 bucks a CD.

It is their own greedy negligence that caused this in the first place. The American Idol culture of "you don't have to write your own music, just buy it from someone else and we'll teach you how to play it on guitar." I can sample 30 seconds of a song on Amazon and the track may seem great, then I purchase and listen to the whole song and realize why they can only pick 30 seconds of anything worthwhile.

*Edit - Not to mention, in a culture where I see rapists and child molesters go free after a couple of years jail time, and murderers at times as well, I'm stunned to see that our legal system would allow the financial rape of a college student. It comes as no surprise to me why the state of our culture is in such a sad state as it is.


[edit on 8/1/09 by niteboy82]

If I was this dude I would just disappear in South America, like all these top ranking Nazis did after WW2 instead of having to deal with the nasty consequences of being on the losing side.

675,000 dollars for 800 s___ty songs by illuminati-controlled, drug addicted 'artists'... Yeah right.




[edit on 1-8-2009 by star in a jar]

reply to post by cassini


So if I stole $100 from your wallet, I should have to pay you back $50,000?

its all about making an example of someone. The fines themselves are so onerous in order to make the DL of it something scary.

If you do, don't share. If you share, don't do it on your home network... plenty of unguarded wifi out there to connect and share on...

Artists get paid before the music is released.
Why do you think bands like the Offspring released there own music on P2P before it was even released
Because they hate these greedy record company's more than us for ripping them off.
The fact is not buying something is not stealing it.
Unless a person loses an actual thing, not a theoretical sale then it is not stealing and only brainwashed idiots try and say it is.
A lost sale is not stealing, clearly.
If the person didn't have the resources to buy it in the first place then its not even a lost sale.
This is just about greed and total control.
You know everyone needs to make a living right?
But the greedy greedsters want more than just a living as you can see by the ridiculous amount of money these idiot brain washed sheep in this Jury awarded.
Also this is not a Fine, it is money to be paid to already wealthy record company's.

[edit on 1-8-2009 by CaptainCaveMan]

This is just to scare the public about downloading songs, I would bet this "Boston University grad student" is either working for the record company or was setup. He said he was thankful the fine wasn't in the millions? This is BS because he will be depth for the rest of his life at $675,0000.

Nobody keeps count of how many songs downloaded from the Internet between 1999 and 2007? BS.... I don't think anyone can be that stupid (especially a grad student) to admit they downloaded more than 800 songs! + it's not stealing if the songs he downloaded where provided by a program designed for file sharing! The guy didn't steal anything.

Too many red flags, this is a PUBLIC STUNT.

No one should be responsible for a program that is designed to share files, other than the person who designed the program.

[edit on 1-8-2009 by imitator]

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy told TorrentFreak that the ‘damages’ will not go to any of the artists, but to more anti-piracy campaigns. “Any funds recouped are re-invested into our ongoing education and anti-piracy programs,” he said.

TorrentFreak

I will agree that laws have been broken but I cannot say that these laws are right.

I believe that the whole record industry in the US has in a way destroyed music. Have no fear though, these cases are only a sign of the desperation that these company's are going through. The changes in the habit's and just plain old way people are doing things is changing at an ever increasing pace. As technology takes over we are going to see a new way for artists to spread there work.

Just like the spread of information one day we will see other areas of work spread rapidly.

Originally posted by cassini
if you steal something you steal it. what happens if someone walked into your house violated your property took it and benefited from it? just because the record labels make huge profits does n`t make it right. I`m an atheist though and through but the bible had it right at least once, you shall not steal.

Deserves what he gets however untenable the ultimate punishment is

ok ... you are just CRAZY and should not be able to have an opinion on this subject ... why? you dont know nothing about the internet

every person from 10 to 30 years that access internet have one or more downloaded songs in his computer ...

THATS A FACT, I DONT KNOW A PERSON WITHIN THIS AGE RANGE WITH A COMPUTER WITHOUT A ILLEGAL SONG IN IT ...

so, do you think it is right to make 1 people pay for everyone ? I think this is crazy, and if I was prosecuted I would consider seriously "doing" the judge and all these things, and I would become a criminal ... I would not pay while all the people within that age range do illegal downloading

if they want to control the internet, OK, they should try to create a mecanism to avoid mp3 downloads ... I dont know how ... but prosecute ONE person to "scare" everyone else ... well ... I dont think it will work ... and I would be very pissed


ps: if you download a music torrent, they will never have any proof that you downloaded a music ... only if you tell them or if they inspect your computer

Thanks but I pretty much know i`m crazy anyway. I`m not saying I agree with these laws but stealing from people is not the way to change things. The record companies and national governments still need to do a lot to address these issues properly and it does n`t seem to be happening.

And your wrong I don`t know anyone who has a ripped off version of a song or DVD.