I think that fine is far too excessive. How is a student ever supposed to pay that amount? That student will never get out of debt for what was a stupid mistake.

Imina centering someone out like that is certainly uncalled for.

I'm sure the record companies will settle for much less in the end.

But, I found it interesting that a jury awarded this amount. This wasn't some judge but a jury of ordinary people.

Clearly, they understood the issue here, and they meant to send a message.

I might also add that damages aren't meant to be subject to a person's ability to pay.

They are awarded based on the perceived injury to the plaintiff. Not on whether or not a student can pay for his illegal actions.

Theft is theft.
I applaud that jury, and I agree...the award is for damages, not s fine. It represents the loss of income because of the theft.

Good for them. As Monica says, "theft is theft". What
difference that it is a cocky college kid?

I too applaud the jury.

Imho, there are a lot of sites where one can download music and a lot of folks think it is perfectly legal, when in actuality, it isn't.

Seems the places word their terms of service to protect themselves though. I read some that were pretty evasive and very hard to understand.

I'll just play my radio, or music I have purchased.

Sue

I'm sure this "kid" knew what he was doing.

The courts need to prosecute the sites that deliver the goods. If we had every college student who downloaded songs brought to court, record lables would be swimming in cash.There should be a way to crunch down harder on the kids sources.

Wasn't the basis really because he "distributed" the pirated material? Not that he downloaded it for personal use?

The loss to the record co. is $25,000. - 80,000. per song per individual infringement?

I doubt it.

So that they can pay the pittance that they do to the artists who made the records?

What troubles me more is that an English person is to be extradited to the U.S. to face such charges.

I find it hard to believe that the U.S. would allow one of its citizens to be extradited to another country for such a crime as theft.

How about some U.S. bankers and their crummy mortgages ... that they palmed off on others? Think any of them might throw a shadow on a jail door?

Not really - ordinary taxpayers via the gov't. bail their company out ... and, after what should have been running their banking company into the ground ... they get to keep their bonuses!

As Dad used to say - some cats have longer tails than do others!

Good wishes for keeping your nose clean.

ole joyful

Imina you didn't have to carry on with the subject to SamKaren and center her out yet again. I'm sure she got the message in the original posting. As an artist she gets her inspiration from other people's artwork. We all do to some extent. Look at the scrapbooking industry and all of the scrapbooking magazines that are sold showing examples. People scraplift and copy ideas all of the time. If I develop an idea or a design and post it, I certainly don't mind if someone takes their inspiration from my idea and designs. In fact I am honoured. Now if they were to trace my design and copy it exactly, then I might object. In fact I have had that happen at a couple of art and craft shows. It would be hard to interpret what would be considered too much copying.

I agree Toni, they need to get to the main source of the distributers of the songs. As it is, we are being taxed extra $$$ for all of the CD's and DVD's we buy and some of that money goes back to the music industry because of theft to help compensate them. I'm not in support of music piracy BTW which you could tell if you saw all of the racks of music CD's in my house. I do enjoy the sites like itunes where you can pick and choose your songs. I am tired of buying CD's where there are only a couple of songs that I really want on the CD and this eliminates the problem.

What I didn't realize is that the fine can be reduced by the record companies. I always thought a court fine was a fine and you have to pay the full amount with no deal made.

I believe damages can be both actual incurred AND punitive.

I found this on Wikipedia:

"Statutory damages can in some cases be significantly more than the actual damages suffered by the rights holder or the profits of the infringer.

At least in America, the original rationale for statutory damages was that it would often be difficult to establish the number of copies that had been made by an underground pirate business and awards of statutory damages would save rights holders from having to do so."

Heather, undoubtedly the defense will appeal the verdict. The record company MAY agree on a settlement. But I think you're right, once a verdict has been given it can't be overturned unless it's appealed. Or, if the defendant declares bankruptcy then the plaintiff will have to settle for whatever it is awarded by the bankruptcy court.

What are they doing, charging people once every two years. If so, they have their work cut out for them for the next thousand years.

lol Karen. What did you do???

We used to just record stuff right off of the radio.......
Never heard of anyone getting arrested for that!

Marry, the key word in the original quote from the paper is SHARING:

". . .a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online. . ."

Recording (back when we did it as kids it was analog) songs from the radio so that we alone could listen to them again is one thing... but downloading high-quality digital music and SHARING it with untold numbers of other folks is entirely different.

I think it's probably bigger than sharing. I think it's also the potential for sharing.

The internet has changed everything. Files can be e-mailed, put up on social networks or personal websites and thousands can access them.

If I read the Wikipedia article correctly, the statutory damages assume other illegal copies are made as a result of the first illegal one.

If they let this kid off easy it would set a presidence for any future lawsuits.
donna

A word to the wise for those who are using LimeWire, KaZaa, and the like - DON'T!