

Judge draws parallel between music sharing and unlicensed public performance - CoryOndrejka
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/double-standard-unlicensed-bar-music-vs-p2p-users.ars

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voidpointer
Interesting approach and I think it is a good direction. There are some
differences though: sharing the files on the net is releasing them to a
potentially broader audience. The patrons in a bar don't get to take home the
music they listen to on their mp3 player. Maybe a comparison to unlicensed
broadcasting is more appropriate?

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c1sc0
But imagine if they could?! Right now, there is no technical reason why this
is not possible, all hurdles are legal ones.

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dedward
There is a distinct legal difference between performance of a work and
copying.... if you were recording the thing at the bar and then distributing
copies - it would be the latter.

The point the judge is making here is more like "Hey - in _performance_
related damages - we punish violators who _knowingly_ and _blatantly_ refused
to follow the law to their direct commercial benefit, and the only pay a few
thousand bucks in damages compared to the licensing fees. (4, or 5 figures in
the extreme.)

Now, even though it's not the same issue precisely, it seems grossly out of
place that a person at home who shared some music with a few people for non-
commercial reasons is being assessed damages in the 6 to 7 figure ranges...and
that just seems absurd.

I mean seriously - some Mom goes out and shares a song on some bittorrent
setup - and we're saying she owes a MILLION DOLLARS?

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voidpointer
The high figures seem to result from the fact that the *AA argue that the file
was _potentially_ shared with _millions_ of people around the internet. I
wonder why they are not required to prove every single instance of downloading
that they claiming damages from...

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michael_dorfman
I'm afraid that if this parallel becomes common, it will backfire. An
unlicensed public performance, which receives a penalty of 2x the license fee,
represents the song being played one time, to a limited audience. If one
extrapolates from there the number of potential hearers/hearings from a shared
file....

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pmccool
But they're looking at actual infringements. 1 download, 1 infringement. The
size of the audience, potential or otherwise, is here nor there.

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nkassis
Exactly, what bothers me is how they don't have to prove how many time the
files were copied (from her computer to another, she didn't do the
infringement when she first downloaded the song.) to make up that 1.92 million
number. If we had a number say $10 per song shared (ridiculous number 10 times
larger that the real number) then if they can prove she at least shared those
file once, that's $240. But they can't prove that currently so... the damages
are in my view totally in founded.

