
Ever Downloaded a Copyrighted Song? You Owe Infinity Dollars - winanga
http://mashable.com/2009/06/19/infinity-dollars/
======
htsh
It seems pretty gutless of the "artists" on this list, like Gwen Stefani, to
sit by and watch someone's life get ruined for downloading their music. I
would love to hear their take on this. We can blame the extortionist middlemen
all we want, but this is not going to change unless the artists say something.

In my mind, to stand by while folks' lives are ruined for downloading your
over-marketed/overpriced music is far worse than what Lars did when he simply
said he didn't like Napster.

~~~
seertaak
> It seems pretty gutless of the "artists" on this list to sit by and watch
> someone's life get ruined for downloading their music.

That is at best an incorrect, at worst disingenuous, characterization of what
occured. The defendant did not just "download" the music. She _made it
available_. She, in effect, distributed it. Two different things. Also, she
refused to settle when it was painfully obvious that she had been caught red-
handed.

This is not some mouse of a victim. She displayed considerable chutzpah,
conveniently forgetting that the hard disk she handed in as a deposition was
the wrong one. She is at the very least co-responsible for her current
situation.

~~~
tptacek
She didn't just refuse to settle. In two seperate trials, she mounted what
jurors determined was a remarkably dishonest defense, and got slapped hard for
pulling that.

People are talking like this case is about the insanity of monetary damages
for individual music tracks. And that's what it would have been about, if this
person hadn't instead made it about whether she downloaded and published
tracks at all.

~~~
htsh
Well its about the fact that there's no cap on statutory damages, and that
when you string together multiple infringements, how out of hand things can
get. I don't think her poor defense changes this concurrent conversation.

Regardless of how poorly she lied or tried to cover up the fact that she
downloaded these tracks, we should not ignore the pettiness of the underlying
crime relative to the fine.

~~~
seertaak
> we should not ignore the pettiness of the underlying crime.

Petty to you maybe. But I happen to know studio engineers who have recently
lost their job, artists like the Futureheads (thanks god they had the courage
to go it alone. They rock!) who get dropped from their labels. THERE ARE
VICTIMS HERE.

~~~
electromagnetic
Please, this is a comment thread, everyone reading this can actually read so
don't block-capitalize anything, there's exclamation marks for that, we're not
retarded we can read but it does make you look retarded for doing it. You've
weakened your point by breaking HN's etiquette, not to mention basic grammar.

Studio engineers lose their job all the time and right now in a down-turned
economy, people in every field of business have lost their job, so please
explain as to why anyone should even care if a studio engineer lost their job.
Workers have contracts and companies have profit margins, for all we know the
studio engineer was stealing microphones.

BTW artists get dropped by their label all the time and its rarely ever a
problem for the artist, the real problem is where the label begins refusing
new material and has the band on a multiple works contract. If you've produced
2 albums and your record label wants a 3rd but won't accept your material, you
cannot go to another label for up to 5 years in some cases.

~~~
seertaak
> we're not retarded

That is an offensive word. Please retract it.

> not to mention basic grammar.

> Studio engineers lose their job all the time and right now in a down-turned
> economy, ...

You're missing a comma after "now". Also, engineers don't lose their jobs "all
the time", they _frequently_ lose their jobs.

> so please explain as to why anyone should even care if a studio engineer
> lost their job

"as to" is redundant. "Even" is redundant. In any case, my point, since you
evidently missed it (perhaps due to excessive focus on such vital issues as
etiquette and "basic" grammar?), was that those job losses are directly
related to lost revenues as a result of rampant piracy.

> for all we know the studio engineer was stealing microphones

Silly; see above.

> BTW artists get dropped by their label all the time and its rarely ever a
> problem for the artist

Again, "all the time" is poor english. And "its" should have an apostrophe.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

EDIT: BTW cool username! I'd actually thought of that for an album name,
although I think deliberately mispelling it, spidey-style, to "electro-
magnetic" would be even cooler (would be particularly appropriate for an
electro outfit, naturally).

EDIT: Also, I feel it's important to point out that the reason I capitalized
the last sentence (and let's be fair here: it was only four words) is that the
great majority of the posts related to filesharing assume that simply because
there is no financial reward for making files available, there is no harm
done. But as Frederik Bastiat would say, there is what you see, and what you
don't see. And what you don't see is that in at the very least a substantial
amount of cases, unauthorized downloads lead to lost sales. The case _itself_
had evidence of this, namely that her shopping list (I believe from Best Buy)
only listed purchases of DVDs and games (it had a single CD purchase, IIRC).

~~~
electromagnetic
Look buddy, I've worked as a writer and aside from missing an apostrophe on
the 'it's' I didn't make a single mistake in my word usage or my punctuation,
so don't troll me on it. Commas are used however the writer sees fit and in
the paragraph you take your third point from, they were elisions not clauses.

I wasn't talking about your paragraph either, I was talking about your use of
block-capitals. I generally don't waste my time picking apart peoples
sentences unless someone has offered to pay me for the service, perhaps you
should consider doing the same.

As for my use of retarded, it isn't an offensive word, I know many if you'd
prefer to hear one of them. However, I wasn't even using it in an offensive
context. I'm fully aware retard is used as an insult, but I didn't call _you_
a retard, I said _we_ , as in the HN community, are not retarded. I was merely
stating that you use of block-capitalization was insulting, because you
assumed people on HN cannot understand basic grammar!

@2nd edit: Regardless, everyone has a reason for using block-capitalization,
but it never justifies it.

~~~
seertaak
> I was talking about your use of block-capitals

It was obviously colloquial language. But since you were being so prickly
about it, I decided to repay you in kind.

> Look buddy, I've worked as a writer

Look, buddy, you're not going to see expressions like "all the time", save
from direct spoken-word quotations, in any newspaper worth its salt.

> Commas are used however the writer sees fit and in the paragraph you take
> your third point from, they were elisions not clauses.

For the comma issue I refer you to "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk,
Jr., page 8:

"3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas."

> I generally don't waste my time picking apart peoples sentences unless
> someone has offered to pay me for the service, perhaps you should consider
> doing the same.

Nor do I; I just do it when someone gets pedantic about "basic" grammar in
what was obvously a colloquial expression and then proceeds to make numerous
-- admittedly minor -- similar "basic" grammar mistakes. And I didn't
appreciate the vindictiveness and severity vis a vis a very small abuse of
all-caps.

~~~
pg
Will you please stop this?

~~~
seertaak
Yes; apologies.

------
cabalamat
If like me you think this is ludicrous, join the Pirate Party -- see
<http://www.pp-international.net/> for your national PP.

~~~
Deestan
Thanks for the final nudge; I'm now a member of the Norwegian PP. :)

~~~
cabalamat
Now go and give the final nudge to 10 of your friends...

------
pierrefar
Hey, finally the recording industry has cracked the new business model they
need. To compensate for the declining sales, all they need to do is win a
lawsuit once a month or so and they'll be fine!

Woohoo!

------
cousin_it
Uh, due to exponential discounting, $15 a month over infinite time adds up to
a finite and not especially large amount of money. Think as much money as
you'd need to have in the bank to receive $15 a month in interest.

~~~
swombat
That's really just being pedantic about a humorous Penny Arcarde comic,
though. Perhaps there are more important points to debate in this article?

~~~
cousin_it
I make a principle of exposing careless arguments even when they support a
good cause. I hate the RIAA as much as the next guy, but Penny Arcade's
"infinity dollars" line didn't attack the outrageous fines of the RIAA, it
(unfairly) attacked Microsoft's price point which is actually very affordable.
Then the linked article took that already faulty argument and made a faulty
logical connection on top. Think about it: even if Penny Arcade had been
right, what does Microsoft's pricing model have to do with the article _at
all_? Unless you subscribe to the view that all bad things in this world are
intimately connected: "Microsoft, DRM, RIAA, boo".

~~~
ggchappell
> I make a principle of exposing careless arguments even when they support a
> good cause.

Good for you.

(See also: [http://www.liberalrevolt.com/article/the-10-signs-of-
intelle...](http://www.liberalrevolt.com/article/the-10-signs-of-intellectual-
honesty) )

------
robryan
Just after a general opinion, what would people rate as a fair penalty in this
case?

~~~
htsh
24 tracks, how about $24 dollars? I'd even give them double, or $48. For the
1700 tracks (that she allegedly downloaded but was not tried for), $3400. The
extra dollar for each song goes towards the administrative costs of tracking
them down.

~~~
rationalbeaver
As I recall, the issue wasn't just that she downloaded the 24 songs, but that
she made them available for download (shared). For that I would tack on an
extra $7-$8 per song to account for the (likely) small number of people who
downloaded from her.

~~~
htsh
Isn't this the issue everytime someone downloads a song since every p2p &
torrent client automatically shares the stuff you download? It seems silly to
punish her for a systematic feature of the software she used to download the
tracks.

I dunno - it seems that if we're going to punish her for sharing as well, do
we then not go after those 7-8 people that downloaded from her? Seems like
there's a bit of double-dipping that's possible here (which again would lead
to an Infinite amount of damages).

But i'll give you that. We're now at $8-$10 a track. Which makes her fine
somewhere between $200 and $17,000, still orders of magnitude less than the
actual outcome.

------
quoderat
I am glad when things like this occur. Ridiculous verdicts like this actually
harm the record industry, and shake people's faith in the court system being
fair and equitable.

The RIAA couldn't have found a better way to discredit themselves in the eyes
of the public, except perhaps by condoning child rape or re-uniting the
Backstreet Boys.

------
sili
To play a devil's advocate, I don't think RIAA is really thinking that $80,000
per song is a fair amount. They are trying to force her to finally agree to a
settlement and get this over with.

------
hellweaver666
I reckon the music industry profit margins must be plummeting like crazy since
online music downloads became popular and they're just trying to recoup their
losses through legal cases!

