

Should a Copyright Infringer Pay $21 or $675,000 for Downloading 30 Songs? - grellas
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202444441911&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=Law.com&pt=Law.com%20Newswire%20Update&cn=LAWCOM_NewswireUpdate_20100224&kw=At%20Hearing%2C%20Boston%20Music%20Downloader%20Argues%20for%20New%20Trial%20or%20Reduced%20Verdict

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protomyth
Let's see, iTunes sells the songs for $1.29 (all new hits) so 30 songs would
be $38.70. Now, you were bad and did something illegal so let's go for broke
and say you need to pay 10x for being bad so you will not do it again. That
gets us to a $387.00 fine. That would be a reasonable slap. $675,000 is some
serious overstepping.

~~~
noonespecial
In the Capitol Records case, the jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay $675,000 to
several record companies for illegally downloading _and distributing_ 30 of
their songs.

## _and distributing_ ## There's a monstrous difference here that we should be
working nonstop to educate people about.

If we can't get people to understand the difference between simply
downloading, and becoming part of the distribution network, we are never going
to have a meaningful debate. Both sides will seem completely irrational to
each other.

~~~
Luc
I'm not sure this is the same case I have heard of before, but let's assume
this person was torrenting some popular songs.

How much does it matter that he was distributing and not just downloading, if
there were hundreds of others seeding at the same time? Other downloaders
would have been inconvenienced just very slightly by him not being there. Did
his contribution lead to an appreciable number of extra downloads, or did it
just help the same number of pirates download faster?

With which I just mean to say that there are gradations in distribution...

~~~
noonespecial
That's actually so good I'm just going to repeat it:

 _With which I just mean to say that there are gradations in distribution_

That's exactly what this whole thing is missing. No one has stopped to
calculate what the impact (in monetary damages, even hypothetically on the
_download==lost sale_ metric) of a bittorrent client running for x days at
home connection upload speed.

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mtarnovan
Let's put it like this: if I'm caught on a bus without a ticket ($ 5) would it
be reasonable to be fined $50,000 ?

There is more depth to this comparison than meets the eye, as naively both
items (song and a bus ride) have zero marginal cost, and the rights have been
violated in a fairly similar manner.

(edit for clarification)

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forinti
For downloading, he should pay as much as a radio listener pays: nothing.

For distributing, he should pay the same fees that radio stations pay.

~~~
noonespecial
_For distributing, he should pay the same fees that radio stations pay._

In other words, they should pay him!, preferably through a shell corporation.

~~~
otto
Actually radio stations pay licenses for rights to songs for
satellite/internet radio, while music is sent to radio stations for free
through promoters.

I work at a small college radio station (<http://kmnr.org>) we have been
working with SoundExchange to get licensing for internet broadcast in addition
to our radio broadcast.

~~~
eli
You might want to double check that. Labels may send your station free CDs,
but if you broadcast them, you should be paying ASCAP/BMI fees based on how
many songs you play.

~~~
otto
I thought about that a bit more and talked to our music director and I think
you are right.

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benologist
I think they should make it $500 - $1,000 per song. It's enough to make people
look at their huge song libraries and wonder if they should go legit, without
it being so phenomenally huge it's just a meaningless number.

The people who fantasize about how he should only have to pay $1 or w/e are
delusional. Why would anyone ever buy music again if the worst case scenario
is they _might_ have to pay a buck a track one day. Punishments need to fit
crimes _and_ serve as a deterrent to others as well.

~~~
sounddust
It's absurd to claim that $5,000,000 is an appropriate punishment for having
filled one's iPod with downloaded music.

Let's be reasonable; the fine should not have anything to do with the volume
of music downloaded, as people who download music often do so to sample, and
delete afterwards (or they download a stuff that they don't even want, because
it's free).

Instead, the fine should be several times what the person would have likely
been able to spend on music during the time that the download occurred,
regardless of the number of songs involved (and of course, the songs should be
deleted).

For a high-school student, that fine could be $500 ($50 if he/she comes from a
poor family). For a programmer making $60,000/year, that fine could be around
$5-10k. For a rich person, the fine could be $50/song.

People who are fined millions of dollars are usually people who have done
atrocious things (like pushing drugs to schoolkids for years), not downloaded
some songs for their iPod, 90% of which were downloaded to try out and
wouldn't have been purchased anyway.

~~~
benologist
If you fill an entire iPod with pirated music then you deserve a sizable
punishment. You're not owed and nor do you deserve gigabytes of music simply
because you bought a device with the capacity to host that much. Your income
and your ability to purchase whatever quantity of music legitimately also has
no relationship with the storage capacity of your iPod.

The other excuses you present are irrelevant too, if you downloaded the music
then you downloaded it, it doesn't matter what happened next. There are free
and legitimate ways to preview pretty much _anything_ on the internet, you
don't need to pirate an artist's entire catalog to see if you like that
person.

The only point I can agree on is making it 'comfortably excessive' relative to
income, $500 means little johnny's not getting that car he's saving for, and
$10k to us is as nice as prison sex. But I think that would naturally sort
itself out - nobody's been held responsible for the full catalog of music
they've pirated, it's always been at most up to dozens of tracks.

~~~
sounddust
Of course you're not owed anything; My point is that downloading two songs is
not necessarily twice as "bad" or harmful to the artist as downloading one
song, so trying to establish a fine on a "per-song" basis is absurd. For each
additional song a person downloads, there is a diminishing harm done to the
artists and labels involved, and it eventually reaches a point where
absolutely no additional harm is done.

Therefore, any punishment should be related to a reasonable estimate on the
harm of the artists/labels (and of course multiplied to the point of
punishment, but to a reasonable extent given the crime).

It would be different in a case of actual theft; each physical CD stolen is a
CD that cannot be sold to someone else, and it's an asset that the thief can
resell.

