
24 illegal song downloads cost US woman 220,000 dollars - gibsonf1
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071004233021.itudt24b&show_article=1
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Alex3917
As an interesting aside, in one of the classes I'm taking this semester our
midterm is to create a plan to change the status quo of copyright. The
assignment was intentionally left very vague, so this could mean anything from
educating the public to lobbying congress. Our prof. even gave the ok on
distributing CDs with P2P clients and fake music files, the idea being to get
students to set up honeypots for the RIAA (to reduce their credibility in
court). Anyway we have three weeks to plan this using the class wiki. I
suspect our final exam will involve executing the plan or some portion
thereof, depending on what we come up with.

I think it's a pretty cool assignment anyway, especially as a cooperative
midterm.

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steveplace
Dang it. I was hoping for juror nullification on this one. That ruling would
have made some serious waves in the music as well as legal system.

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run4yourlives
That's a travesty of justice to be honest. Even assuming she's in the wrong,
nobody in their right mind would value a 24 recordings at 220K. They sell them
for 99c on iTunes, how they were magnified into those numbers is beyond me.

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cstejerean
I think the whole point is to set an example and to deter others from sharing
music. I wonder exactly how they expect her to pay $220k out of pocket.

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some
The woman did nothing wrong.

Im not saying that the legal system is wrong either. But the woman did nothing
wrong. I salute her for her courage to go to court.

And Im not going to spend any money on music anymore. Music and money dont go
together for me. Im not going to finance people who sue people for sharing.

She did not sell the music. It was a "fan helps fan" thing. She did good, not
bad.

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kingnothing
Regardless of your moral stance on the issue, it is copyright infringement.
How would you feel if someone went around giving away your programs for free,
or even worse, the source code if it's not open?

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zach
Uploads, not downloads, for what it's worth. RIAA has been focusing on
uploaders for some legal reason.

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jamesbritt
Thank you. This detail is ignored in most accounts I read. The RIAA has been
going after people for redistributing copyrighted material, not for
downloading. However, the hype about it is always about downloading.

The RIAA would like both to stop, but I think they encourage the idea that
lawsuits have been about downloading rather than uploading because that (they
hope) will drive more people to buy instead of snarf.

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jamesbritt
From what I've read, the defense was largely a matter of repeated insistence
that there can be no real proof that a particular person or machine was
involved because there are enough was to spoof the trace information.

The defendant was not using wi-fi. Is it that plausible that an outside person
could engage in file sharing using a spoofed IP address and user name? Could
someone go on a P2P network, look at who is online, and then clone someone's
identity?

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damon
Stealing == giving artists 10% of sales.

