

Judge reduces file-sharing award by 97% - anigbrowl
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/judge-reduces-shocking-file-sharing-award

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nkassis
54K is still a lot. I understand that she is guilty(of downloading) but 54K is
still a lot for some unproven(in my view) distribution.

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tptacek
Why is your opinion about a court's finding relevant? (Seriously, asking).

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rjprins
Justice comes from the need for social morality. Law books are only a means to
express this morality.

If society thinks something should or should not be done, or a punishment is
too harsh or too light, then the law should be changed.

Since we're all part of society, all our opinions matter.

Unless you were talking in the cynical sense that only the opinions of the
powerful really matter.

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tptacek
No, I meant it in the sense that we have the rule of law in this country, and
I didn't understand how the original commenter thought his opinions factored
into a case that had been decided as a matter of "fact".

Opinions about the reasonableness of the law are one thing. But opinions about
whether the defendant here was _actually found liable_ are another: she had a
trial, she had vigorous defense, and both a district and appellate hearing
found the industry's version of the facts more compelling.

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rms
The rule of law is undermined in our country because the laws themselves are
not on trial.

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tptacek
What does that even mean?

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rms
I meant that the right to jury nullification is suppressed.

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Poiesis
Note: you are allowed to change the laws.

(I wish I could give attribution to this, but I'm likely misquoting and hence
can't find it)

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invisible
Are there even statistics for how many people downloaded songs from her? Was
an entire song even distributed to any one individual or is it just that it
could have been? I really don't grasp these outrageous dollar amounts and
judges pretending that it makes sense to ruin someone's life over the use of a
computer that wasn't even used maliciously.

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tptacek
Again: just because the Internet makes a tort insanely easy to commit does not
make it any less of a tort.

The cognitive dissonance here is between the casual ease (and apparent
innocuousness) of file sharing vs. the actual reality of unauthorized
distribution.

It doesn't seem like it should be possible for some poor soul to wind up
incurring 60k of damages just for clicking a button to trade "free" music. But
it is. Just about every government in western civilization has considered this
issue, and from what I can see, the verdict has been unanimous. "Easy for a
lower-middle class mom to wind up in hock to the RIAA for five figures? Not
the RIAA's problem. Don't trade copyrighted music."

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invisible
If I went out and copied 24 DVDs and gave them to random people I would be
appalled if someone came after me suing for 54k. So no, I don't have any
cognitive dissonance on the matter. It's just a ridiculous tort and a
ridiculous award.

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tptacek
I think you find the tort "ridiculous" because it's so easy to do and so hard
to stop, not because you fundamentally don't believe companies shouldn't be
able to price their products as they see fit or to enforce their own property
rights. I don't know, I can't read your mind, that's just my opinion.

After all, you're commenting on a message board for startups, almost all of
which rely heavily on IP and copyright law to survive.

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invisible
I find it ridiculous because they are blaming an epidemic (somewhat caused by
their own actions) on an individual's ignorance of computers (likely). She is
not being sued for downloading music, she is being sued for sharing (to which
she probably was ignorant to). The 54k in damages (or 2M? who knows) that they
want to collect is not because some mother accidentally (or not) shared some
files. Also, it can be said that they are not protecting their IP very well if
she and one other person is being sued out of the likely 50 million or more
people that are downloading music illegally (or have at some point).

