Originally Posted by Bill Robinson
I am a little surprised at the attitudes shown here.
Copyright infringement is a CRIME. It hurts everyone in the business of creating intellectual material. It doesn't matter if it was one song or fifty songs it is still a theft of some one's property.
The laws were written for a reason and the fact that everyone in the business of making music is losing Billions of dollars is a indication of the the reason for the laws.

If the guy was sharing those songs on a fileshare network he may very well have shared them with Thousands of users. Those users would also share those files to thousands of users. Each song could easily have been stolen by 20,000 30,000 or more people.

The argument that the people probably would not have bought the songs anyway is simply wrong. That's like saying shoplifters wouldn't have bought what they stole so why punish them for it. How about car thieves?

Here is what the penalty is for ONE copyright infringement.

In a civil suit, an infringer may be liable for a copyright owner's actual damages plus any profits made from the infringement. Alternatively, the copyright owner may avoid proving actual damage by electing a statutory damage recovery of up to $30,000 or, where the court determines that the infringement occurred willfully, up to $150,000. The actual amount will be based upon what the court in its discretion considers just. (17 U.S.C. 504)

Violation of copyright law is also considered a federal crime when done willfully with an intent to profit. Criminal penalties include up to ten years imprisonment depending on the nature of the violation. (No Electronic Theft Act, 18 U.S.C. 2319)

And I do not think Bankruptcy removes a civil judgement. He will owe that money til the day he dies. He will never be able to buy anything on credit or get a Mortgage.

Good for the System. The thief got what he deserves.




Bill, once upon a time I would have agreed with you but the cat jumped out of the bag years ago and he's not getting back in. We now have a new music industry paradigm. Songs are free now. There is no copyright protection because it is impossible to enforce. The only way to make money is to go on tour, attach the song to a movie score or television. The judgement against this graduate student is meant to scare those who do peer to peer music sharing. But it is the music industry that is scared. The music industry probably started worrying about what technology would mean for their industry when tape started replacing vinyl in the 70's. Only a few people copied 8 track cartridges but the cassette tape recorder was the volley across the bow of the music industry. By the time CD's became recordable, the music money makers were sweating. They didn't know it then but the ship was fatally damaged. When internet file sharing became easy, the water was over the bow and the ship was going down. The music executives are watching the Titanic break in half and sink to the bottom and it's not coming back up.

It isn't just music. You should see how scared the education industry is right now. There is a movement for Open Access for education that has the textbook distributors panicking. Large prestigious universities like Harvard and Stanford are allowing anyone to enroll in some on-line classes with completely free access to textbooks if you read them on line. You still get the option to buy a hard copy, or a bound hard copy, or a color bound hard copy. You pay accordingly. In the same way you can buy a nicely labeled CD with printed lyrics and nice graphics.

I think this is the price we pay, as songwriters, for the new "openness". Having spent years believing our great song, and a break, might bring us riches, now we understand that even our finely crafted smash hit still won't bring us much more than a pat on the back and a chance to meet a celebrity or two.

But I say so be it. We have access to all the knowledge and music and culture the web has to offer. Would we be willing to rein it all in just for the sake of copyright protection? It would be a sad day if, for the sake of copyright protection, we lost all open access to music, information, news and art. It would feel like a return to the dark ages.


"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein