Woman illegally downloads 24 songs, fined to tune of $1.9 million
cnn.com
cnn.com
All legal systems that I know are completely broken because the consequences of losing are so different for the parties involved. For that woman, losing the case means total financial ruin for the rest of her life. If the RIAA had lost, it would be just a blip in their legal budget if anything.
In my view, the right way to set fines would be to ask, what percentage of their profit have record companies lost due to the actions of that woman. She should be fined that same percentage of her disposable income (excluding minimum wage).
So I could pretty much go up to your driveway, take your car, and if caught pay back $500 or less. Because of course this is what I can afford to pay.
No, there is a much simpler way. She should pay to the order of magnitude of the loss she caused RIAA. A bit more actually, for deterrence. Which could be something like $1 for each song downloaded and $1 for an estimate of each song uploaded from her computer. This is not the real damage, because of course not every song downloaded would have been bought, but as an order of magnitude it's pretty much ok. You don't need to go counting incomes to make it right.
And if you're going down the "justice not blind" route, why even stop at income? "Your honour, I may have just killed a man but let me assure you that my high school years were very traumatic. I was bullied and got bad grades."
This may save some embarrassment in the future: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/60793/civil_crimina...
My point is that the law treats all individuals equally. Your link was interesting, but nowhere therein did I see any mention of this basic tenet changing when we move from a criminal to a civil case. Justice is portrayed as a blind person for a reason; and it doesn't matter an iota if you're talking about civil or criminal law.
And, in any case, the comment I was replying to used the example of car theft, which manifestly would involve a criminal case. My analogy is perfectly valid; it is you who ought be emabarrassed!
Very broadly speaking, two things go in to deterrence: (perceived) Chance of getting caught * (perceived) Cost of getting caught = deterence. To improve deterrence you need to increase one of these. There obviously isn't enough deterrence to stop illegal downloading/distribution. Higher fines are an easier option then more fines.
They want the laws, which are on their side, to be enforced to the point where the great majority of people do not break them. That means harsher penalties, more penalties or both.
They don't want to send the message that they are ruthless bastards, necessarily. They want to send the message that the it is not in people's best interests to download free stuff. Doing this by making it risky in the way that speeding past a cop shop is risky (very likely to be caught), is too hard. So they opt for making it like not having fire insurance a one-in-a-lot chance of being ruined.
I don't agree with the law, with the ruling or their morals. I think that this kind of enforcement is immoral. Deterence is not the only thing behind enforcement of laws. Punishment/deterrence should not be concentrated in one person. It's like saving money on police patrols by catching only 1/4 of burglars we currently do but shooting them to make up the difference.
I'm just arguing that the RIAA are rational. Her capacity to pay doesn't interest them.
The "excessive" penalty and the resulting publicity helps get that message out.
I'm not arguing that it's good to do that, but that is the idea. (Yes, whether it is good and whether it is effective are different questions that may have different answers.)
Should her circumstances also be taken into account if she robs a bank?
Justice is personified as being blind for a reason. You break the law, you pay the price. There's no: you broke the law, but factor X and Y should increase our leniency. That's a recipe for chaos I'm afraid.
Actually you're completely wrong. The legal system is there to look at factors X and Y and determine if and how they should affect the ensuing penalties or awards.
She did need a lesson - not one quite so extreme but still.
It comes down to the concept of cost that you are using. What is cost? Dollars? I don't think so. It's how much of your living time you have to spend in order to pay for something. That's what fines should be related to.
(If they made that the law in e.g. US I wonder if some sheriff's department would get the idea to have policemen exclusively to follow around wealthy drivers -- in the style of drug property seizures and overtuned red-light cameras)
However, you need to take into account that the studio will allege that there must be greater punishment to deter the crime than just the cost. Even at double or triple percent it's not close though obviously.
True. You'd think though that eventually good old-fashioned common sense would come into play. We have murderers who get punished more proportionally than this.
" Woman illegally downloads 24 songs, fined to tune of $1.9 million"
The issue was the _sharing_ of 24 songs, not the downloading.
Thomas-Rasset also is not the most innocent of those who have gone to court... Great write up on the entire case here:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jury-selecte...
"Thomas-Rasset had used Napster for a college course and had written a paper on it, arguing that it was legal. She also admitted that she followed the court case that shut Napster down and knew that it was not legal. Given her knowledge and experience with file-sharing, her claim never to have heard of KaZaA and never to have downloaded files might seem suspect."
If this makes jurisprudence, you could flood the tribunals by simply, massively admitting filesharing, couldn't you (I say "you" because I not from the US)?
US is all about the money, screwing up someone, suing someone and going to court. It is one big capitalistic system that hurts only the people worldwide. Everything is messed up, starting from IRS, government, army and politics, education, food, patents, and especially things like this - "copyright". Yes, my life goal is to make someone rich. How about some honor and doing something for the society without "profits first"?
I almost puked when I saw that John La Grou smart power outlet - we will save lives etc...and we filed many patents. Save lives? Give the technology as free, and build other means around it for sustaining own costs.
Should have Tesla patented his inventions with the US approach, most of the world would have been in the dark ages, where computer is not possible, Internet doesn't exist and healthcare is power-less. Should he have dictated the progress of the world? No. The world as we know it, is made from minds that think of social progress, not this invented thing called money. US dishonored Tesla, (most even think Tesla is a car now!!), and named a nice little corner in NYC, instead of teaching real values in schools.
Laws do support growth of startups indeed, but that is the side-effect which truly should be taken as an example. Everything else, plain wrong.
I do not think reproducing material or sharing is something that is wrong. People in the US just wrote that it is, while in nature of the Internet it is not. Let me guess, downloading youtube video is also illegal? Than sue my browser's cache.
I really feel sick when reading stuff like this, for goodness sake, this is not the first time nor the last, meaning something there is broken, so change it.
I am boycotting buying CDs from those retards calling themselves artists. They are all about the money, not art. Real artists do things for the love of it, not the money. And when I see that, I feel great donating my money directly to them to hear more of that.
Disclaimer: I am some nationality as Tesla, but that is no reason why I mention him. He is the most important scientist of all times.