Ever Downloaded a Copyrighted Song? You Owe Infinity Dollars
mashable.com
mashable.com
In my mind, to stand by while folks' lives are ruined for downloading your over-marketed/overpriced music is far worse than what Lars did when he simply said he didn't like Napster.
That is at best an incorrect, at worst disingenuous, characterization of what occured. The defendant did not just "download" the music. She made it available. She, in effect, distributed it. Two different things. Also, she refused to settle when it was painfully obvious that she had been caught red-handed.
This is not some mouse of a victim. She displayed considerable chutzpah, conveniently forgetting that the hard disk she handed in as a deposition was the wrong one. She is at the very least co-responsible for her current situation.
People are talking like this case is about the insanity of monetary damages for individual music tracks. And that's what it would have been about, if this person hadn't instead made it about whether she downloaded and published tracks at all.
Regardless of how poorly she lied or tried to cover up the fact that she downloaded these tracks, we should not ignore the pettiness of the underlying crime relative to the fine.
Petty to you maybe. But I happen to know studio engineers who have recently lost their job, artists like the Futureheads (thanks god they had the courage to go it alone. They rock!) who get dropped from their labels. THERE ARE VICTIMS HERE.
Studio engineers lose their job all the time and right now in a down-turned economy, people in every field of business have lost their job, so please explain as to why anyone should even care if a studio engineer lost their job. Workers have contracts and companies have profit margins, for all we know the studio engineer was stealing microphones.
BTW artists get dropped by their label all the time and its rarely ever a problem for the artist, the real problem is where the label begins refusing new material and has the band on a multiple works contract. If you've produced 2 albums and your record label wants a 3rd but won't accept your material, you cannot go to another label for up to 5 years in some cases.
That is an offensive word. Please retract it.
> not to mention basic grammar.
> Studio engineers lose their job all the time and right now in a down-turned economy, ...
You're missing a comma after "now". Also, engineers don't lose their jobs "all the time", they frequently lose their jobs.
> so please explain as to why anyone should even care if a studio engineer lost their job
"as to" is redundant. "Even" is redundant. In any case, my point, since you evidently missed it (perhaps due to excessive focus on such vital issues as etiquette and "basic" grammar?), was that those job losses are directly related to lost revenues as a result of rampant piracy.
> for all we know the studio engineer was stealing microphones
Silly; see above.
> BTW artists get dropped by their label all the time and its rarely ever a problem for the artist
Again, "all the time" is poor english. And "its" should have an apostrophe.
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
EDIT: BTW cool username! I'd actually thought of that for an album name, although I think deliberately mispelling it, spidey-style, to "electro-magnetic" would be even cooler (would be particularly appropriate for an electro outfit, naturally).
EDIT: Also, I feel it's important to point out that the reason I capitalized the last sentence (and let's be fair here: it was only four words) is that the great majority of the posts related to filesharing assume that simply because there is no financial reward for making files available, there is no harm done. But as Frederik Bastiat would say, there is what you see, and what you don't see. And what you don't see is that in at the very least a substantial amount of cases, unauthorized downloads lead to lost sales. The case itself had evidence of this, namely that her shopping list (I believe from Best Buy) only listed purchases of DVDs and games (it had a single CD purchase, IIRC).
I wasn't talking about your paragraph either, I was talking about your use of block-capitals. I generally don't waste my time picking apart peoples sentences unless someone has offered to pay me for the service, perhaps you should consider doing the same.
As for my use of retarded, it isn't an offensive word, I know many if you'd prefer to hear one of them. However, I wasn't even using it in an offensive context. I'm fully aware retard is used as an insult, but I didn't call you a retard, I said we, as in the HN community, are not retarded. I was merely stating that you use of block-capitalization was insulting, because you assumed people on HN cannot understand basic grammar!
@2nd edit: Regardless, everyone has a reason for using block-capitalization, but it never justifies it.
It was obviously colloquial language. But since you were being so prickly about it, I decided to repay you in kind.
> Look buddy, I've worked as a writer
Look, buddy, you're not going to see expressions like "all the time", save from direct spoken-word quotations, in any newspaper worth its salt.
> Commas are used however the writer sees fit and in the paragraph you take your third point from, they were elisions not clauses.
For the comma issue I refer you to "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk, Jr., page 8:
"3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas."
> I generally don't waste my time picking apart peoples sentences unless someone has offered to pay me for the service, perhaps you should consider doing the same.
Nor do I; I just do it when someone gets pedantic about "basic" grammar in what was obvously a colloquial expression and then proceeds to make numerous -- admittedly minor -- similar "basic" grammar mistakes. And I didn't appreciate the vindictiveness and severity vis a vis a very small abuse of all-caps.
Also -- she likely would have gotten less of a penalty if she had indeed shoplifted these cd's and then sold thousands of copies on a chinatown corner. I'm just sayin'...
Again, crimes usually have to have some sort of intent component. She wanted to download and listen, not share, this music.
Yes, I think so.
> Is there any evidence that she wanted to share?
She knew what she was doing. She had written a paper about Napster's forced closure. In that paper she argued that it should be legal, so it's quite clear that she knew that filesharing copyrighted material was illegal. And she had password protected her computer, which showed that not only did she have control over the software on her account (she actually put the blame on her son during the trial; absolutely shameless, this woman), but that she was not a complete neophyte on the computer. Claiming ignorance just isn't convincing in this case.
> she likely would have gotten less of a penalty if she had indeed shoplifted these cd's and then sold thousands of copies on a chinatown corner
True, and rest assured, if a significant amount of people start engaging in this kind of behaviour, the RIAA will go after them too. My point? Filesharing is making the industry bleed. That's why they're going after it.
> She wanted to download and listen, not share, this music.
She downloaded 1,700 tracks. She shared 24. Those are the facts. It's impossible to know what her intent was, but my feeling is that you're being unduly lenient towards her behaviour.
In essence, you're just defending her because you hate the RIAA, not because her position has any merit. And that I find jarring.
"The artists" say plenty. Here's a talented pro musician who has spoken out against this:
But you see the problem here: Jim Infantino is a great guy, but he's probably not famous enough for you.
The problem is that musicians who don't sign major-label contracts don't become world-famous. And world-famous musicians who are signed to major-label contracts and then speak out against their own label tend to... stop being world-famous. Even if they avoid having to fight their label in court, or release a grueling series of contractually-obligated albums that don't get promoted, the best case scenario for former major-label musicians is to reinvent themselves as indie musicians. After which they are indie musicians -- even if successful, they just won't be as famous as they once were. They don't have the marketing budget to fill those giant arenas. Unless they're Radiohead or Trent Reznor -- both of whom have "said something" against the RIAA -- but there are only so many Trent Reznors in the world.
Woohoo!
So? That's what Spotify does, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
> It’s just a joke, but it makes a good point. How much is one song worth to you? How much is it worth to the author? How much is it worth to the recording industry?
I don't see this relates at all about the howler ("point") regarding infinity dollars. In any case this is a confused mess passing for deep thought. How much is a song worth to you? However much you're willing to pay for it, I would have thought. How much is it worth to the author? However much he sold the rights to his music to the record industry for. How much is it worth to the music industry? Well, it's worth precisely the price they set for an album!
> ultimately you can always claim that a song never fully loses its value and it can therefore be set to an arbitrary, insanely high amount of money.
Another non-sequitor. My well-kept 1980s casio watch will never fully "lose its value". Would you like to buy it for USD 100,000.00, sir? And anyways, the claim can't be set "arbitrarily" high -- the law sets a limit of between USD 300 and USD 150,000 per song.
It is impossible to know the financial damage wrought by making a song available on a P2P network. However, it worth stating two points:
1. It is the jury that sets the amount of damages per song, not the plaintiffs. This should have been obvious to anyone who had actually read the court case, as the author claims to have done. 2. While it is impossible to determine a precise value for the damages, you can make a reasonable, conservative estimate based on the expected number of times a song has been downloaded once made available on P2P, what the expected price of said download would be if it were effected through legal channels, etc. It's not going to be perfect, but this is far from being "arbitrary".
Finally, the title of the article just reeks of demagoguery. Ever download a copyrighted song? You owe infinity dollars? Does the author take us for complete idiots?
I frankly don't understand why there's this rush to defend a woman who repeatedly lied about her activities. She could have settled for a reasonable sum. She instead had the chutzpah to claim that she never even knew about KaZaA despite having written a paper about Napster (her conclusion: it was legal). She lied about the hard drive she handed in for depositions. She, simply put, doesn't have a foot to stand on. Defending her just makes the anti-copyright movement look like a bunch of loonies.
The phrase "never fully lose its value" in this case means month-to-month value. Are you really still paying some amount every month for a watch you bought in the '80s?
Sorry; no. It presumably refers to the fact that music, in electronic form, can be copied arbitrarily and stored indefinitely, at no loss of quality. I don't see how the mode of payment, whether one-off or monthly subscription, is relevant at all.
> Are you really still paying some amount every month for a watch you bought in the '80s?
No, and irrelevant. See above.
EDIT: It occurs to me that the poster might have meant the "value of the song seen on a month-to-month basis", in connection with the claim that this value never changes. This is of course a ridiculous claim; it is well-known that popular single in the Top 20 cost more than less popular singles. This could quite easily be factored into a calculation of damages.
""" It reminds me of a recent Penny Arcade comic which mocks Microsoft’s Zune Pass, which offers unlimited selection of music for 15 dollars per month; since time never ends, this technically amounts to infinity dollars. Since the music is DRMed, if you ever stop paying, you lose all your music.
It’s just a joke, but it makes a good point. How much is one song worth to you? How much is it worth to the author? How much is it worth to the recording industry? You can push arguments to favor each side, and ultimately you can always claim that a song never fully loses its value and it can therefore be set to an arbitrary, insanely high amount of money. """
So, in context, it's talking about month-to-month plans, not resale-of-copies value.
I don't know, maybe he is. In which case, I agree that the casio analogy wasn't correct.
I think the anti-copyright campaigners would be wise to distance themselves from this brand of "argumentation". It weakens the argument against copyright.
Good for you.
(See also: http://www.liberalrevolt.com/article/the-10-signs-of-intelle... )
In any case, your arithmetic seems to me to measure the wrong thing. The problem is not that she downloaded the songs. The problem is that she made them available for downloading. If all she had done was burned 24 tracks from a friend's collection and listened to that in her car and gotten caught, then your calculation makes sense. But each time someone downloaded the songs she made available, that person no longer need to buy the album from the artist. That's why two dollars per track, IMHO, is far from being a fair figure from damages. It's the viral aspect which makes P2P different, from, say, copying cassettes like we did when we were kids.
For most minor and petty crimes (such as my examples in another comment; parking violations, drunk driving, etc.), mens rea is unneeded (in the US, at any rate). The question of what degree of mens rea is relevant for intellectual property theft is both open and relevant; simply saying that, for example, it should should require mens rea because larceny (theft) does ignores the fundamental differences between the two.
EDIT: Two clarifying points. First, there is legal language describing the mens rea necessary in intellectual property theft; however, there is not a significant body of case law interpreting exactly what it means. Second, the reason that you can't just copy the mens rea of larceny is that intent to commit larceny is the intent to deprive the rightful owner of the object, which is clearly not a factor in intellectual property theft.
I dunno - it seems that if we're going to punish her for sharing as well, do we then not go after those 7-8 people that downloaded from her? Seems like there's a bit of double-dipping that's possible here (which again would lead to an Infinite amount of damages).
But i'll give you that. We're now at $8-$10 a track. Which makes her fine somewhere between $200 and $17,000, still orders of magnitude less than the actual outcome.
I'm against music piracy and I think those who get caught should be responsible for paying back what they took from the other party. But bankrupting a person serves no societal purpose and actually provides a disincentive because someone who owes more money than they could ever pay will probably end up paying nothing at all. While someone who owes a couple thousand will probably just take the hit and move on.
The sense of entitlement evident in a statement like that is frankly breathtaking. I should be able to break the law, lie about breaking the law, get dragged into court, waste everyone's time, and then, as punishment, I should be given the option to simply delete the offending files? Are you serious? And what about the all the individual downloads of the songs she made available? Should we just ignore those, because the original perpetrator no longer has them?
It's quite obvious that you haven't given this a great deal of thought.
We can see this principle at work in the fines for things such as littering, illegal parking, and drunk driving. Individual instances of these crimes gain a person a small amount of value; the fines for being caught are around one or two orders of magnitude greater than this (at first--often repeat offenses raise the expense another order of magnitude in the form of either jail time or increased insurance costs), in line with the approximation of being caught a non-negligible fraction of the time.
By comparison, illegal file sharing has a vanishingly small chance of getting your life completely destroyed. The problem with this is two fold. First, it isn't at all calculable what the expected value is; there simply isn't enough data to accurately determine what the probability of getting caught from any single illegal act is. Second, the enforcement rate is sufficiently low that, even if it were reliably calculable, people would not emotionally treat it correctly--the same emotional detachment from strongly negative consequences occurs here as the one that makes people take other sorts of extreme risks such as teenage unprotected sex, extreme sports, and going to war as a foot soldier (note that I am not saying that these always have negative expected value; merely that people are not good at estimating these sorts of risks).
The problem the RIAA faces is that enforcement to the degree necessary for a lower level fine to create sufficiently negative expected value is a practical impossibility; there's no reasonable way to effectively catch and fine even 1% of file-sharers (a rough estimate of what order of magnitude of enforcement is necessary to make people effectively able to gauge the risk--such an enforcement rate would not stop illegal file sharing altogether, but it would at least slow it down, much like my other examples). The only long-term option is to change business models to one less completely invalidated by the advance of technology.
I fully agree that the expected cost/benefit balance has to be redressed. Personally, the way I see that occuring is via a variant of the three-strikes rule proposed in France. I think that rule is too draconian; I do think that the internet has enjoyed a penetration level in society similar to that enjoyed by other basic amenities such as water and electricity. So shutting someone off from the internet is a highly draconian measure, perhaps infringing on someones human rights.
But what if rather than cutting someone of completely, you just limited their bandwidth to a size to make, say, reading email and news practical, but make it impractical to fileshare music in any reasonable volumes. What's good about this is that the penalty fits the crime: you'll still be able to enjoy the internet, just not media-intensive stuff. Certainly a nuissance and displeasurable to the perpetrator, but it seems to me a proportionate and fair response, and it directly affects their ability to continue engaging in the illicit activity.
I would be more inclined to suggest limitations on internet usage for 2^N months (or some reasonable facsimile) for an Nth offense.
Of course, any such scheme is dependent upon dramatically better enforcement, in much the same way that, due to ineffective and uneven enforcement, drug laws are not an effective deterrent.
Most 3-strikes proposals, including the HADOPI one, say that someone should be punished on being accused of filesharing by the entertainment industry, not on being found guilty of anything. Is it fair to punish someone if they've not been given due process and been found guilty by a court of law? I say it isn't, but 3-strikes proposals, including the HADOPI one, say that someone should be punished on being accused of filesharing by the entertainment industry, not on being found guilty of anything.
Is it fair to punish someone if they've not done anything wrong, but if amember of their family or a flatmate has? I say it isn't, but 3-strikes proposals say that everyone using an Internet connection should be punished, for what one of them does. This is collective punishment, it's repugnant to the English Common Law legal tradition, and if you do it in wartime, you're a war criminal.
The RIAA couldn't have found a better way to discredit themselves in the eyes of the public, except perhaps by condoning child rape or re-uniting the Backstreet Boys.