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Comment by seertaak | Hacker News Reader

> It seems pretty gutless of the "artists" on this list to sit by and watch someone's life get ruined for downloading their music.

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.

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She didn't just refuse to settle. In two seperate trials, she mounted what jurors determined was a remarkably dishonest defense, and got slapped hard for pulling that.

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.

Well its about the fact that there's no cap on statutory damages, and that when you string together multiple infringements, how out of hand things can get. I don't think her poor defense changes this concurrent conversation.

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.

> we should not ignore the pettiness of the underlying crime.

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.

Please, this is a comment thread, everyone reading this can actually read so don't block-capitalize anything, there's exclamation marks for that, we're not retarded we can read but it does make you look retarded for doing it. You've weakened your point by breaking HN's etiquette, not to mention basic grammar.

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.

> we're not retarded

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).

Look buddy, I've worked as a writer and aside from missing an apostrophe on the 'it's' I didn't make a single mistake in my word usage or my punctuation, so don't troll me on it. Commas are used however the writer sees fit and in the paragraph you take your third point from, they were elisions not clauses.

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.

> I was talking about your use of block-capitals

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.

Will you please stop this?

Yes; apologies.

Again, doesn't every p2p application share by default? Is there any evidence that she wanted to share? And unless there's another motive here besides her wanting to listen to the music, I still don't think we shoult treat her like some bootlegging operation that sells thousands of cd's in downtown manhattan (to customers that are more likely to buy the cd).

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.

> Again, doesn't every p2p application share by default?

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.

Wow. Unduly lenient for disagreeing with $80,000 per track? As you can see from the above conversation, I'm fine with something like $10 and then perhaps a $100 administrative fee.

Hang on, I said you were being unduly lenient with her, not the court. And I made clear that the leniency stems not from your disagreement with the sum, but your willingness to absolve her from any intent in distribution when the evidence is that she was more savvy (and dishonest) than she was willing to let on.

In essence, you're just defending her because you hate the RIAA, not because her position has any merit. And that I find jarring.

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