U.S. Govt: Harsh Punishments Needed to Deter File-Sharers

Ernesto
February 12, 2013
265
RIAA
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The Unites States Government has submitted a brief to the Supreme Court asking it to uphold the $220,000 verdict in the RIAA vs. Thomas file-sharing case. According to the Obama administration damages of $9,250 per song is not an unconstitutional amount and is in fact needed to deter others from engaging on online piracy.

running The extended legal action between the RIAA and Jammie Thomas has been dragging on for more than half a decade, and is currently with the Supreme Court.

The case is best known for being the first major file-sharing case in the US concerning the P2P activity of a regular user and the vast swings in damages awarded over multiple court hearings.

The court of appeal reinstated the original $222,000 award in September after which the case headed to the Supreme Court.

In the Supreme Court the defense team argued that the $9,250 statutory damages award per shared song (24 in total) is unconstitutional. According to Thomas’ lawyers the damages are out of proportion and not in line with any harm the RIAA labels have suffered.

The RIAA disagrees, and they are not alone.

The Obama administration has now chimed in, most likely because this is the first file-sharing case to make it to the Supreme Court. The outcome of the appeal will set a strong precedent for future cases, and in a brief filed on Monday the U.S. informed the Court its position.

In the brief the Government backs the RIAA and asks the Supreme Court to keep the current $220,000 verdict intact.

Among other things, the administration emphasizes that punishing damages are needed to deter others from engaging in online piracy.

“An award of statutory damages under the Copyright Act does not simply redress a private injury, but also serves to vindicate an important public interest,” the brief reads.

“That public interest cannot be realized if the inherent difficulty of proving actual damages leaves the copyright holder without an effective remedy for infringement or precludes an effective means of deterring further copyright violations,” it continues.

Although the Obama administration is not part of the case, it has the right to ask the Court to accept its opinion, just like any other third party. By doing so the Government wants to make sure that file-sharers aren’t able to walk away with a token fine of a few hundred dollars.

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy previously told TorrentFreak that this deterrent function is one of the main reasons why the music labels started their file-sharing lawsuits.

“I remember sitting in a focus group of college students and the moderator kept asking the students what would it take them to stop downloading illegally: more than one said, ‘You have to sue me or my roommate. We need to see first hand that getting caught could lead to trouble’,” Lamy said.

The RIAA eventually targeted about 35,000 people in their litigation campaign, and the Thomas’ case is one of the last remaining.

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I wonder if this was the hope and change Jammie Thomas was expecting.
- Mr. Burns
  
  “Welcome to the American dream: A billionaire using public funds to construct a private playground for the rich and powerful”.
  - Guest321
    
    And thank you Americans for voting Obama back into the office.
sigh

They will never learn, will they?

They’re not creating a deterrent, they’re creating a martyr.
- Christopher Kidwell
  
  Agreed on the martyr thing. It’s amazing that they do not see that, but I think that it’s the old ‘gold lining the pockets’ that keeps them from seeing that.
- One-Eyed Willie
  
  No amount of money or time will be a deterrent.
  - Violated0
    
    Quite true when you can’t switch off the human nature of sharing no matter how much they try,
    
    The big flaw in the US system is that they don’t separate out commercial from non-commercial infringement when such statutory damage are aimed to wipe out any commercial profit they would have made. So there is little separation of greed from simple user entertainment. That means, for this single mom of four from Brainerd in Minnesota, the award is so high that no matter what she does it will always remain as never paid.
    
    You would think it would be in the interests of everyone involved to have just gave her a small quick fine that can be classed under “fair” and to have sent her home. No lengthy half a decade long Court trials, no huge lawyer bills, where it is instead a “you got caught” and a quick fine like a speeding ticket. Having the punished accept the fine is the only way to have the population accept the law.
    
    You can rest assured that these RIAA labels won’t ever be doing this one again. Dragging someone through the entire Court system up to the Supreme Court was never commercially viable where it only makes many thousands of music fans hate them anyway,
    - http://news.mensactivism.org/ Jhon Deo
      
      Exactly. Infringement for commercial purposes [making a profit], and infringement for personal use should be separate categories.
      
      Personally I think copyright infringement for personal use should be legal. Sharing for personal use has been the defacto standard for nearly the past 50 years because enforcing copyright monopolies was impossible to do with the technology of the time. Only just recently have the media producers been able to go directly after consumers.
      
      Despite that piracy has gone up, media producers keep making record profits year after year. Evidence that legitimate media services, and pirated media are complementary goods not substitutes.
- Guest
  
  They are paid to not learn.
- projecticequeen
  
  his explains the whole f#cking agenda of the copywrong monoplists!
  
  I was blind to their ways before the professor in this vid explained
  the endgame. Project icequeen has been given the go ahead folks believe
  me.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=HL1360742482&v=nbpRRvRVsME
- dondilly
  
  Obama might as well have just sent a note to the judge telling him it would be career limiting if he did not rule in favour of his party donors.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    Not quite…to my understanding, Supreme Court Judges are appointed for life. All the president can really do is nominate.
    
    Makes sense, since the primary job of the supreme court is to be able to shoot down presidential and congressional suggestions and laws when they prove unconstitutional.
    - Anonymous
      
      If only THAT were true!
      
      Warrantless wiretapping anyone? Great result came from that! [
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  That has been the case for centuries. Government, facing the unpalatable discovery that people will not abide by a flagrantly unpopular law, decides to pick someone and “make an example”.
  
  It always fails.
  
  In this case, a verdict of guilty makes headlines, and that makes every US citizen question the validity of a law which allows copying a dozen songs to lead to $220,000 damages. That pushes the entire “pirate” issue into the limelight and from what we’ve seen so far, every time that has been done, the result is a radical extension of “fair use” to accommodate the habits of the filesharer. Cassette tapes come to mind, as does radio.
  
  Whereas a verdict of “not guilty” collapses the entire house of cards the First Church of Copyright is fervently trying to prop up.
  
  Had the US government and the RIAA settled for making the lawsuit, say, for 2,000 dollars, the penalty might sting, but most importantly, Jammie would not become a martyr over it.
  
  As things stand, however, the RIAA are now facing a Morton’s Fork. Whichever way SCOTUS rules, they lose.
  - bobmail
    
    “Had the US government and the RIAA settled for making the lawsuit, say, for 2,000 dollars, the penalty might sting, but most importantly, Jammie would not become a martyr over it.”
    
    The RIAA has repeatedly offered to settle this and other cases for very low amounts, and at each turn those offers were declined. It is very well documented (Google is your friend, right?). I think the lowest offer I read about was in the range of about $6000. That would have ended the issue, but a stubborn attitude and some bad legal advice instead put her in a very bad place.
    - djnforce9
      
      Even $6000 is still ludicrous for a measly 21 songs when the RIAA can’t prove that any “actual” (NOT theoretic one download = one sale nonsense) damages were inflicted.
    - guest
      
      “some bad legal advice instead put her in a very bad place.”
      
      Unless she wins, of course.
      
      The Supreme Court doesn’t hear bad cases, genius.
    - MadAsASnake
      
      Meanwhile, most jurisdictions outside the USA recognise that private individuals are not able to defend major commercial cases, and are not expected to do so.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Obvious to all.
      
      Except, of course, to bobmail whose religious beliefs state otherwise.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “The RIAA has repeatedly offered to settle this and other cases for very low amounts, and at each turn those offers were declined….”
      
      Low, as in the completely unattainable sum of $6000 dollars for a single mother? From her perspective, of course she had to decline it since she wasn’t able to pay it.
      
      The point is that a $6000 dollar fine, while still ridiculously high for copying a dozen songs, would not make the average citizen wake up and go “DAFUQ did I just read?!”
      
      “That would have ended the issue, but a stubborn attitude and some bad legal advice instead put her in a very bad place.”
      
      She had the choice between irretrievable bankruptcy or irretrievable bankruptcy with a chance of acquittal. Which would you choose?
      
      From your own perspective, however, insisting on the 200k fine doesn’t harm Jammie further. It only harms your own cause.
      
      This is why you sectarians from the fundie church of copyright keep shooting yourselves in the foot. You overreached in a way which made the entire cause ridiculous enough for John Q Doe on the street to actually wake up to it.
      
      Pro Tip? Had your marketing department settled for merely making the fines sting, you would not right now be making everyone who hears about the case ask themselves the question how much a dozen copies of music files ought to be worth.
      
      Mistakes such as these is what has encouraged the pro-pirate movement to virtually explode on to the world stage where a more quiet approach would have had it simmering quietly for at least a decade longer.
      
      If the case in question were not as tragic I’d say we pirates ought to be thanking you for making these waves.
    - http://news.mensactivism.org/ Jhon Deo
      
      So if the file sharer settled they would have only had to pay $285.71 per song? What a deal!!!
- anon
  
  Doubt he wanted to be one and in all honesty. Exile it is for another poor sod. I mean: 220k for sharing files? You can get a house with that kind of money and usually pay for it 10-20 years. If this is to create a deterrant for the rest, they might as well start cutting off hands.
downunder

not as fair as NZ judge who fined $2 bucks a song and admin fees all up of $500..usa is clearly full of dinosuars and greedy men. as if they see all those fines in their pockets anyhow.. like 6million to tpb.. how much did they see of that
and the camripper recently.. 750000? really.. wake up usa world polive
you so need a wake up

fines never deter anyone.. if they dont make money from it or have the money you can sue them for what ever fake losses you want you never see any of it.. espc if the person/s are jobless
- Guest
  
  Deterrence without criminal proof is wrong. For that reason other countries refuse to enforce US punitive damages because these violate due process.
  
  If society wants to deter an act, it should only be through criminal law and proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Fantastic
  
  Its a flailing old beast and the government getting into the act it just makes them the idiot holding the leash that will likely take them right over the cliff with the mongrel. They rejected the internet as the new medium holding hard to their own pirated monopoly and sealed their own demise to the rubbish pile of history. Its not about the money really its about control of the people and the information that is imparted to them. Other sources mean they are not the only voice telling the populace what to believe and think and that is what is truly dangerous to them There isn’t any mistake that it just happens to look like censorship to some, its because IT IS CENSORSHIP.
- bobmail
  
  Actually, it only goes to show how out of touch NZ’s system is when it comes to the reality of internet sharing. A single share can create an infinite number of copies. The $2 a song thing doesn’t begin to create any deterrent factor, does it? At that level, it’s “buy one, get one free”. It creates the silly situation where 10 friends who want to buy the same music should just buy it once, make copies, and the total risk is 20 cents each – less than the price of the song retail to start with.
  
  Deterrent factors are created when the risk outweighs the benefit enough to encourage people to change their behavior. Without it, it’s a meaningless slap on the wrist that does nothing to stop the offense, and instead actually encourages it.
  - Guest
    
    What are you talking about, bobmail?
    
    You were the one in the original thread that posted about the NZ verdict, claiming it was a deterrent.
    
    Now you’re backpedalling and claiming it’s not deterrent enough?
    - bobmail
      
      Umm, I didn’t post that, sorry.
      
      Why are you so full of shit?
    - Guest
      
      http://torrentfreak.com/first-kiwi-file-sharer-guilty-but-lack-of-evidence-kills-large-fines-130130/
      
      Read the thread. Everything you post is essentially a claim that the verdict was a victory, nothing less. If you want to keep spouting nonsense it pays to remember what you’ve posted.
      
      I’m still waiting for your opinion on whether Iceland’s MPAA should receive the same astronomical level of fines they demand of other people for the use of software they didn’t pay for. I’m perfectly willing and very interested to see your perspective on this question, since you so frequently complain nobody ever listens to your views on these things.
    - bobmail
      
      Again, you are playing a game, a childish one at that. You are trying to put words in my mouth that I did not say.
      
      I will say that ANY law against is better than a law that permits, but a $2 per song judgement has no deterrent effect unless people are getting stopped more than 50% of the time that they download or share. Otherwise, statistically, it’s meaningless. If a song costs $1, and you pirate 1000, and get stopped once, then you paid a very low price for the 1000 songs. There is nothing there that would discourage you from doing the same for the next 1000 songs, is there?
      
      So stop trying to be clever, you fail. As soo as you say “essentially a claim” you are admitting you are full of shit.
      
      Stop making yourself look like and idiot.
    - Anon
      
      Why won’t you answer his question, bob? Aren’t you always whining that no one ever listens to what you have to say?
      
      Why do you refuse to answer?
    - DutchGuest
      
      Isn’t it obvious ?
      He won’t answer any question that he doesn’t have a ‘comfortable’ answer for.
      Nor does our Bobby McFailpants ever seem to remember exactly what he said or implied, and when people call him out on it, he accuses them of lying and slandering his ‘good name’.
      He’s an either a paid mouthpiece or an utter imbecile, and quite frankly i don’t really care which it is; his stone age ideas and rants are so utterly amusing that these days, i prefer reading TF’s comment section over the comics section in the newspapers, as Bob’s silly little failed attemtps at trolling are just so badly thought through that every time he spouts more nonsense and contradicts himself, he just digs the hole deeper and deeper.
      And once it gets deep enough we’ll stand around the hole, have one last beer on him, thank him for all the entertainment he provided…
      And then bury the silly bugger alive, to teach him trolling never pays :-D
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “… his stone age ideas and rants are so utterly amusing that these days, i prefer reading TF’s comment section over the comics section in the newspapers, as Bob’s silly little failed attemtps at trolling are just so badly thought through that every time he spouts more nonsense and contradicts himself, he just digs the hole deeper and deeper.”
      
      That’s what I do as well.
      
      What makes it so hilarious is that bobmail even fails to realize just how much he harms his own cause every time he has to contradict himself or turn against a factual refutal with weak attempts at ad hominem.
      
      Generally speaking if in order to support a cause you have to lie, it’s a good indication your cause is weak to begin with. If you literally have to lie every time you comment, it’s a result of your cause being doomed.
      
      Bobmail is just perpetuating the Einsteinian definition of lunacy – harping on about how there must be punishment in best “Anon”-style while desperately not confronting the fact that throughout history, punishment has never deterred copyright infringement. Ever.
      
      And the US government is blithely along for the ride, once again failing to learn the lesson which was so painfully taught every other government in existence about such issues.
    - Guest
      
      “Essentially a claim”? For half the posts in that thread that said the penalty’s magnitude was fair, never mind the fact that only ONE out of THREE charges were proven even though they were all accounted for, you whined that it was an effective deterrent and crowed that it was a victory.
      
      Any law is better? The RIAA’s been playing that game for years, mate. They sued children. They sued grandmothers. They sued homeless people. They sued people with the wrong names. They sued people without computers. They sued dead people (then promised to sue the family after they finished grieving). They sued laser printers.
      
      And what deterrent did they get? Nothing – the RIAA stopped publicising the number of settlement letters they were sending out, because they realised how horrible it was making them look. Creators from MC Lars to “Weird Al” Yankovic to Bill Amend have all criticised and/or distanced themselves from this ruthless, reckless regime. What did you think suing the kids of the parents who happily swapped tapes during the time of “Home Taping is Killing Music” was going to accomplish? Win you respect? Forget that; you lost that battle twenty years ago!
      
      That you have to weasel you way out of these questions, of which I’m still waiting for your valued perspective, is a clear indication that you’re not interested in proper debate. You’re only here to look for retarded dogs to kick when they refuse to say “How high?” when you say “Jump, jackass”, and you’re furious because you can’t find any quarry.
      
      Prepare to have some fun in the next few weeks; I hear your hero Brett Gibbs botched his role as valiant copyright enforcer and managed to piss off the judge in his case by demanding his replacement. I daresay you’ll be campaigning for Gibbs’ amnesty and insisting the judge is wrong on all counts, right?
    - icec0ld
      
      “I will say that ANY law against is better than a law that permits, but a $2 per song judgement has no deterrent effect unless people are getting stopped more than 50% of the time that they download or share. Otherwise, statistically, it’s meaningless. If a song costs $1, and you pirate 1000, and get stopped once, then you paid a very low price for the 1000 songs. There is nothing there that would discourage you from doing the same for the next 1000 songs, is there?”
      
      Never-mind legal expenses. Tax payer be damned, we want to waste as much public time and money as possible? God damn it and fuck that. Count yourself lucky for now but big money wasters are or will be on the chopping block soon enough.
      
      “Stop making yourself look like and idiot.”
      
      Glass houses friend.
    - bobmail
      
      Wow, watching the idiots pile on here is fucking hilarious. What a bunch of dopes!
      
      Icecold, let me start with you: LEARN TO READ. Legal expenses to the public don’t apply in non-criminal cases. Don’t you get that? The government isn’t sending out their jackbooted thugs to knock on your door, the rights holders have their own and pay for them on their own.
      
      # Devil: ” punishment has never deterred copyright infringement. Ever.” You may be even a bigger idiot. How many songs do you think Jammie Thomas has shared online recently? I am betting zero.
      
      Unless you have absolute numbers, reports, and stats to back up your claim, just admit you are full of shit and move along.
      
      @Dutch: “He won’t answer any question that he doesn’t have a ‘comfortable’ answer for.”
      
      Wrong. I won’t answer something where someone is trying to put words in my mouth or is intentionally misunderstanding me to try to make me look bad. The questions are moot, because I am being asked why I changed opinion on something that I did not change opinion on. The only thing that changed is that Guest can’t read, and made some shit up.
      
      @Guest: “you whined that it was an effective deterrent and crowed that it was a victory.”
      
      No I didn’t, stop being a fucking liar. End of discussion. You are a lying sack of shit, you are making stuff up.
      
      If you cannot quote me specifically saying it, then you are full of shit. So which is it, child? Are you full of shit?
    - Anon
      
      Answer the question, bob! Or we’ll take your constant refusal to answer that you’re fine with the illegal usage of software by Iceland’s MPAA, in which case, you’re full of shit as you so aptly put it!
    - Guest
      
      “Other than that, it’s pretty much victory on victory, small and large, for the rights holders.”
      
      Right there, from the thread. You really need to keep a list of the shit you write, bobby; it’s absolutely gauche when you need to have other people do it for you.
    - MadAsASnake
      
      I have no idea if Jammie Thomas still shares music online, but since the RIAA action any economic activity by that individual is in a highly distressed and totally bizarre state. It is more likely a deterrent from taking any form of gainful employment. The RIAA will never recoup their legal costs let alone the “fine”.
    - icec0ld
      
      “Legal expenses to the public don’t apply in non-criminal cases. Don’t you get that? The government isn’t sending out their jackbooted thugs to knock on your door, the rights holders have their own and pay for them on their own”
      
      Are you sueing them in a court house? Are you using a Judge? Have you at anytime used these 2 facilities and services that would deprive anyone actually requiring them, to sue for stupid amount of money you’ll never see?
      
      If you answered yes, congratz. You used public time and money.
      
      If you answered no, you are not actually using the legal system.
      
      Learn2legal
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “You may be even a bigger idiot. How many songs do you think Jammie Thomas has shared online recently? I am betting zero.
      
      Unless you have absolute numbers, reports, and stats to back up your claim, just admit you are full of shit and move along.”
      
      …and that merits yet one more facepalm.
      
      Take a look at any statistics on estimated “piracy”. Our numbers, dear “Baghdad Bob”, are growing. What deterrent were you looking at? The one where we still see that the odds of getting caught are lower than getting hit by lightning?
      
      Or are you looking at a world where everyone who was going 5 mph over the limit on the highway would suddenly throttle down if the odds of getting a ticket became a thousandth of what it currently is?
      
      Does Jammie Thomas personally still fileshare? Well, since there is little else you can do to her, I’m betting a free proxy or a client with built-in onion routing will see to her entertainment needs. Because one way or another you have just ensured that any entertainment she will ever get HAS to be free.
      
      It might be she’s been turned away from most non-free music as a result. Which has simply lost you a potential customer, without gaining you anything at all.
      
      And all I need to prove that is logic. You have guaranteed she can never be a customer but she still needs entertainment. And she doesn’t really have anything left to lose if the verdict stands, now does she?
      
      That’s just elementary. The most basic kind of grade school logic. And yet somehow you simply assume differently.
      
      Honestly, “Baghdad Bob” every time I think your clown act can’t get any more entertaining, there you go. You should charge for this.
  - icec0ld
    
    Out of touch with what? NZ courts recognized the insane level of fine for what it is, insane. It’s a god damned miracle the judge didn’t toss charges out of the ball park right then for lack of evidence.
    
    The deterrents haven’t worked. File sharing is as prevalent as it is today if not more so than it was when this madness started because, quite frankly, “sue me” as reflected in the article is what it will actually take. Legal action against everyone. No one is going to front the bill for lengthy, frivolous and expensive trails on such a stupidly large scale. File sharing enforcement through deterrents is unfeasible because it cannot be enforced, only punished.
  - Liam JH
    
    An infinite amount of copies does not mean that their was even a single lost sale.
    If I have no intention of buying a product then where is the lost sale?
    As ever Fuck off Bob
Alan Ball

If I pirated my whole music library it would cost $23,130,000 or roughly 23 million dollars. To buy, it would cost a total of $2570
- billy
  
  Mine would be $166 million
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Damian-Byrne/1383318742 Damian Byrne
    
    If we take just what’s in my music folder (and don’t anything else, like
    music in games whose copyright I’ve infringed on), then that’s 12,944 files x $150,000 maximum penalty = $1,949,100,000. Or you can just go to Youtube and look up Rob Reid – the 8 Billion Dollar iPod
    - Chris
      
      so in their logic whatever 40k x $150k anyone want to say oops?
    - Romet6
      
      Jesus!
      
      I’d rather sing the songs myself! :]
      
      Then again some goblins in suits would probably still show up and threaten to sue me for billions, perhaps for using… Words!
    - djnforce9
      
      “I’d rather sing the songs myself!”
      
      In the UK, you’d probably end up paying for that too :P
  - Traveller
    
    Was NASA’s budget the cost of mine, they’d send several manned missions to Mars :)
- bobmail
  
  The you would agree that the punishment would be enough to make you consider not doing it, right?
  
  If you felt that you could get that knock on the door, would you even start?
  - joexxx
    
    In this case, the punishment for ANYTHING that the government doesn’t want you to do should be immediate and unconditional death sentence and nothing else.
    
    Bob, I’m still waiting for you to post something even marginally intelligent on this website.
    - bobmail
      
      “Bob, I’m still waiting for you to post something even marginally intelligent on this website.”
      
      After you. Trying to paint my point into a strange absolute “they all must die” is clearly the limit of your intelligence.
    - MadAsASnake
      
      You come up with some pretty strange absolutes without any help from us. If you can’t see what is wrong with these sorts of punishments, then you rather tend to prove that intelligence is not in operation in your point of veiw
    - Pelham123
      
      “After you. Trying to paint my point into a strange absolute “they all must die” is clearly the limit of your intelligence.”
      
      You didn’t recognize the sarcasm in his post? We did.
      
      You have Asperger’s syndrome. Which is fine, a lot of people do. But it explains why you don’t understand this discussion. You just don’t see what we see.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      I beg to differ. I know a few people with aspberger’s. Their problem tends to be that they have no filter against facts which makes social situations awkward.
      
      Bobmail’s problem, if there is one, belongs to the schizophrenia department, judging by the way he keeps rewriting history, law, and empirical data.
      
      Or his own previous statements, come to think of it.
  - Anyone
    
    that would require getting caught
    more people are struck by lightning than convicted for sharing culture
    - JG
      
      Oh, I like that… “Sharing culture”… I’ll have to borrow that, if you don’t mind :D
    - ROFLMAO
      
      *and information
  - Jesus
    
    What does it matter to you? It doesn’t effect your life. Aside from filling your tired, sad time on this earth, involving yourself into an issue that doesn’t concern you or effect you. Do you always try to interfere with people lives and intrude on affairs that don’t concern you. That’s very pathetic bob. Maybe you should see a doctor about your condition.
  - Guest
    
    Considering that death used to be a punishment for copyright infringement in the fashion industry, and now fashion is an industry where copying is widespread…
    
    No, that’s a horrible deterrent. Also keep in mind that when it comes to getting that knock on the door, enforcers in question have the accuracy of a blind man shooting a target the size of a barn with both his arms chopped off. The RIAA’s (un)impressive track record of actually suing the right people is testament to this. (No, before you ask, parents of scared children paying settlement fees doesn’t count. Settlement letters that come before any actual subpoena or litigation have close to no legal ground to stand on.)
    - Arkzad
      
      Fashion industry is a different beast. Many small time fashion designers already gave up to work against the big ones and simply accept that they can’t “grow” against those who employ spies, fast factories and a quick distribution system including getting “face time” in the fashion press.
      
      The only thing you can hope for is, that you can get a job at the big corps as a designer or getting a distribution contract. The landscape is practically set this way, for nearly forever. Or some billionaire gives you money.
    - 2013PickAName
      
      Fashion is for fags anyway… xD no srsly. Have you seen the shit on the catwalk lately? Jerk-off festivals is all that shit has come down to. And I fucking hate skinny ass bitches. Who wants to bang these broads anyway? Even the dessous models. Fuck that.!. It is all about LABEL, NAME, BRAND, BIG HYPE BULLSHIT!
      
      ’nuff said. But you are right about the career opportunities nonetheless. I just hate the modern fashion industry with their good for nothing pieces of shit tucked together on anorexic skeletons. Even the skeletons feel offended by the comparison. xD
  - Adam
    
    No, the punishment is not fair. It makes me want to fight the system to make my point. More piracy, more VPN security, more of what they dont want. I’ll send the counter message loud and clear “f**k you assholes. I’ll buy your stuff, if and only if I like you and want to give you my money. Because of this kind of stuff I dont and wont.”
    - http://www.facebook.com/siiix Andras Sz
      
      how about the end of copyright and patents completely , or at very least limit the life of those to days to tops few years depending on initial investment, and nature of the material, so a song maybe 30-90 days, a billion $ patent maybe 3-4 years, a movie maybe 2-5 months, if you have not made you money back by then its your problem
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      That’s basically what’s slowly becoming the stakes here.
      
      Every time the first church of copyright has overextended itself this way, they lose. And the way they’ve tried to turn “copyright” into “immaterial property” in general means once the general public gets sick and tired of copyright, they’ll be firing the broadside of public opinion wildly at the entire concept.
    - Arkzad
      
      CC-Licenses, GPL-Stuff (like the Linux kernel), all that Fotos people post of Instagram or Flickr that doesn’t show persons, the billions of non-commercial texts or music or movies would also get into the grasps of those who have the power or the machines to “money-tise” them.
      
      Its not a judgment, just a fact that CC-Licenses don’t work without a strong copyright. Practically everything becomes Freeware or CopyLeft then.
  - Boring Phil
    
    I’d say doing the simplest bit of arithmetic shows it to be absolutely absurd.
  - dondilly
    
    No,extreme over the top punishment such as this (and unless dumb enough to admit liability, unreliable ip evidence) is no a deterrent. It is an incentive to take further measures not to get caught.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “If you felt that you could get that knock on the door, would you even start?”
    
    You mean, given the same odds of being hit by lightning twice in a row, I should be wary of stepping out of doors?
    
    No, bobmail, what you do is take elementary precautions and ignore the fact that in the same category as being hit by a dinosaur killer there is also the hazard of being sued over downloading songs. Most sane people do.
    
    Your statement is akin – in more respects than I actually want to consider – to when the Westboro Baptist church pickets military funerals, screaming “You’re all going to hell! Repent Sinners!”.
    
    And if you even try to make it so the odds are “better” to get sued, there is no way the enforcement will not impact everybody else, at which point in time guess who they’ll blame. You’ve tried that one before, remember?
    
    Once again, Baghdad Bob, standing tall and screaming that there’s a good chance the republican guard will win the battle. Assuming every guardsman gets magic bullets.
  - Bob65536
    
    Ruining a person’s life with a $220,000 fine is not a deterrent. It’s incredibly excessive and cruel punishment. A $1,000 fine would be just as effective, and wouldn’t ruin someone’s life just to make a point.
  - Liam JH
    
    They cant take what I don’t have, stupid douche’s would rather waste time lying about imaginary losses than engaging with their biggest customers.
    Yours truly Fuck off Bob.
  - djnforce9
    
    It doesn’t deter me. Just deepens my disgust for the entertainment industry and the US government for endorsing such an unconstitutional fine on one of its citizens (a single mother no less).
    
    The RIAA is throwing a fit because they are losing control of distribution; nothing more. They are redundant and need to leave (The sooner, the better). Then an organization who isn’t comprised of a bunch of old farts living in the past can take their place and embrace the 21st century.
    - bobmail
      
      “The RIAA is throwing a fit because they are losing control of distribution; nothing more. ”
      
      Umm, no, they are throwing a fit because they are paying big to make a product that everyone wants, and then some wankers give it away for free, fucking up the marketplace and making it harder and harder to pay to make the content these people really want.
      
      Let’s be fair – if they got paid $1 for every download on a torrent, they wouldn’t care – distribution is not the issue, business model and the ability to stay in business is.
    - RlyBOB?
      
      “Umm, no, they are throwing a fit because they are paying big to make a product that everyone wants”
      
      WTF?? ….are you on??I DONT want the pointless bubblegum bullshit auto-tuned “pop” music they are spewing out…nor the re-write of a re-written movie script that most of the current films are….its simple BobTail, they make someting i DO want…stop cheating me and the artists that are dirrectly involved….and then, ONLY THEN!! will i PAY them for it..so as said before…GTFO!!!
    - djnforce9
      
      To be fair, if people didn’t want it, the songs wouldn’t be pirated either. Lots of piracy shows there is a ton of interest in the content.
      
      What is a problem is when a radio hit that many DO like is then shoved into a CD full of filler crap and then a full $20 is charged for it meaning your paying full price for only one song you may like. This happens a lot which is why CD’s are not worth the money. At least with digital distribution, you can buy the one song and be done with it. However, very often that one song isn’t even up for sale digitally if you live outside the US.
    - Liam JH
      
      Distribution is key to their business model bob. The artists pays for everything – Recording costs, publicity and distribution are all recouped through the grossly one sided contracts.
      
      The monopolies, you are so supportive of, are scared because they missed the opportunity to monetise zero cost distribution. More and more artists are publishing independently and even the old established artists are starting to realise this.
      As always Fuck off Bob
    - MadAsASnake
      
      So why don’t they set up websites themselves that do just that?
    - Arkzad
      
      Newspapers are dying because the market doesn’t need 10.000 people telling the same news in a global world. Thats how it works. Thats how the market cleans itself.
      
      The problem is, that they refuse to go out and/or the money still made is “enough” to keep going. Thus, they are inconsequent in their arguing and trying to keep the business rolling by any unkoscher means possible, despite the minimal “contribution” on global GDP.
      
      Many games companies failed in the last 2 years. AA games can’t be sold for the amount they cost. Maybe because of copies, maybe the market has enough other things to offer. Its not really relevant. If revenue is not possible or not enough, close the shop.
      
      If people whine that they have to listen to the same tribe, there will be other ways financing it. At the end, that is, what the music industry is fearing: that they are not needed anymore when customers are faced with an different system.
  - MadAsASnake
    
    The punishments are so insane and so remote as a possibility, impossible actually in the UK, that it acts as no deterrent at all.
  - Arkzad
    
    Don’t you think that the line “You have to sue me or my roommate. We need to see first hand that getting caught could lead to trouble” is exactly that was asked, that was the minimum acceptable “correction”-action?
    
    When you drive too fast, you get a ticket, you usually don’t get sued. “They” practically asked for it, which is a totally stupid thing to do. Lawyers take everything so serious.
  - Guest
    
    I don’t pirate much. Bet every time I hear about the massive fine the US government is trying to hit Jammie Thomas with, I pirate a little harder.
  - ROFLMAO
    
    Sharing isn’t illegal though.
- tonyj
  
  My music library was personally responsible for the U.S. deficit.
  - Romet6
    
    Haha, keep up the good work then : )
- http://www.facebook.com/buddhaflow Sasha Shepherd
  
  An appropriate penalty. You are directly taking $23Million out of their pockets if you pirate their music.
  
  I know because of numbers.
  - http://www.facebook.com/siiix Andras Sz
    
    yeah those numbers LIE, i dont buy music #1 because until recently they sold music on antiquated plastic disk #2 because the artist barely gets anything(5-20cents / song sold, where 20 cents is very unusual), so all i pay for is some dush distributing the art on a medium i dont use for a decade anymore (2 decades now) and rips off the artist and the customer at the same time… if i would have to pay what ever the artist gets + maybe 30% for the distributing website i probably pay, in addition until recently i was forced to buy entire albums, even trough i only liked 2-3 songs out of like 10… same with movies, in the 80′s i loved to go to the movies, i not gona pay $20 for a ticket or again buy the movie on a plastic disk… they refused to change how they do business and intentionally killed all the competition for a long time, try to dictate what we actually supposed to like, now we are used to get the art our way… to little to late, the damage is already done, you screwed us for decades, now its our turn
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    You mean the same numbers which “prove” the lost sales due to people copying culture equals 46 times the Gross National Product of the entire earth?
    
    If you believe those numbers I have some similar ones which claim two computers copying media back and forth could single-handedly remedy the US trade deficit.
    
    Meanwhile, back to the 3rd grade math school you go.
    - bobmail
      
      “You mean the same numbers which “prove” the lost sales due to people copying culture equals 46 times the Gross National Product of the entire earth?”
      
      Oh, please show me where that is. Or are you joining guest in the “lying sack of shit” department?
    - icec0ld
      
      Who the hell is lying?
      
      All you’ve done lately is call people lying sacks of shit and not actually have anything to refute their claims
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “lately”?
      
      That is how bobmail has always done it. And his predecessor nicknames before him. The overt venom simply comes because people are now being less than polite in calling him on his more obvious bullshit.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Oh, please show me where that is.”
      
      Happily.
      
      Go read up on the Pirate Bay Trial. Pay special attention on how the damages were estimated and on what grounds. Then do the basic math, again using the industry’s numbers.
      
      Either the industry spokesmen and lawyers of the RIAA were, in fact, lying in a courtroom, or they were claiming damages which equate to 46 times the Gross National Product of the Earth.
      
      And before you try to backpedal your way around this one, those numbers are still supported by the RIAA’s legal department. Except that around the estimated “damages” they have added the word “potential”.
      
      As far as I can see, Guest is actually being rather factual in all his posts. Your refutals, however, being based entirely on implied slurs and bad language, are impossible to determine on factual grounds.
    - DoctorT
      
      Ha! I love that it’s “potential” damages now!
      Using that logic you could get a speeding ticket for “potentially” going 3000 over the limit.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      And applying bobmail’s logic, if you run 5 mph past 60 on the highway, the ticket you should be handed is for the assumption that you WERE going 3k mph over the limit.
      
      Someone has to take the rap for all those speeding bastards, after all. Might as well be the one who actually got caught.
      
      That used to be “Anon”-logic. Now, apparently, much like the moniker of “Baghdad Bob”, it belongs to bobmail.
- ROFLMAO
  
  I could purchase the entire Earth with my entire collection of games, music, movies, TV shows and what not.
K. C.

What about the FBI? I thought they downloaded/shared stuff via BitTorrent as well.
Well, typical U.S. – double standards.
- Bitch govenment
  
  No problem is the idiots don’t want to lose as soon as they do or give up it will show they think it is a lost cause and it is and the govenment stepping in shows it will bend over backwards and take it up the arse like the bitch it is
- me
  
  as far as the FBI or any other government entity you must keep in mind it’s do as we say not as we do. They can, have, and will again at will take anything they want things like copy right and patents don’t matter.
- One-Eyed Willie
  
  The FBI are downloading it for the purposes of prosecution.
  - Wallace
    
    Then, logically, they are sharing because they want to be prosecuted.
    
    Perhaps they intend to prosecute themselves and plead guilty to create a legal precedent that for the first time allows them to prosecute others.
    
    Maybe they will arrest themselves.
    - One-Eyed Willie
      
      I think they are probably sharing back again to get a list of all the IP addresses
- Pelham123
  
  This case is about sharing via Kazaa, not swarming via BitTorrent. And it’s only about distributing, not downloading.
  
  In fact, the reason we have BitTorrent is that BT is not “technically illegal” in the same way that inviting the world to your hard drive is. At least, not in the U.S. to date.
  
  And arguably, inviting the world to your hard drive via P2P shouldn’t be a civil violation at all.
  
  Just a little history for ya.
Steve Smith

This won’t stop anything, all it does is show ppl they need to do work to prevent being found. Either VPN, a server in another country, or private sites.
- MadAsASnake
  
  Pretty simple, if they knock on your door accusingly, simply tell them “no, didn’t do that”. Should be end of story.
cold

This is absurd. If some one was killed they spend time in jail. Once the government picks a side and it all becomes about money the people lose. I’m sure this person does not have that kind of money. And I am also sure that this asinine penalty is not a deterrent. This will just make people find a work around if they want to continue sharing music. Sharing is caring. They taught me that in first grade. This is also the reason that I shop yard sales or resell stores for movies and music. I don’t want these greedy fools having any of my money. Especially since they are in cahoots with the government that no longer servers its purpose but only corporate greed.
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http://geekhideout.net/ The G33K

If the public interest is at stake like they say then why have they not instead created this to be a purely criminal and not civil matter therefore assuring that detrimental and just sentences (damages) occur for any proven offense.

Logical isn’t it? Though that would be counterproductive towards the PRIVATE interests of the content industry and not the public, therefore removing there ability to claim fictionally legal amounts that are not a deterrent and instead an abuse of government powers towards the public for the sole benefit of one group of citizens (content owners).
- Zumzum
  
  Spot on. It is not in the interests of the copyright owners to have infringements covered by criminal law. The most they’d likely see are small fines (or perhaps custodial sentences in more extreme cases) and those fines would be payable to the state/judiciary, not the copyright holder.
billy

Thanks everyone for voting for Obama! Grrrr
- NewClear
  
  Obama doesnt care about file sharing and intellectual property. Its his corrupt old man vice president Biden who does. He was behind the megapuload takedown, and is a personal friend of the MPAA president
  - HelpfulMan
    
    still doesnt change the fact that Obama had him as his vice president running mate.
    - Christopher Kidwell
      
      Only legitimate choice, HelpfulMan. Numerous other choices were much worse on various subjects and that has been documented.
    - Rezident_User
      
      No, you were (and obviously still are) manipulated by Obama’s loyal media to believe the “other guy” was a terrible boogeyman who wanted to starve children.
      To quote Obama: “If you don’t have a record to run on, portray your opponent as someone to run from”.
      Dems and big media are in a mutually beneficial relationship. The Republican’s have woken up to the fact that the media has an agenda, and I doubt you’ll be seeing them do them favors any time soon.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      As bad as Biden is, Palin is WORSE.
      
      And between Obama and McCain the odds were (and are) better of Obama being “Not Bush”.
      
      So, really, that the reps lost the election they have only themselves to blame for. 8 years of GWB, Wolfowicz, Cheney and Rumsfeld more or less guaranteed the next ten years republicans would have to hang their heads in shame – for even breathing.
      
      If the reps even want a long shot at an election within the near future, they’ll have to guillotine every known neocon within their ranks in public, put on sackcloth, and spend the next few years trying apologizing for the national disasters which was the Bush regime.
      
      Obama could have ten-pound garden gnomes in solid gold erected on every lawn in the US and STILL not get even halfway close to the fiscal disaster which the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and the first bailout packages cost.
      
      To say nothing of the cost to democracy worldwide of Mr. “Mission Successful”‘s tenure.
      
      Is Obama a bad man? That’s quite possible. The least of two evils will still be the party GWB did not spring from, in the minds of many americans.
      
      The reps need to houseclean. Badly.
    - FixFlix
      
      In the end, no matter what president is at charge in US.
      They will do the same sooner or later.
      
      Their laws always have been serving
      those who have money and power.
      
      Ironically, one of bobmail’s comments in this subject
      gave a good example of it. Read what he said about
      War on Drugs and people being sent to jail.
    - Who
      
      “War on Drugs and people being sent to jail” around here the people that get nailed for possession get out the same fucking day but the ones that get arrested for stupid shit must stay in for months @ a time if not longer.
      
      so this is the ware on drugs…..make money off the sellers, and let them go to make more each time they get arrested for possession.
bobmail

You will all pay, you’ll see. You’re all going to be bankrupted by the US government and I warned you and you had nobody to blame but yourselves and stealing stealing stealing, I think rape victims deserve it stealing stealing stealing…. waaaaah I want my monopoly back.

(obviously not the ‘real’ bobfail)
- Guest321
  
  Ahahahahaha
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  Like the fake “Anon” however, quite frighteningly similar to the real thing. Same message but fewer words.
Ryan Barrett

Any fine that is greater than the cost of a song is a deterrent. Who wants to pay $5 for a song? But who really even wants to pay $2 or $1? That is what should be addressed.
- bobmail
  
  Ryan, in fairness, it’s not just “more than the cost of the song”, you have to factor in things like the percentage of times someone will get caught to consider the deterrent effect.
  
  Example, if you pirate 100 songs, and get caught once, even a $10 fine for the song is still “worth it”, because you paid nothing for the other 99. Your effective cost per song is well below retail even.
  
  Now, if in the same scenerio you get a $12,000 judgement against you, suddenly it’s very expensive to download, and buying the stuff would be cheaper and safer. That’s the deterrent effect – you consider the chance of getting caught, the cost of getting caught, and the results of getting caught… and you make a choice.
  - Guest
    
    In other words, because your methods mean that more often than not you can’t even accuse the right person, you have to chop off the arm of the few people you do manage to catch.
    
    Stay classy, bob. Wipe the Robert King jizz off your face when you’re done.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “That’s the deterrent effect – you consider the chance of getting caught, the cost of getting caught, and the results of getting caught.”
    
    So, what you are saying is that the last ten years of “piracy” didn’t really happen because those deterrents you mention were all there.
    
    And the fifty years before that, in the times of cassette tapes, VCR, CD-Rom, DVD, etc….didn’t happen either.
    
    For your argument to hold you need to rewrite history. The “deterrent” effect does not work, and doesn’t deter.
    
    If you pumped the cost of speeding by a magnitude of 100, I think you will find that similarly you will still find most about everyone going about 5mph faster than allowed on highways. The difference is only that you are VASTLY more likely to get ticketed by a traffic cop for going 5 mph faster than the allowed 60 in LA rush hour than you are of getting caught in a filesharing case.
    
    Unbellievable, bobmail. That’s not even Baghdad Bob you are quoting now – that argument of yours is right in there with that of a tin foil hat fanatic believing drinking silver nitrate will cure cancer.
    - Guest
      
      Going by his usual responses, SDM, one can’t help but think that bob is no stranger to the consumption of AgNO3…
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      I got this sudden vision of a sad-faced overweight clown with zombie-smurf skin color sitting at a keyboard laboriously pounding out incoherent garbage wearing badly fitting gloves…
      
      And occasionally helping himself to a big gulp of cloudy water from the repurposed vintage revigator mounted on the side.
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http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/ SJD

In the news: RIAA’s operation “Deterrent function” has been declared a huge success: http://fightcopyrighttrolls.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/deterrence.png
Anyone

it’s still much more likely to get hit by lightning than being convicted for filesharing

so it sucks for the people that get caught by these witchtrials, but in the overall picture it doesn’t matter much.
Romet6

Wait, “public interest?”
Don’t you mean “corporate interest?”
- One-Eyed Willie
  
  Yes and that is the problem is it not?
https://thepiratebay.org/user/manOtor/ manOtor

“An award of statutory damages under the Copyright Act does not simply
redress a private injury, but also serves to vindicate an important
public interest,”

Found a typo: shouldn’t this say “corporate interest”?

“That public interest cannot be realized if the inherent difficulty of
proving actual damages leaves the copyright holder without an effective
remedy for infringement or precludes an effective means of deterring
further copyright violations,”

LMFAO!

If there’d only be someone with brains in charge of the Supreme Court, this would be the main argument to overrule the previous decision of the court of appeal and fine Jammie Thomas with a maximum of the actual worth of what he downloaded, hands down!

More and more studies surface confirming, that file sharers buy more music than the regular customer, and yet the RIAA and buddies still have to come up with actual proof of damage.
It’s sad that a judicial system can be so completely ignorant to that fact…
curious

I don’t think the death sentence is reducing murder rate in the US is it?
- Rezident_User
  
  It’s been statistically shown to have a deterrant effect.
  - DutchGuest
    
    Tell that to all the gangbangers in downtown L.A. O.o
    - Arkzad
      
      The gangbangers act purely capitalistic. If the quickest and “cheapest” way to get “market share” is to kill the guy who has it, they will do it.
      
      The normal judicial mechanisms for “murder” doesn’t apply here, because its often the only thing that works in a certain area.
      
      “Life in Jail” works quite well for the cheating husband who probably thinks about killing his pregnant assistant, then remembers the last 300 episodes of CSI and the immense digital footprint he left – and decides to got with the divorce.
      
      Yeah, there are (stupid) exceptions to that rule.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    As in “compared to all the countries which do not have the death penalty but where murder rate is less than a fifth of that in the US”?
    
    Hell, in Switzerland every male between the age of 18 and 24 has a fully decked out military assault rifle and a standard-issue handgun in their house. It has fewer shootings than most of the rest of europe – and less than 1/20 of that in the US, per capita.
    
    Despite rather lenient laws.
    
    No, statistics in this case are rather misleading as the only comparison is between an extremely high murder rate and a marginally lesser – performed in a patchwork realm where legislative practices differ between states.
    - Arkzad
      
      Swizerland and rest of Europe has a public school system with required school attendance.
      
      America has like always 3-5 shows on air which somehow “glorify” people who where brought on a farm with kindergarden level schooling and/or lived chained in a cage until they found out thats “funny” to hunt 16yr old red heads and play dress with them until they get chocked to death and buried on a field where 20 others already are buried. I never understood this fascination.
      
      When we look into all killing sprees in Europe, even Breiviks, you can directly make an link to a serious troubled youth. Its not truly the guns.
      
      Its whats up in the heads. Swizerlands schools are like paradise, even in contrast to the good ones in Germany, France or England.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Quite true. And that underscores my point.
      
      The problem is usually that most murders tend to be caused by individuals who are either desperate or who have serious mental illnesses.
      
      For those people, the chances of getting caught and the penalty doesn’t even factor into the decision to commit murder. Either they aren’t thinking – at all – about the consequences.
      
      Or they assume they will not get caught since the voice in their heads tells them so.
      
      It’s not just the school system. A quick comparison of statistics both on how many murderers are diagnosed as having a mental health problem, and the comparative statistics on how much of Europe compared to the US deals with mental health problems provides a very clear correlation.
      
      EU schools usually have counsellors which recommend psychiatric evaluation of difficult subjects. Although this can be objected to from an integrity perspective in some cases, it does push more people into treatment at a younger age.
- Witblue
  
  No it doesn’t, compare murder rates in the states with death penalty to the ones that don’t. Google it, its not reducing murder.
nospam

jesus that is just crazy, they people of the USA really need to standup to the government on this issue they are supposed to represent the people
Sharma

Every time they sue P2P gets larger. You will never stop freedom and progress RIAA. Your days are numbered you archaic piece of &$@!.
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JordanKratz

We in the USA are totally screwed and in so many ways.No matter who you Vote for you are FUCKED !
The many sheeple are Clueless ! And the many Politicians are as Corrupt as Communist Russia Party.
FUCK YOU USA Government ! FUCK OFF MAFIAA ! But mostly FUCK YOU for so many reasons USA Government !
LJW

By this logic, the death penalty would stop piracy? Of course not, why does the government spend so much time and money on a problem that doesn’t exists? The copyright industry keeps making more and more money despite the gloom and doom poor-mouth they claim in public. They are making money by the buckets. I don’t consider that a problem.
- Rezident_User
  
  You wouldn’t stop pirating if there was a 5% chance of being executed for doing it?
  - LJW
    
    Probably not because it’s so easy to get around. My point was study after study shows harsher punishments do not change behavior. Not to mention this is a CIVIL matter, not a criminal one. Pirating of media is a response to a business model that has failed. It punishes those who give them money, it punishes artists, and has no other redeeming qualities.
    
    Spending tax payer money to bolster a bad, outdated business model is corporate welfare. It’s time to stop giving these billion dollar companies money. In a time when we say we can’t afford many social programs we are giving corporations billions of dollars in welfare.
    - Rezident_User
      
      “study after study shows harsher punishments do not change behavior. ”
      Wrong. Studies show the opposite. Punishment increases the “cost” of that behavior, and when you raise the cost of a behavior you reduce it.
      Do you believe the reason banks aren’t robbed on a daily basis is because people are intrinsically moral and good?
      LOL.
    - Anon
      
      Why rob banks when there’s already plenty of robbery occurring inside?
      
      Do you believe the reason why bankers convince people to make investments that led to the financial crisis in 2008 is because bankers are intrinsically moral and good? LOL.
    - LJW
      
      You beat me to it! Robbery is happening, but it’s not like in the old movies. Money is being stolen all the time by financial “instruments” which are designed to fail in order to make tons of money for a few.
      
      The government at every level steals money every day. Wonder why those stupid politicians agreed to fund those football stadium upgrades? They’re not stupid, they are funneling your money to their friends!
      
      The difference is these bank robbers get away with it. Their theft creates a catch 22 with the public. Punish them and we all pay, don’t punish them and we all pay again later.
    - LJW
      
      Actually that is the theory, but isn’t reality. Punishments for sharing keep getting higher and trading keeps getting bigger.
      
      The punishment for murder is already pretty high, yet thousands are murdered every year in the US. Increasing the “cost” is a theory that’s been put forth forever, but actual studies have shown over and over again punishment has very little to do with crime rates.
      
      In this case the copyright holders are creating the problem themselves. To prove that they benefit from piracy, they actually use piracy numbers as part of their “sales” figures because they know that if something is popular on the piracy “charts” it will sell well.
      
      They also know that if, let’s say a movie, isn’t pirated, it stands no chance of making money at the box office. Turns out pirates also spend a hell of a lot more money on media than non-pirates. Pirates promote media for free.
      
      The fallacy of piracy is the “stealing” model. Too bad supply and demand doesn’t work for infinite goods. In the world of the Internet, demand will be met come hell or high water.
      
      Millions of fans are begging to spend their money, yet the copyright holders insists on punishing them for being fans.
      
      Who cares. The Internet will get what we want whether or not the copyright holder wants to provide it.
    - Anyone
      
      if you commit a crime you don’t plan on getting caught
      
      so the punishment is irrelevant
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Do you believe the reason banks aren’t robbed on a daily basis is because people are intrinsically moral and good?”
      
      Straw man, moving the goal post, or was that “I don’t even understand that which I’m making a comparison to?”.
      
      Filesharing is akin to going 5 mph over the limit on the highway. Or perhaps a bit like Jaywalking. Before you can make a case of making the punishments extreme you need incontrovertible proof.
      
      That makes investigation extremely expensive.
      
      And even when reckless speeders are shown to be a leading cause of car crashes and loss of life, STILL we don’t see every square meter of a stretch of road fitted with cameras and police officers.
      
      Because the public purse puts a rather sharp limit on what it can bear.
      
      Everyone will realize the Jammie Thomas case is a fluke – the token scapegoat. And all that does is generate resentment and disbelief. Not only among filesharers but among the general public.
      
      If SCOTUS upholds these damages we have a martyr. And filesharing gains while public resentment increases.
      
      If SCOTUS does not uphold these damages, the pro-copyright sectarians lose.
      
      And there’s a chance SCOTUS might even scuttle the case altogether in which case much of the copyright house of cards collapses.
  - Guest
    
    Death for theft (and I use the term loosely) hasn’t passed the laugh test for centuries.
    
    The Georgians tried it in the 18th century, including the hanging of children. It didn’t work.
    
    The Victorians tried it in the 19th century, including the hanging of children. It didn’t work.
    
    Even artists like “Weird Al” Yankovic are disturbed by how disproportionate and “hamhanded” these punishments are. What do you think a 5% death penalty would do for entertainment industries? It wouldn’t make consumers happy, that’s for sure.
    - http://www.facebook.com/buddhaflow Sasha Shepherd
      
      Well, killing their consumers does seem more or less in line with the RIAA strategy…
  - Anyone
    
    5% is way higher than the current rate at which you get caught for sharing culture
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    If there is ever a 5% chance of getting executed for doing it, you will by similar extension have a 100% crime clearance rate.
    
    Or you will be paying a thousand times as much on copyright enforcement as you do for mitigating crimes like homicide, arson and grand larceny.
    
    In reality the odds of getting pegged by a lawsuit are less than those that you’ll get hit by lightning multiple times.
    
    Let me ask you this in return: Would you stop going 5 mph above the limit on the freeway if the odds of getting ticketed suddenly became 1/10th of what they are today?
    
    I’m guessing No.
The People

US government wants to have less piracy? Than first stop screwing with the economy and stop creating global economic crisis, maybe than people will be able to buy all the shit they want because they will actually have money to buy it and won’t have to resort to file-sharing. Until than, long live The Pirate Bay.
Fugasmic

Destroy the economy, take the banks to the brink of bankruptcy, send the world into a global recession and get get rewarded by receiving hundreds of billions in bail out money. Share a few songs and get punished to the tune of 1/4 of a million. Yet still they deny there is a two tier justice system with one law for the rich and another for the poor. Fucking hypocrites.
- joexxx
  
  As long as money is involved, it will always be a multi-tier system.
Ophelia Millais

This is standard procedure; part of the Department of Justice’s job is to go to court and defend federal law against constitutional challenges, so they always intervene in appeals and supreme court cases by filing a brief in support of the letter of the law, if not also by testifying. It doesn’t matter how just the law is or who it favors. The law could say you can only vote for a President if you have a penis, your skin is white as the driven snow, you own a significant amount of property, you’ve paid all your taxes, you don’t live in Washington DC, and you’ve legally been an adult for more than 3 years, and the government would be obligated to defend that position. (Those are all things that the law used to say, by the way).
Ophelia Millais

Hmm, well, this case is not really “in the Supreme Court”. That’s the only place it has left to go, but it might not make it that far.

What has happened is that Thomas-Rasset(‘s lawyers) filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari, which means they’ve asked the Supreme Court to review the appeals court case. The Supreme Court receives gobs of such requests every year, but only chooses to review a handful of cases. They haven’t said they’re going to review Thomas-Rasset’s case, as far as I know.

The executive branch of the government is required to defend the letter of the law in high court cases, so they’ve submitted a brief to that effect. This is normal. However, I’m not sure this would be happening if there was no possibility that the court was going to take up the case. The fact that they felt they had to file the brief says to me that maybe the Supreme Court was thinking hearing the case. Any experts here who can say for sure?
- bobmail
  
  You are correct. The court selects only a few cases a year, and they have to meet a fairly high criteria. Particularly, they are looking for situations where similar cases have run and come to opposing conclusions, based on the law, and have used up all other levels of appeal. Then they will generally consider it.
  
  Since there is no other case that has gone this far with an opposing conclusion, there is no contradictory case law out there to argue. The court will likely decline to hear the case, The most meaningful argument (against statutory damages) is something that the courts have addressed in the past in other cases.
  
  You can look at a case like “Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc” to see that the issue of statutory damages has already been touched on, and the decision was massive in it’s support (8 to 1, which is almost a perfect score).
  
  Unless Thomas is bringing something new to the table that is currently against caselaw, then there isn’t much to get a grip on.
  - joexxx
    
    >looking for situations where similar cases have run and >come to opposing conclusions,
    
    Really? Is that why Supreme Court themselves keeps flip-flipping on the digital rights issue since Sony vs Betamax?
    Supreme court chooses the most political cases these days and tries to create policy using the judicial system… something that is not even in the constitutional power of the court.
    Just look at their latest Obamacare ruling…
    - Who
      
      “Sony vs Betamax?” http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/betamax/
      
      I hope you do know that both corporations are part of the MPAA…..LOL can you say corruption?
    - joexxx
      
      This is was a LONG time ago.
    - bobmail
      
      Actually, there hasn’t been any real “flip flops” on the court on the issue. Betamax case has stood as a solid anchor for almost every other decision since. There are some variations as the justices have changed over the years, and as new US law has been enacted. But really, there have been no flip flops, that is just a tale told by the anti-copyright forces to try to explain why they keep losing in the high courts.
    - joexxx
      
      False. Read the actual decisions. If legal analysis is over your head, read the published analysis of legal scholars. Their latest Grockster decision was the latest example.
      Google is your friend.
    - bobmail
      
      Yes, Google is my friend, and aside from a few anti-copyright zealots claiming massive flip flops, the reality is that most of the decisions are well beyond what was considered in Betamax.
      
      You also cannot understand all of the implications in various decisions until you realize that the legal landscape has changed, with new laws such as DMCA coming into being since the Betamax decision. Each new piece of legislation has to be weighed and considered, both for it’s constitutionality, as well as what it may or may not have changed since the previous decision was made.
      
      Flip flop seems mostly to be used in this case as “we don’t like their decisions”.
    - joexxx
      
      DMCA is a different matter and a huge mess in itself.
      
      But, the very fact that DMCA is still on the books, is another confirmation of the flip-flop mentality of the supreme court on this matter. Supreme court’s mandate is to shape the legal landscape because they’re the last stop in USA.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Yes, Google is my friend…”
      
      Would this be the same Google which led you to such embarrasingly wrong statements in the past where your grasp of what was being discussed was less than satisfactory?
      
      Because if so, I think you’ve been using a cheap knock-off.
    - bobmail
      
      Just because you don’t like the answers, because I actually read court judgements instead of opinion sites…
      
      You are a small minded person when it comes to this stuff. If you don’t agree with it, it’s wrong, no matter what.
      
      How do you live?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Just because you don’t like the answers, because I actually read court judgements instead of opinion sites…”
      
      I’m not quite sure what you “read” but based on your previous cocksure commentary it must have been science-fiction. That became particularly clear when you tried to defend copyright as not being in conflict with human rights, remember? You were quite adamant, trying to back your statements up with a plethora of “fact” and irate ad hominems.
      
      Don’t forget to go to the nice judges at the European Court of Human Rights and tell them they were wrong. Because of what you “read” by googling a few lines.
      
      Your main problem appears to be that it doesn’t matter what you read since if it doesn’t fit your predrawn conclusion, you mentally rearrange it until it does.
      
      “You are a small minded person when it comes to this stuff. If you don’t agree with it, it’s wrong, no matter what.”
      
      Caring about civil rights is “small-minded”? As is caring about getting the facts straight, apparently.
      
      Well, by your own “newspeak” definition I would definitely be called “small-minded”, I assume. As would Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi where I distinctly recall you ridiculing the same arguments they made.
      
      “How do you live?”
      
      Very well, getting paid highly for the service of being an expert in how to handle, process, and collate information.
      
      And with a clean conscience to boot.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      O_o
      
      Did you just compare yourself favourably with Mendela, MLK and Ghandi?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      No, but what bobmail has apparently missed is that quite often my arguments have been paraphrasing Gandhi, MLK and Mandela.
      
      To which bobmail has answered with derision and scorn, usually responding something to the effect that it would take childish, immature, ill-willing or bigoted people to come up with such slogans.
      
      I also like to quote einstein and plato. Bobmail hasn’t caught on there, either.
MrGeek

Governments, just stop worrying and stop telling world that being victim in piracy because you guys promoting younger ppl/older people change their habit to be pirate… that’s why you guys need to mind y’all business. u know not everyone in the world have internet or computer at all just smart ppl use computers so stop saying about piracy just livin’ the life!!
joexxx

Yay… that’s what all of the liberal free-loaders voted for! Enjoy!
- Who
  
  voted for? the pols are rigged now so how do ya figure?
  - Who
    
    oops poles*
    - Rezident_User
      
      mmmm….kielbasa.
    - zarathustra2k1
      
      Third time’s the charm: polls.
      
      HTH
  - joexxx
    
    Do you have any proof of this?
    - Who
      
      ya its all over fucking youtube LOL look much?
BastardGovernment

Well it looks like standard operating procedure for the US government. They have tried this shit with the so called war on drugs and prisons are full of people busted for weed.

The prisons are a business and business is good, but they wont be happy until they have crucified people for minor shit and soaked every dime they can out of them
Lobying = Bribery

The Obama administration isn’t going to bite the hand that feeds it, i.e.
the RIAA
- joexxx
  
  Well, that’s the issue. Government is picking sides in a civil case is BAD news for everybody!
  - Who
    
    the problem is despite what is says in the US copyright act the RIAA and MPAA both think that ALL copyright cases should be tried as criminal. in other words they THINK they are above the law and can do as they please. and as a result *because no one puts them in there place* they do as they please.
    - joexxx
      
      RIAA is MPAA are private entities and are entitled to their opinions. The problem arises when there is collusion between private entities the government.
    - Who
      
      there not privet there commercial. privet means that ONLY specific people can do business with them.
Lobying = Bribery

PS. While were in a D**K length contest I have 180,000 mp3s m4b/a’s + flac , ogg etc. multiplied by $9,250 = $165,600,000.
Who

“According to the Obama administration damages of $9,250 per song is not an unconstitutional amount and is in fact needed to deter others from
engaging on online piracy”

ya know they are defiantly NOT going according to what the US copyright act says the fines are. the $220,000 fine exceeds what is defined in the law. if ANY one would actually read it they would know this.
- bobmail
  
  No, the law says per item, not total.
  
  Please actually read the law.
  - joexxx
    
    The particular law you’re thinking of is intended for commercial infringement. The courts and the industry have been grossly misapplying the law.
  - Who
    
    I have Y don’t YOU read it?
    
    here let me help you
    
    http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
  - MadAsASnake
    
    Yes, per item, total. Not per item per person.
Guest

So they’re claiming, “If you don’t let us pull numbers out of our ass, the economy is fucked”? Yeah, really convincing story. Decades after the campaigns of “Home Taping Is Killing Music” and “Don’t Copy That Floppy”, the industry is still raking in the cash.

Leave the imaginary numbers to mathematicians and engineers; no one outside of your cocksuckers like bobmail are falling for your bullshit.
- http://www.facebook.com/buddhaflow Sasha Shepherd
  
  You’re wrong. Tape cassette sales and floppy disk software sales have both plummeted. I have facts and figures to back this up. I weep for the poor content producers :(
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    I really hate to bring this up…but phonograph cylinder sales are almost non-existent as well.
    
    And I’ve read no less than ten obituaries stating the death of music was impending. The first one was from 1906.
    
    Apparently piracy is so fiendish, it can kill multiple times, presumably in effigy.
    - MadAsASnake
      
      And 8-track, 8mm, BetaMax, VHS, 78 rpm eps, god knows what they must be doing because of all that lost income.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      We know that, don’t we? The proselytizers of the First Church of Copyright have so informed us.
      
      The purveyors of all these devices are drifting through the streets in starving teary-eyed hordes, clutching random bypassers, mouthing “Why?” before expiring at the feet of the vicious fiend who in choosing an iPod over a wax cylinder deprived them of their last chance to live.
      
      And no one today has even heard of the term “music” since no one is making any, or has for the last fifty years.
  - Who
    
    NO YOUR WRONG! tapes and floppy’s are no longer sold as the media format just changed. I still buy 2.5 floppy’s tho some places STILL do have them.
    
    and FUCK the content producers.
Amazing

What really pissesme off is if you own a record and record to mp3 that is ok but rip a cd or music DVD and they nail your arse to a wall
UraPhake

I’m not sure about how this could be coordinated, but when (if) the Six Strikes bullshit begins, there should be a massive public torrenting (no VPNs or proxies) as a way of protesting. Take one of Hollywood’s “tent pole” blockbusters and just run away with it in the open.

What are they going to do, sue every subscriber who dared to engage in “CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE” because of crap like what they’re doing to Jammie Thomas?

Personally, I barely make a living at this point in time and they’re not going to get blood from a turnip no matter what they do. I don’t use a VPN or proxy and refuse to do so. If the Internet is becoming just another way to spy on the citizens, then the words of an old song come to mind.

“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Fuck Obama, and fuck Biden! Fuck ‘em all!
???

Because Prohibition was such a great success, right?
tonyj

The only way to deter priracy is to close down the internet, close down all cell phone networks and remove cell phones and computers and tvs from society, close down libraries and force people to give up their personal collections of media they’ve purchased through the years from vinyl to digital, and that should pretty much end it.
john doe

“what would it take them to stop downloading illegally: more than one said, ‘You have to sue me or my roommate. We need to see first hand that getting caught could lead to trouble’”

Bullshit. That’s their own opinion.

What about the millions on the net that would answer that asking for: better service, no DRM, high quality and better prices?
ThumbsUpThumbsDown

What’s the best way to wake up 350 million sleeping sheeple?

Annul their Constitutional rights.

If that doesn’t work?

Threaten them with brutal criminal prosecutions.

If that doesn’t work?

Bankrupt them into penury through massive Civil penalties.

If that doesn’t work?

Let them watch you do all these things to their children.

If that doesn’t work?

Forget about them. They’re only getting the future that they so richly deserve.
RenkBooo

the US Kangaroo Court system is a JOKE. Period!

Total-Anon.da.bz
Andrew Lee

Still can’t figure out why a song that is most likely 2$ on iTunes becomes worth 4,625 times more the second it’s uploaded/downloaded..

When it comes to file sharing extortion is perfectly legal business these days. Extremely profitable so it seems, well at least from where I’m sitting.
http://twitter.com/Paco420_Pt Paco420

Does this not start crossing a line that it is considered inventing money? At what point did currency go from being equal to gold/diamonds to 0 and 1′s?

For instance.. Lets say this pass’s and a year later they finish convicting another 1000 people with over 1000+ songs shared… at some point the money they are claiming lost will not equal the worth…

You know… Let them keep doing it, hell let it pass…
They will destroy the US currency by doing this driving the economy deeper into recession and destroying the country as a whole. Perhaps then more people will open their eyes and look at the bigger and more forecast-ed picture.
I don’t know what more to say about this because its clear that the law makers and justice systems aren’t looking at these things. If they don’t care why should people that know US laws will never be welcome or accepted in their country care either?

~.~
doug

Typically the fine for shoplifting is 20x the amount of the product you tried to steal. So a person stealing a music CD would pay about $300 in fines… with $1000 being the max penalty for “petty theft.”

How can they justify the penalty of $200,000 for downloading 24 songs all worth $0.99 each on itunes?

Which ever judge agrees and lets this fine pass through at the full amount needs to be put down.
BlaBlaBla

CISPA is back…
- Guest
  
  And NAFTA.
One-Eyed Willie

There is no amount of money or time in jail that will be a deterrent.
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Guest

The MAFIAA will never learn.

Why is Big Crap Content dictating the internet?

DMCA, SOPA, ACTA, CISPA will not stop filesharing.

Clearly all this war on filesharing is about censorship and control of the Internet.
Guest

CISPA is back!!!

cispaisback(dot)com

CISPA is back!!!
dude

we don’t need p2p or torrents. there are many legal sources where i can download from…..for free…YouTube..fm radio..ect. go back to the days of recording fm radio.lolololol.

The music has to be good to even consider to buy it.

megabox here i come!!!!
Naya

Focus Group? What focus group did they ask? If someone asked me “What would it take for you to stop littering.” my answer doesn’t automatically go to “More police!” it goes to “Put more trash cans around”

I smell bullshit, people tend to answer stuff like that with an answer that makes their lives easier, not with an answer the moderators stuffed in their mouths.
Trelew

Well this shows how well the government can be bought and controlled by corporate interests. Big Business has corrupted our governments beyond any real hope of redemption. One of two things will happen, sometime in the future, people will rise up against this and rebel against the corporate takeover of our governments, or our will become nothing more than a decadent corporate wasteland where the general public will be considered nothing more than disposable by the powers-that-be
- ItsTheSasquatch
  
  The latter has already happened, and they’re working hard at preventing the former by promoting anti-gun hysteria in the media.
ItsTheSasquatch

You know what this is really about? The administration’s actual opinions on the subject are irrelevant–Chris Dodd threatened (on live television and without consequence) to stop paying for their political campaigns if they don’t do as they’re told. We can only assume the other MaFIAA bosses have done the same behind closed doors. And the administration gleefully complied–making them every bit as bad as the MaFIAA themselves. Worse, IMO.
anonymous

it amazes me how there is never any mention of the entertainment industries actually doing something to cater for their customers, in the ways the customers ask. it’s always the customers that are wrong and have to have the harshest of punishments. it is expected from the Obama administration, however, as those same entertainment industries throw an awful lot of money behind him. this is obviously hie way of repaying them. what a shame how quickly he has forgotten that it was the people that he is now advocating severe punishment at that voted him into office, not just once, but twice! i suppose it’s another example of ‘once i’ve got it, i’ll do what i want with it and if that means screwing the ones that got me where i am, so be it!’ shameful really!
Jesus

What’s interesting is in most cases we’re talking about people that might, on a good day have a few thousand dollars in savings and that’s being generous. Most Americans live pay check to pay check. So whether its $200,000.00 or $2,000,000.00… what do they really think their going to get? It will turn into a giant costly bureaucracy of dept collecting or fine collecting that would take years of constant notice mailings, not to mention that they would have to take you to court several times over many years trying to get cash from you and you still wouldn’t be able pay. All the legal fees associated with this? They could try and make you foot that bill, but that’s just added to a dept you already can’t pay and the lawyers will what their money. The administration cost to do this would be very pricy and with little return.
JG

There are two issues they’re not taking into account when determining the effectiveness of a deterrent….

First, you have to stand a high probability of having it applied to you, which I don’t think applies in this case…. The other day, in the article about the BPI claiming pirates spend less than non-pirates, they claimed something like a third of the country pirated media. There are 62,641,000 residents of the UK according to Google. Assuming only 10% pirate, that’s 6,264,100 pirates. How many trials have the BPI had? Let’s say 14,100…. That leaves 6.25 million pirates going about their day…. With my numbers, that’s a 99.7% chance you will NOT get caught…. What does a $10k/track threat have to concern me if I know its almost a certainty I’m not going to be fined that…. At most I’ll get a “Give us $25k and we’ll pretend like this never happened” extortion letter….

Second, the punishment must be proportional to the crime…. OK, you don’t want a convicted pirate walking away with a slap on the wrist.. But you don’t want to go too over-board either…. I mean would you consider giving a jay-walker life in prison so other potential jay-walkers know your serious and aren’t just giving out slaps on the wrist??? I don’t know where the magic number is off the top of my head, but I’d think 9,343 times the retail price (99 cents per track) might just be a lot closer to the life in prison end of the spectrum than the slap on the wrist side….
project icequeen

This explains the whole f#cking agenda of the copywrong monoplists!

I was blind to their ways before the professor in this vid explained the endgame. Project icequeen has been given the go ahead folks believe me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nbpRRvRVsME
http://www.facebook.com/defho Gary Campbell

Typical. Corporate interests pushing for backwards legislation. You don’t see $9,000 fines for jaywalking or 5yr imprisonment for failing to signal before a lane change. The proposed penalties are severely disproportionate to the offense.
http://www.facebook.com/forkingham.melle Forkingham Melle

so, America should electrocute some minor traffic offenders, to put the shits up the rest of us, lest we park in a pirate bay
HonkIfUrHrnee

World citizens to world gorvernment(s), and the corporations that run them: noone’s buying it.
Hogspace

It didn’t happen quickly but over 60 years or so the US lost it’s soul and now it’s fucked. Not destroyed by the much feared coloured immigrants but from within. By white Liberals who somewhat defy the word liberal.
Darkhog

That’s it. Obama, prepare for some Kennedy time.
Traveller

“According to the Obama administration damages of $9,250 per song is not
an unconstitutional amount and is in fact needed to deter others from
engaging on online piracy.”

WTF is this?. All your life ruined just for downloading a crappy file while more serious offenses get way lesser penalties.
pippen1001

ok lets see 35 000 / 300 000 000 = 0.00011666666 = 0.0116666666666% of all the people in america if you count everyone as a suspect filesharer. So how does this “deter” people at large I’m still baffled as to why american butthurt old companies still think they can bully their ways to how things used to be
djnforce9

Well there’s your proof that the MAFIAA has bribed and bought out the US government. Why else would the Obama administration give a crap about someone downloading a handful of songs when they have a country to run including far more pressing matters? What’s worse is how they want to make an example out of this individual in order to scare others into not downloading. What will really happen is people will become more discrete to avoid detection by these goons.
Nope

“the inherent difficulty of proving actual damages”

lololol
dwpbike

would have happened sooner, except obama needed to be lame duck; i.e., he now has an excuse and still gets industry $
me

Corporate fascism in the US has a face, and it is… vice president Joe Biden. Anyone seriously surprised than this government supports the MAFIAA?
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NETTII

Sad, VERY sad :(
enzofloc

Admitting deterrence as a necessary objective or recourse of action is not going to deter anyone. They may as well admit defeat. They have no way of preventing the flood.
John Casey

Considering songs are about $1 each, so basically the RIAA is claiming each song was downloaded over 9000 times each. Where is the proof? Is the burden of proof not on the RIAA? Should they not have to produce records for the over 9,000 unique IP addresses for each song. This is just a witch hunt, I can guarantee the RIAA has spent 100 time what they are looking to get from this person. Money they gather from artist contracts. It is all completely stupid…the RIAA is not losing money from online sharing, they are actually benefiting from it, just like they benefited from Radio DJs playing their artists songs. They bitched about that too.
Pelham123

“That public interest cannot be realized if the inherent difficulty of proving actual damages leaves the copyright holder without an effective remedy for infringement or precludes an effective means of deterring further copyright violations”

Well, in theory that’s true. For a TRUE copyright violation – selling bootlegs, counterfeiting, etc. – damages should act as something of a deterrent.

The error is in trying to claim copyright law applies to noncommercial peer-to-peer communications of any kind. That’s the war that will never be won, because the “violators” are motivated by the desire to communicate, not to make money. They know the spirit of U.S. law is on their side and they have the strongest of reasons to never back down.
FearMe

We need harsh punishment to deter corporate crime and satanism currently infesting the entertainment industry. If we gun down some of these tugs the rest will start to shit brick and run for the hill just like the Islamic terrorists did. Also once we take back our governement we could send the survivors to Guantanamo.
Kyuu Eturautti

USA has among the harshest punishments for drug related offenses and crimes of violence. As someone looking from Europe can clearly see, because of this deterrent, there’s just about zero violent and drug related crime in USA.

I’m sure that with such heavy deterrents for intellectual property protection, the problem of piracy will simply disappear, remaining as a hindrance only to us, the not-quite-greatest countries of the world.

Here’s to supreme intelligence, Obama!
- MadAsASnake
  
  Wow, no gun crime? No drugs in USA? when did that happen?
- Who
  
  WHAT? ….ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? LOL
- ItsTheSasquatch
  
  You forgot your tag, and people are getting confused.
Arya

The U.S. government and Federal Reserve Bank manipulate the gold and silver markets, print paper money as if, well, it is paper; why not go ahead and distort the punishment to file sharers while you are at it? Yeah, go ahead, you lie and cheat around the world with your tactics, you U.S. government. You manipulate everything. Morons!
Freethinker

Land of the free ? MY BUTT !
USAisgarbage

USA is a complete shithole and a terrorist nation, can’t wait till their final collapse!!
moth

lol if you were forced to paid 9,250 per song and you pirated 40,000 songs that a 160gb ipod holds you would be forced to pay 370,000,000.
Pingback: A piracy perspective | Mantra Software
utuxia

since when did jay walking become a major offense?
ImPISSED!

And there goes Baboonbamas creds. Fuck off nobel piece of shit price winner. We won’t miss you a bit. Just because you are the guy mopping up behind G. W. ain’t nobody giving you a free pass for your color nor your speeches. It is the actions that define a presidency… and yours has taken a few steps further DOWN right about when I read that your fuckface of a vice douche chimed in on the matter. Good going bruh. Seems to me the #1 man of state is not that powerful after all. Yeah right. Ordering fucking drones around the world and being the lesser of two evils… BIG FUCKIN WHOOP bruh! Good luck with gun control and social care. I support the notion but I can’t see any quick success because your country (as any other country in the world) CANNOT govern INSANITY which is rampant in your country. Bitch!
Akumanoid

Harsh punishments needed to deter authorities is more like it.
anon@anon.com

They did a focus group with children and believed them. FFS! ^^
Whatever

And so the Democrats, accused of being communists by Republicans, overtake the Republican party from the right.
Winston Smith

Coming from an administration that thinks it’s moral and Just to kill American citizens with Drones, it doesn’t surprise me that Dear Leader Obama thinks $9K per song isn’t harsh enough. Maybe he wants to unleash those drones on evil file sharers…Afterall, aren’t they terrorists too.
Goo Smoo

“According to the Obama administration damages of $9,250 per song is not an unconstitutional amount and is in fact needed to deter others from engaging on online piracy.” Well, it hasn’t deterred me….
Ace

This is like chopping off the hands of a kid who takes from the cookie jar.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=788625202 Sandy Aj

geeze, stop wasting our tax dollars on this crap already
satanjesus

Fining $9,250 a song is cruel and unusual. That’s a fifth of the median annual income for the average US citizen. Paying off the full $222,000 would essentially take her 4 and a half years worth of total net income if the average income is $50,054 a year, and assuming she isn’t straddling the poverty threshold, which is only $23,021, it would take her over 9 and a half years of net income. That’s beyond cruel and unusual punishment which is a direct violation of the 8th Amendment.
fixed

World Population: Harsh Punishments Needed to Deter U.S. Govt

Corrected that for you, TF
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U.S. Govt: Harsh Punishments Needed to Deter File-Sharers

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