Trial will test power to stop illegal music file-sharing
Synopsis: The record companies accuse Jammie Thomas (a 30-year-old mother of two from Brainerd, Minn) of making 1,702 songs available on her Kazaa file-sharing account in 2005 without permission. In court, they will try to prove she shared 25 specific songs in violation of copyrights the companies hold. The recording association is seeking damages set under federal law, of $750 to $30,000 for each copyright violation.
What’s Wrong? Did this woman break the law? Yes. Should she be punished? Yes. Should they charge up to $30,000 in damages per song?
I don't think so.
Think about it, they are, at minimum, trying to get this woman to pay over 1.2 million dollars for sharing these songs. The maximum would be an insane 51 million dollars. What the hell is wrong with these guys? Assuming that they get the absolute lowest amount possible (1.2 million), and considering that most people buy songs for about a dollar each (and I’m being generous here), for this to be justified, 1.2 million people would have had to download those songs, or each song would have had to be downloaded 750 times. This is for the minimum.
I don't care what she did. There is no way she caused the RIAA to lose 1.2 million dollars, because 1.2 million people did not download them, but there's more. This is the first-case out of the 26,000 cases that have been filed that the victim has not settled outside of court. They are simply too scared, because the RIAA says "Give us a couple thousand bucks or we sue you for millions." What we have here is a failure of the system. The RIAA is able to bully its way into getting whatever it wants and for that matter, what they are doing is completely immoral. Why?
Let us recall that I am an amateur musician. If I were to get a record-label, I get a cut of the profits that the RIAA gets selling the album. Now, most people grudgingly support the fact that downloading music is bad because it hurts the artists who are trying to make a living. So the RIAA can't be all bad, right?
WRONG.
The artists get nothing from this case. All this money, were it collected, would go straight to the unholy coffers of the RIAA, leaving the artists who are suffering without any compensation. Not only is this downright criminal, it’s a sick example of what bureaucratic bullshit can do. That is just disgusting. Not only that, but it’s an example of how utterly stupid the RIAA is. They are at war with not only their own customers, but their own employees. They seem to be at war with EVERYONE.
I will never, for the life of me, let the RIAA get their filthy, blood-stained hands on my music. They clash with their own customers, refuse to budge from a system that was broken years ago, and despicably collect money for themselves by suing people who steal music that wasn't made by them. Something has to change. This must stop. If it is impossible for a boycott to stop this, then what we have here is a full blown violation of the anti-trust laws. I can't believe how fixated people are on Microsoft when companies like the RIAA walk with impunity to those anti-trust laws. The RIAA has a stranglehold on the entire musical industry, and it is abusing its power.
The system has failed. Change it.
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My favorite part is the record label senior executive who said that the lawsuits were not helping anything, and that if his name was printed, he would have been fired.
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"If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?"
-Steven Wright
-Steven Wright