Woman fined $1.9 million for 24 illegal song downloadsFollow

I thought 3 strike laws only applies to felonies?

Its amazing how being an alcoholic is a medical condition, but getting help is a person's choice, but being a pothead makes you a bad person.

Did the pedestrian have any illegally downloaded music on their iPod?

Money talks. This is not news.

It's comparable to winning the lottery to be taken to court by the RIAA.

At least in California, generally the third strike cannot be a drug crime: they get referred to drug court, due to a proposition which amended the law. However, an amendment to require the third strike to actually be a violent or serious felony was rejected, narrowly, by voters.

So pothead, no. Stealing US$500, yes. Welcome to California. Our sporadic bouts of direct democracy are amusing.

That said, if the illegal downloading community got together to put a proposition on the ballot to limit damages to so something reasonable (I have no idea what that would be...$10/song?) it would likely pass overwhelmingly.

Well. Technically, she made an example out of herself. They offered here the same sort of deal they offered everyone else. She chose to go to court instead of pay more reasonable damages.

I'm not a big fan of the RIAA, but they have the same right to sue to protect their property as anyone else. I don't really have an issue with the argument that even though they couldn't prove anyone downloaded any of the songs in question, she's still assumed to be distributing them. They're absolutely correct that there is no other reason to put a song on Kazaa. No one accidentally does this while using songs for personal use, or even to share them with some close friends.


I have sympathy for someone caught downloading a song and fined heavily. I don't have much pity at all for people who deliberately put someone else's copyrighted work up on a publicly accessible site so that anyone and everyone can gain a copy for free. The former can be argued away as a minor thing, or that you'd not have purchased a song anyway, so the artist didn't lose anything. The later is just a complete lack of respect for someone else's work IMO. Yes. I get that they're connected, but that's kind of the point...

Nearly all P2P programs do this. ESPECIALLY bit torrent programs - sharing what you've downloaded is a core concept to the bit torrent protocol.

Do they still use sucker wheels at carnivals? I NEVER got the giant lolipop, only a dum-dum.

Music distribution is an interesting issue. Samira made a good point about how we share books. That is not illegal is it? Historically we've shared music in similar ways. I used to borrow out my LP's all the time - thing is, only one phonograph at a time could be playing it.

I was watching a commercial the other day for a console game rental service - it's set up to mirror Netflix. You pay a monthly and use a game as long as you like. I was thinking if there could be some sort of similar service for music. But there are issues. So what makes music different from other forms of art and entertainment.

- we don't 'finish' music like we do a book, a movie or a game.
- we mimic music - we sing it, play it on an instrument or even quote the lyrics on forums. We do some of this stuff with other types of literature but not to the same extent. I mean sure kids might do some play acting, but really it's not like you have teenagers that put together a grunge garage thesbian group.
- music is just much more ethereal than other entertainment forms.


I don't think music can be rented.


Anyways, it will be interesting to see how things play out.

Yeah, it is. I used to check out music cassettes from the library - mostly kids music. I don't recall ever duping them. however at one point I was checking out music books - stuff for the piano, and photo-copying off the songs. I still have some of that stuff (though I no longer have a piano).

Some music you can listen to, AND watch, completely legally - at least for the moment. ---->

I really enjoyed this tiny desk concert by the Avett Brothers.

My dad's a pretty ethical guy - he used to check out music cassette tapes from the library and once asked a librarian if it would be okay to make a copy. She laughed at his concern and said "of course it's okay." I think he only ever made a dozen or so. When duplication required time, money, and suffered from constant quality loss, there wasn't much of a threat to the industry.


*Not that the librarian is an agent of the record company or the artist, but most people didn't just didn't think of it as stealing at all back then.



Edited, Jun 25th 2009 12:08pm by trickybeck

Maybe that was just the point...The jury told this woman, the judge, the RIAA and everyone else watching - She was a very very bad woman. Gave her such a rediculous judgement knowing full well she would then file for bankruptcy and the RIAA now gets nothing. Now that's justice.

And for those wondering - YES, court ordered judgements can be discharged by filing for bankruptcy.