Posted on 10/04/2007 4:15:18 PM PDT by ThePythonicCow
bttt
Expert witnesses that might have been able to create reasonable doubt that what was on her computer was downloaded by her.
They might have been able to claim that her PC was taken over and became a zombie process that downloaded and shared all of those files.
Her getting rid of the harddrive soon after getting the letter from the RIAA puts a bit of a kabosh on this theory, but they could always try.
Putting the best face I can on it, it implicitly takes the position that the law is the law, and should always be respected, because to do any less is to tolerate disobeying any law, any time.
So by that, if I can get a law passed that says you owe me $10,000 if you sing the traditional Happy Birthday song, and if I then manage to overhear your six year old daughter's ten friends singing Happy Birthday to her at the party you hold for her, then I can sue you for $100,000.
Well ... if I could get that law passed, and if I caught you doing that ... wouldn't you owe me the money?
Just laws should be obeyed, and enforced.
And businesses have a right to the profits from their goods and services.
But the RIAA's position here is not entirely just, in my view. They have taken excessive advantage of their power, and of the power available to them via their lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to exact an unfair advantage in the market, and to impose unfair penalties on competition.
Limewire, bearshare, Kazaa, etc.
All subject to the same issues. I'm a tech Savvy 40 something who does this for a living. If your teens are doing this, you need to block some ports on your router.
If they need to steal, do it on torrents for flippin sake. On a torrent, if you don't go over 1.0 leech/seed, they can't say you ever gave someone an entire copy.
don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Stealing is stealing.
My understanding ( I may be wrong ) was that they never had the actual hard drive to prove it was on her computer. They just traced it to her IP address. An easy defense would have been she had an unsecured open wireless access point to her DSL modem. Not being tech savy and knowing that you had to secure the access points, she could have claimed she was the victim of someone hijacking her internet access.
So, you’re saying bit torrents are files they can’t catch you on?
No. Not saying that at all. I'm saying that to date, they're only going after the original seeder. It's also more difficult to track down leechers on a torrent, specially if the torrent doesn't have a tracker.
I get paid every month for doing absolutely NOTHING. Retirement pensions are a novel idea!
There is NO difference between what people who download do and recording songs off the radio with a tape recorder in the good ole days . If you buy a CD it is your property. BTW, What is the difference of getting a CD at the library and listening to it ? The library purchases one copy and hundreds, maybe thousands listen to it when they check it out .
Some kind of computer geek that could confuse the issue with reasons she might not have done it even though it looked like she did.
It was $9,250 per song. The law allows for $700-$30,000 for non-willful infringement, and $150,000 per song for willful infringement. The idea of such statutory damages is not wrong in itself. Imagine you wrote a free, open source program, and a software company sticks it in their product without adhering to the license. The actual damages you can demand are zero, but the law allows you to get $150,000. This makes for just compensation and deterrence even when the monetary value of the work is small or nothing.
I am surprised they got so much though. She obviously didn't think she was infringing, so she could have had it cut to $200 per song.
Does anybody here honestly think she wasn't willfully trading songs?
Forgot, from a business point of view it also works because authors often have no idea how many copies were distributed. She could have distributed 10,000 copies of each of those 24 songs in that time, making the damages about what they cost online.
No, but by not putting up any defense, she HAD to defense.
She sure made it easy for RIAA Ior whatever they are called). If I believed in conspiracies, I might wonder if they arranged for the person in the very first trial to take a dive. That will be used a precedent in all cases from now on.
“she HAD to defense.” should be “she had NO defense.”
Thanks for the info.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.