Maybe if it was YOUR work that was being stolen and given away for free you might have a problem with it. If you owned a dollar store and someone stole 1,700 items from you what do you think should happen? No jail time?
I cant believe these lawsuits exist. Does anyone here still buy cds or music, I dont, I just listen to music on websites and find songs to play through my computer on youtube, I dont even remember the last time I bought a CD. I still see them priced at $15.99, fucking rip off.
The good old US of A has the highest per capita prison rate in the world. Of course she should get jail time. Shit, she should get prison time. Maybe a couple of decades. The US loves to lock up just about every fucker that does wrong. The sentencing guidelines for drug charges are insane. You're literally better off killing someone. You do less time for murder than you do peddling a few bags of crack.
Believe it or not, they still call this the land of the free? What a bold face lie! Oh well, what can you do?
So, don't you think the artist who wrote the song that you like is entitled to some money? However, I also think the verdict is insane, the value of songs is just $ 1 per song, so maybe that plus a $ 3,000 penalty. This reminds me of the teens who stripped at McDonald's because someone called on the phone and told them too, and they got like $ 100,000 for suing McDonald's.
I agree there should be fines as you suggest. But you know as well as I do that pirating exists because the public felt they were being ripped off for many years. Buying a CD with 2-3 good songs and filler for $16 or $8 a movie ticket and watching 10 minutes of previews and commercials. Now there is bit torrent.
But the woman was offered an out of court settlement if she would agree to pay something like 2, 000 dollars a couple of years ago. She arrogantly refused. She violated copy right laws. If she's not punished, then every one will do it. The only thing that's revolting to me is that we allow Asian Pacific countries to steal our copy rights, and don't slap them with fines or trade penalties. In China you can walk into any mall and buy any software you can imagine for a couple of bucks.
Its not just China. Thailand too, probably originating from China though. I couldn't believe the quality knock offs I saw on vacation in Aruba recently.
Actually it is not harsh. The article failed to mention that she left these songs on the peer-to-peers network named Kazaa in her computer 24 hours a day, and they were downloaded by Kazaa users around the global several millions of times. Each download on itune costs $1.00. So several million downloads should have been cost her around $3 to $5 million but the judge only fined her $1.5 million dollars for distribution without reproduction rights.