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$675000? At a buck a song that's an awful lot of music to steal. I'd like to know how they arrived at that amount.
It helps to discuss a topic intelligently once you understand the subject.
I guess in your case you either can't read or don't understand "per infringement" means each song....
Quote:
"It was not necessary for the district court to reach the constitutional question of whether the jury's award of $22,500 per infringement was so excessive as to violate due process," the 1st Circuit wrote.
So much for the wind vain approach for defending property rights.
I'm all for a reasonable period of time where the creator of original content has exclusive rights to make money off of it but the current copyright laws are insane. There have always been fair use exceptions to copyright but noone else other than the creator or anyone he licenses the rights to should be allowed to make money off of the content.
A great example of where copyright infringment works well for everyone is anime. A lot of Japanese anime was not available in the US and in English. Back in the 80's and 90's it was hard to get anime with English subtitles so fans started doing it themselves. They distributed it either at cost (when physical products had to be mailed to people) or later for free when the internet became available. As a result, the market for anime exploded in the US and today it is possible to get thousands of anime titles with English subtitles. I should also point out that when an anime title was licensed for eventual production in the US the fansubbers stopped distributing it and always encouraged everyone to support the industry by purchasing the commercial product (which often had subtitle work that was below that of the fansubbers).
You can bring an action at the International Trade Commission, in D.C. for infringement of Intellectual Property by an Importer. Once successful, they will ban the goods from entry into the US and can award damages.
Been There, Done That!
been there done that. It doesn't work. You have to show a substantial damage (like in the millions) for them to do anything. I'm a part time artist, who created an image, that I never sold, as part of my gallery.
I dont know how many tshirts were sold with my image, so I couldn't show the damage. My only claim was a copyright infringement claim, where I could "sue" up to $250,000 for the infraction. The only persons I could sue were the stores that carried the item in stock (which I did, but the shirt still shows up on online stores housed in foreign countries where I can't touch them).
Yeah, the ITC wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Its not worth their time trying to chase.
There are plenty of people that actually think that since something is a law, it must be just. This fine is completely absurd and anyone that doesn't see that just has no ability to think for themselves.
I dunno, what copyrighted material is originally yours that you know for a fact someone in China is using illegally?
I stated it in my post, you ignored it.
A piece of my artwork ended up as a design on a tshirt. I found the tshirt with my design when I was surfing the net. I was able to sue the stores to remove the infringing item (after sending Cease and Desist letters), but till this day, my design is still for sale, with no compensation to me, on various foreign websites that I am unable to bring to court. Many of those websites are registered to unknown entities in China using anonymous registrations on their domains. Issuing Cease and Desist letters to the ISP's hosting the sites, resulted in nothing happening to them.
There are plenty of people that actually think that since something is a law, it must be just. This fine is completely absurd and anyone that doesn't see that just has no ability to think for themselves.
the original amount was ridiculous. At most he should have been fined $30,000.
I would have fined the person, for how much each song costs on iTunes and have that person pay that amount and plus 5% per song
Depending on how many songs he had downloaded illegally, at $.99 a pop, and if he had thousands of them (say about 4000) a reasonable fine of $4200 would have been enough for the man in the OP.
BTW, the court could at its discretion, up the fine to $150,000 if they wanted to:
c) Statutory Damages. — (1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just. For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.
(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200. The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a fair use under section 107, if the infringer was: (i) an employee or agent of a nonprofit educational institution, library, or archives acting within the scope of his or her employment who, or such institution, library, or archives itself, which infringed by reproducing the work in copies or phonorecords; or (ii) a public broadcasting entity which or a person who, as a regular part of the nonprofit activities of a public broadcasting entity (as defined in subsection (g) of section 118) infringed by performing a published nondramatic literary work or by reproducing a transmission program embodying a performance of such a work.
This is one of the last smells from a dying corporate monopolized music industry. They know that the ship is sinking fast and they are desperate for anything and everything that they can get.
In 5-10 years, their reign will be completely finished. Artists already don't make much of anything off of CD sales. It's all about touring and diversifying to other markets such as merchandise, promotional stuff etc.
And I say GOOD!
No one making $7.25 an hour should have to work their ass off for two hours to be able to afford music to listen to. There are basically 3 or 4 record companies that pretty much own EVERYTHING popular. Why should they be able to monopolize an industry and set ridiculous prices for music which should, for the most part, be free (or at least affordable).
And why the hell would ANYONE pay a single dime to listen to music when much of that musical content (most pop, rap) has an "artist" bragging about how rich they are and how much of a lavish lifestyle they lead.
Bands like Metallica who cry and whine are disgusting. No one is going to pay $16 for your ****ty CD so you can buy your 5th house and another ferrari when they are taking a bus to their minimum wage slave job just to survive.
I can't wait until the corporate music industry is completely out of money. The sooner the better. Greedy bastards!
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