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In 2009, a Boston jury downgraded a ruling against Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading music files from $675,000 to just $67,500, deeming the original penalty "unconstitutionally excessive."
Well, when you steal, and when you encourage theft, this is what happens.
And you don't think downloading for free instead of purchasing the music isn't theft?
The illegal downloading and uploading it is theft, and infringes on the copyright.
Quote:
Los Angeles Times editorial writer Jon Healy looked at some of the semantic ammunition being used in the legal and ethics battles over illegal downloading in a column last week. The recording and movie industries, he notes, “contend that copyrights are indeed property, entitled to the same protection as a home or a car. To counter the notion of ’sharing,’ they’ve advanced an equally powerful metaphor: downloading as theft. ‘When you go online and download songs without permission, you are stealing,’ the Recording Industry Assn. of American says on its website.
I wonder if that award is in dollars or dollar bills?
Because dollar bills have no par value, since 1933, and thus he owes 'nothing'.
And if the award is in dollars, how can he acquire them, since dollars haven't circulated since 1933. {We are in a State of Emergency!}
Either he "owes nothing" or he is obligated to do the impossible.
Agreed, and nothing shows that copyright laws need to be reformed than stupid rulings like this one. When we allow the special interest groups and their lobbyists to write the laws this si what we get. A company that makes a life-saving drug is only given a 5 year exclusive right to sell it and try and recoup the hundreds of millions they invested in inventing it yet a piece of crap song can have its copyright extended forever (50 years after the 'death' of the copyright holder but the copyright holder is a corporation and corporations don't die of old age).
It's theft, and in addition to paying for the music, he ought to pay for the time he was incarcerated, any medical services he received, meals he ate, the cost of the deputies and bailiffs, rental of the court room, the judge's hours, the hours of his paralegals and staff, and the cost to investigate his theft.
But before he pays that, he should pay the wages lost by the jurors.
Chinese steal and copy American products, their penalty?
Selling these stolen copied products in America making huge profits.
Man saves music and shares it, his penalty?
A huge life changing fine, the profits from his dastardly act? $0.00
Anyone else see the injustice and hypocrisy in this?
Moral?
If you live overseas stealing and copying American products is OK, an American copying and selling copyrighted products? You're a criminal.
Last edited by plwhit; 09-20-2011 at 09:20 AM..
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