http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/ ... 1217_2.pdf
Copy of the form letter sent to ISPs.
Oooh, golden:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10127873-93.html
Assholes ahoy:
https://www.payartists.com/index.php?p=about
Bottom feeders.
IANAL, but to clear things up:
The Act allows for the copyright owner to recover monetary damages equal to actual damages plus any profits made by the infringing party or statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement.
(emphasis mine)
Okay, here's the deal.
If I make copies of your RRP $30 CD and sell them to 10 people, and you can provide evidence enough to convince a jury 51% that I had done this, you would take me to court.
Working out the damages for the first "option" available is pretty easy; Whatever profits I made from those 10 sales (probably close to 300 bucks) I give to you.
I also pay you for "actual damages", which I suppose would be the initial 30 bucks of CD I took for myself (maybe I got a burnt copy off a friend).
330 bucks max. I'm a pirate in the true (IP) sense of the word; that is, I took your property and sold it as my own, for my own profit.
If I
download your 30 buck CD, however, what do we do then?
Well, it could be argued that all I should pay for is the 30 bucks I didn't spend on buying the legit CD. But that oversimplifies matters - most P2P software allows, encourages or requires you to share and share alike - that is, whatever you download, you probably shared in some capacity with other people.
How many other people? That's not always easy to answer.
Who were they? No idea.
Would they have bought the CD had they not been able to download it from you? Do they already own the CD in another format? Did they then go out and purchase the CD on the strength of the listens they gave the copy they downloaded from you? - these questions are not considered. At all.
Given this is so murky, the other option is to award statutory damages "per work". (Statutory damages are calculated as a multiple of the "value" of the work)
Under this option, the maximum penalty awarded is $150,000 per infringement (I assume that's per work... if I download a song from an album, I assume that counts as a work, but if I download an entire album does that count as 10 works? Beats me).
Typically*, this value is in the thousands. I personally think this is utter arse. People who are
smarter than me think it's unconstitutional.
Either way, it's a curious system.
Note however, that because of the fluid and intangible nature of IP, and as evidenced by the very existence of statutory damages, working out the "cost of piracy" (in the downloading, not the selling sense) is a futile excercise.
This doesn't stop anyone in the industry from pulling billion dollar figures out of their arses and using it as "evidence" that IP law needs to be altered to rape consumers more.
Hint: It doesn't.
*"Typically" - this hasn't actually been settled by the courts in more than a handful of cases. Often people settle out of court.
Who do you think you are? If you'd stopped winning, you could have been the Biggest Loser, if you gave up, you could have been a Survivor, if you'd stopped reading Orwell, you could have been on Big Brother!
