Judges should body-slam RIAA lawyers at every opportunity, forcing them to actually PROVE damages, for example, rather than theorize and estimate. At the worst, proven, actual damages should be limited to 3x market value (Or 3x about $1 per song), and punitive damages should be similar to shoplifting fines.
She should be looking at $1000 - $2000 in damage, tops.
Courts should stop being a perverse revenue stream for the RIAA.
I wish mathematicians had an RIAA. We’d be filthy rich.
1) Record labels pay to promote the music of their artists, hoping to increase the airplay of the songs on the radio, which is free. (See the "Payola" scandal of the 50's)
2) Recording music off the radio for your personal use is legal, and always has been, AFAIK.
3) Radio is a 115-year-old technology for mass dissemination of information.
4) The Internet is fundamentally the modern, superior equivalent of radio: a technology for the mass dissemination of information.
So, the recording industry, which pays for -- sometimes illegally -- its product to be disseminated to free mass market broadcast using one technology now sues its own customers for obtaining or sharing the very same product through a modern free mass market broadcast.
The activity is the same; only the technology is different. But one is promoted to the point of bribery, while the other is brutally punished.
HMMM? Did someone miss something in this suit? Most of those who have been charged it wasn’t for downloading but for uploading and sharing?
Hope they don’t get me for all the highspeed dubbing I did when I was a teenager.
Did your kids ever tape songs off the radio? The RIAA wants to KNOW!
If the retail total of the goods is around $40 and she “stole” them by writing a bad check, how much would the damages have been? Most places allow a bad check to be reimbursed with 2-3 times the face value. So why should her punishment be so much more severe than if she had written a bad check or actually shoplifted the recordings from a music store?
Ummm, there’s still time...