Posted on 05/21/2012 7:49:30 PM PDT by ETL
BOSTON (AP) — A former Boston University student who was ordered to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs on the Internet says he will continue fighting the penalty, despite the Supreme Court's refusal to hear his appeal.
Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., said Monday he's hoping a federal judge will reduce the amount, which he called "ludicrous."
A jury in 2009 ordered Tenenbaum to pay after the Recording Industry Association of America sued him. A federal judge called the penalty constitutionally excessive, but the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Can You buy a CD of Music and then Make copys and give them away?
Can You sue your emplyer for using your labor to make a profit and not give you a greater share???
I hope the Music industry goes bankrupt.
Insane! And corzine anyone?
Are they doing that yet?
Because the day they do is the day we are OFFICIALLY the USSR.
I bet he now hates those 30 songs.
The biggest irony however is that this was all stuff that could be had for free from radio stations. If the same student had sent out instructions on how to nab a copy from a radio station he wouldn't have even gotten noticed.
People put music up on You Tube frequently without any sign that they are paying licenses for it. Sometimes the resulting videos get automated ads for sales of official copies of the music, but won't get taken down unless the copyright holder requests a DMCA takedown.
If RIAA wants to be magnanimous about this guy's role as another hole in the massive sieve, they would reduce their request to a nominal amount if the guy agrees to do a national mea culpa about it.
Copying is not stealing. If he stole the songs the band, store etc. would not have them to sell. He made two where there was one. It is simply not the same as stealing. His penalty ought to be to remunerate the lawful copyright owner the download price multiplied by the number of times he shared it.
Yes, it is stealing. But is it right that he be made "an example" and therefore pay the price for everyone else who does it? $675,000?!
this particular Tad is morbidly obese
I'm sure we will. People will start fleeing this country en-mass with the direction we are headed.
Soon, too.
The rest of us, however, have a right to wonder about such a capricious and out of proportion system. Copyright “stealing” may dilute a market but it doesn’t remove physical goods from a vendor. You can literally steal that many CDs and suffer orders of magnitude smaller penalty for it.
He could use a stolen SSN from Connecticut. They don't prosecute for those!
Yeah! The hell with the Bill of Rights! Excessive, cruel or unusual punishments are just fine!
They should have slowly tortured him to death! His parents, too! And anyone he's ever met!
>Copying is not stealing. If he stole the songs
>the band, store etc. would not have them to sell.
>He made two where there was one. It is simply not
>the same as stealing.
Looks like you may be right...
“Copyright holders frequently refer to copyright infringement as theft. In copyright law, infringement does not refer to theft of physical objects, but an instance where a person exercises one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder without authorization.[6]
Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft, holding, for instance, in the United States Supreme Court case Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property and that “interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud.
The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright... ‘an infringer of the copyright.’” In the case of copyright infringement the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law is invaded, i.e. exclusive rights, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held.[1]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Theft
Not many places left to go, though.
The Apaches found some Bin Laden-type crevices on this continent...
Belize, Honduras, the Yukon, etc.., Ever play “Risk”?
Better to die like a man where you stand, IMHO.
How do you legally continue fighting after the Supreme Court turns you down? Perhaps he should give them a big public raspberry and illegally download thousands of songs now, inviting, daring, the court hit him with a $675,000,000,000,000 fine -- to protest the first ridiculous fine?
Replete with peeing my pants and clutching my dolly.
>I bet he now hates those 30 songs.
How appropriate is this 2008 article I just found?
30 Best Songs About Business and Money:
http://www.businesspundit.com/30-best-songs-about-money/
Maybe he can get it cut in half with a good lawyer..
I'd probably join an organized crime outfit.
I can't make money legit? Fine. Watch this.
Oh, and as an organized crime figure, my first few whacks would be at anyone that heads up RIAA.
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