You may know more about this than I do, but by "statutory," is that like "punitive"?
My point was that some defense lawyers seem to be arguing that a $750 fine is not a just punishment for someone who took 70 cents worth of merchandise.
It's not really punitive. If you register a copyrighted work, the law allows you to seek either actual or statutory (specified by law) damages from the infringer. A lot of copyrighted works don't have much value, and certainly not enough to be worth a court case over them. That would leave many copyright holders with no real way to get compensation for possibly massive infringement of their works. Take free software for example, what could you sue for if not for statutory damages, since you give it away for free anyway?
My point was that some defense lawyers seem to be arguing that a $750 fine is not a just punishment for someone who took 70 cents worth of merchandise.
This is one reason why I don't agree that giving songs on p2p is theft. It's infringement, a violation of another's rights. The actual value doesn't need to play into it, except for a defense attorney trying to say that an award of the statutory damages would be unfair -- but that misses the whole point of statutory damages.