Jury rules against Minn. woman in download case

[versuviusx]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_music_downloading

ok this is pretty rediculous!

i really hate this quote right here:
"An attorney for the recording industry, Tim Reynolds, said the "greater weight of the evidence" showed that Thomas-Rasset was responsible for the illegal file-sharing that took place on her computer. He urged jurors to hold her accountable to deter others from a practice he said has significantly harmed the people who bring music to everyone."

"He urged jurors to hold her accountable to deter others from a practice he said has significantly harmed the people who bring music to everyone."

ok my understanding is that artist really don't make too much money on their record sales. they make money on tours. the people who do make money on cd sales consistently have already made their money. bands like the stones, MJ, the beatles, etc.
the only people who are not making the money are the greedy record companies who can afford high dollar attorneys such as Tim Reynolds.
i'm not justifying stealing music. i'm saying this has gone way too far and is rediculous. she had the chance to pay 3-5k and now she is going to owe 1.92 mil!
she's an idiot clearly but does she deserve to spend her whole life paying off a debt to greedy record companies or the RIAA?

[chris harris]

ok my understanding is that artist really don't make too much money on their record sales. they make money on tours. the people who do make money on cd sales consistently have already made their money. bands like the stones, MJ, the beatles, etc.

Your understanding is not at all accurate.

the only people who are not making the money are the greedy record companies who can afford high dollar attorneys such as Tim Reynolds.
i'm not justifying stealing music.

But, yes. That's exactly what you're doing. If you do something, then turn around and say, "I'm not doing that", it doesn't mean that you actually weren't doing that.

i'm saying this has gone way too far and is rediculous. she had the chance to pay 3-5k and now she is going to owe 1.92 mil!
she's an idiot clearly but does she deserve to spend her whole life paying off a debt to greedy record companies or the RIAA?

Does she deserve it? Well, she deserves it as much as anyone else who commits a crime does. Does the punishment fit the crime? I don't know. When someone creates something, they're perfectly able to give it to you for free if they want to. If they choose to sell it, you can't just choose to take it for free. You can choose to not buy it if you don't think it's worth what they're asking. But, just taking it, when the person who created it clearly intends to sell it, is not only illegal... it's also a really, really shitty thing to do. Now, does that mean that the millions and millions of people who do it every day are all just shitty people? Probably not. I do believe that most of them know that what they're doing is wrong, though. I just figure that most of them come up with questionable justifications like the one you started off with. Who knows? Maybe a few multi-million dollar judgements or actual prison terms will actually drive home the fact that this is a crime.

I'm not siding with the labels here. I do feel like they've brought most of this on themselves. But, that doesn't make it right. I'm siding with the artists. And, since every single time this topic comes up, someone has to spout off about how they "know" that such and such artist really doesn't care about piracy because they made some asinine statement in some glossy music magazine or a MySpace interview where they said "we appreciate any exposure we can get!", I'd like to point out that lots of artists say that shit because it makes them look cool to their fans. But, don't be fooled. They've got plenty of their own lawyers making sure that they get theirs. Why not email them and ask them if they're so cool with file "sharing", then why don't they just bypass that big mean record label and give away all of their music? Tell 'em that they make all of their money from touring anyway. Then get back to me and let me know what they say.

[Gentleman Jim]

I agree that stealing music is illegal. I agree that stealing music is morally wrong. I agree that distributing stolen music is just as wrong and immoral. I did it for a short time many years ago, but I don't do it anymore. The risk of a civil judgment isn't worth it.

I am, however, going to play a bit of Devil's Advocate here.

The same companies that insisted that the music they were selling was to stop being made available in analog forms, (vinyl and cassette), and pushed their customers to repurchase everything in digital form, (cd's), have now reaped the unintended consequences of that action. While the older among us fondly remember making mixtapes in our youth, we tend to forget how tedious they were to make; not so with a mix cdr, where you can just drag and drop and you're done. Stealing music from analog formats was much clunkier, and the barrier to entry for outright piracy was pretty high.

This isn't about whether they "deserve" whatever happens, or how they've been acting in bad faith, or if they're somehow inherently evil. This is about how the RIAA's membership created a public feeling of entitlement to stealing.

The industry worked in pretty-close-to-lockstep to switch to a digital format, but didn't consider what making everything into 1's and 0's might mean. And now, even over a decade after the problem started getting national attention, they still can't figure out how to market their product using more than three distribution models.

Remember the talk in the mid 1990's about the Information Superhighway? Remember how we were all told that entertainment, news, and shopping would all be provided via computer? I do. And yet, when I brought it up to a VP from Warner Brothers in 1996 or 1997 he scoffed and talked about how mp3's sound terrible, and that people want the artwork that comes with cd's. While he may have been partly correct, the fact that nobody accounted for the segment of the market that was more interested in convenience speaks volumes.

They fought with iTunes over royalty splits rather than have any moral high ground from which to speak. They dragged their feet over letting Rhapsody have every track from legacy cd's. They weren't prepared for what we had all been told was coming for years. And while that time passed, their customers got used to doing what they knew was wrong, but the convenience overrode the legality.

The lag time between the technology to steal digital music being made affordable to a large portion of the public and the wide availability of legal paid downloads was years. To think about how subsidiaries of large multinational corporations could be so ignorant of what's about to happen is mind boggling. Think about Sony Music: their parent company made the Sony Vaio computer I bought in 1999 and used to illegally download music, edit it with Sound Forge, and burn cdr's for friends. All this three years before iTunes debuted.

[Jim_Boulter]

ok my understanding is that artist really don't make too much money on their record sales. they make money on tours. the people who do make money on cd sales consistently have already made their money. bands like the stones, MJ, the beatles, etc.

Your understanding is not at all accurate.

I'd go more with "grossly over-generalized", but not completely inaccurate. Otherwise:

the only people who are not making the money are the greedy record companies who can afford high dollar attorneys such as Tim Reynolds.
i'm not justifying stealing music.

But, yes. That's exactly what you're doing. If you do something, then turn around and say, "I'm not doing that", it doesn't mean that you actually weren't doing that.

Yep. Though saying he was justifying it may be a bit harsh. I think he, like I do, just thought the punishment here was overly harsh.

i'm saying this has gone way too far and is rediculous. she had the chance to pay 3-5k and now she is going to owe 1.92 mil!
she's an idiot clearly but does she deserve to spend her whole life paying off a debt to greedy record companies or the RIAA?

Does she deserve it? Well, she deserves it as much as anyone else who commits a crime does. Does the punishment fit the crime? I don't know.

Does she deserve something for having committed the crime? Yes. Does this punishment fit the crime? Not even close. The lawyer's own argument that it is to "make an example" to others proves that. There is a terribly heavy burden of proof to show that people downloaded that 1.9 million dollars worth of music from her, and from what I see, there is none whatsoever. IMO, the judge should throw out the punishment, and assess something reasonable. I would be much more strongly deterred by a $2000 penalty, which they could easily get from me, than a $2 million dollar penalty that I would laugh off because it would never happen.

[AstroDan]

"I would be much more strongly deterred by a $2000 penalty, which they could easily get from me, than a $2 million dollar penalty that I would laugh off because it would never happen."

True. My days are ruined more by a late car payment than about North Korea nuking planet earth.

[versuviusx]

i'm just kind of saying what jim boulter is saying.
that the penalty doesn't fit the crime.
and if i'm so accurate i would love to know what percentage of an artist income comes from cds?
i would love to know how much you think an artist every month makes who belongs to a band. this means if there are 4 people in a band how much money does 1 of them make out of the band for one month off of cd sales and of that money they get from royalties, what is the percentage of their total income? i'm not talking big mainstream bands i'm talking new up and coming bands trying to make their way.

[Bro Shark]

Damn. How much do I owe for all those cassettes me and my friends dubbed for each other back in the day? Just let me know where to mail the check, and do adjust for inflation.

Sincerest apologies.

[chris harris]

i'm just kind of saying what jim boulter is saying.
that the penalty doesn't fit the crime.
and if i'm so accurate i would love to know what percentage of an artist income comes from cds?

There's no official scale or anything. There are lots of people both major label and independent, who make a living without playing shows at all, ever. To just assume that the only people ever who make money off of cd sales are multi-national corporations and the Stones and Beatles is the reason your assumptions about how things work are inaccurate.

If the artist wanted to give you their music, they would just give you their music. What you're doing is making yourself feel better by choosing to believe that the artist isn't losing any money by your theft. If you can convince yourself that the only people you're stealing from are the big mean corporations, you don't feel bad about doing it. But, you have to be pretty detached from reality to believe that stealing an album that you want, rather than paying for it like you're supposed to, doesn't deprive the artist who created the music of any money.

i would love to know how much you think an artist every month makes who belongs to a band. this means if there are 4 people in a band how much money does 1 of them make out of the band for one month off of cd sales and of that money they get from royalties, what is the percentage of their total income? i'm not talking big mainstream bands i'm talking new up and coming bands trying to make their way.

I would love to be able to enlighten you and help augment your apparent limited understanding of how the music industry works. I think that helping you to understand these things might make it more obvious to you that you're using misguided rationalizations for defending something that you have to understand is wrong.

One misperception you seem to have is that "big mainstream bands" make a certain amount of money and that "new up and coming bands" have a separate scale. The truth is, if you look through the bins at a record store, every one of those bands makes a different amount based on how they choose to handle their business. Again, there are independent artists who make a living from only selling cds on the internet. And, there are other bands who only play at bars, make a ton of money, and never record a thing.

You're rationalizing doing something wrong based on a very, very narrow, and misinformed view of the music industry.

[chris harris]

My band, for example, is a "new, up and coming band". We've self released a CD and we're working on a couple of vinyl releases for a couple of labels.

If you download our album on the internet, rather than pay for it (y'know, since we've chosen to sell it), you're ripping us off. Sure, you can argue that the exposure benefits an "up and coming" band like ours.... that's just more misguided rationalizations. We understand the exposure that can come from making stuff available for free online. And, we do that. But, for this release, we've chosen to sell it, just like all of your favorite bands with cds in the stores. If you don't think that it's worth it, then don't buy it. But, if you think it's valuable enough to you for you to seek out and download, then you're just being an asshole and depriving my band of compensation for our hard work.

But, I'm sure that if you like it, you'll come to our show and buy a bunch of t-shirts and vinyl releases, huh? That bullshit is what everybody says. And, it is absolute bullshit. Go to shows. People that are downloading hard drives full of pirated music don't give a shit about those bands. They just know that they can get a shitload of "stuff" for "free" that they would have previously had to pay for. And, what if I don't want to tour? Should I not be able to make a living selling my cds if there is a demand for them and I choose to sell them for a fair price?

A bunch of spoiled kids who think that they're somehow entitled to free music aren't going to be the ones to decide that if I expect to make any money, I better get out on the road.

Sure, the major labels are to blame for letting things get this way to begin with... But, it always comes back to the same thing. The people who are doing this just think that it's gone on long enough, it's so widespread, and it's easy to rationalize, so eventually the world will give in and all music will be free. That's just bullshit, hippy utopia nonsense, perpetuated by a bunch of greedy-as-fuck, morally bankrupt assholes.

[cgarges]

i would love to know how much you think an artist every month makes who belongs to a band. this means if there are 4 people in a band how much money does 1 of them make out of the band for one month off of cd sales and of that money they get from royalties, what is the percentage of their total income? i'm not talking big mainstream bands i'm talking new up and coming bands trying to make their way.

Aside from the fact that the amount couldn't possibly be more wide-ranging (literally, from zero dollars to millions of dollars), I don't see why it matters one bit in terms of this discussion.

Someone not at all related to the parties who collect broke the law. It doesn't matter how much the receiving parties make individually, she's looking at receiving a penalty of some sort. If you're trying to make the point that small-time, not-very-hard-working bands don't make much money on royalties, then that's all the more reason why she should be punished. In any case, the parties involved won't directly see the result of her punishment. If I complain about my neighbors parking in front of my mailbox to the police and they show up and write them a ticket, that's a punishment that is deserved, but I'm not going to see any of the fine collected from the ticket. Therefore, how much money I paid for my house doesn't have anything to do with the amount of the ticket.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[@?,*???&?]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_music_downloading

ok this is pretty rediculous!

Finally! We will have 'precedent'!

[rwc]

The big problem as I see it is that if common people no longer buy & fund music, that other sources will step in to do it. Before the early 20th century 99% of the music out there was funded by the high upper class, and they influenced on a great scale what was played. Now, if advertisers are the ones funding most music, they will choose what gets played, and this leads to more plastic music.

When people around me have discussions about modern pop music going to shit and blah blah blah, I can't help but notice that the timelines people point out always seem to coincide with when downloading music became something the everyman could do.

I think the main issue is assigning value to anything that can be digitized and utilized to its full extent by any common person with an inexpensive device. IMO, to call it stealing when the original remains untouched makes one sound old and lacking in understanding, but it also doesn't make it any less fucked up.

Over the next century, music, film, and television will appear to only be the tip of the iceberg.

[Knights Who Say Neve]

Here's some more devil's advocacy.

I buy used CD's. Am I robbing anyone?

Before you answer, recall that the music industry fought against used cd sales for years, but eventually lost, because of the doctrine of first sale. Who knows how may times that used CD has been resold? The only difference between used CD resales and internet file sharing is scale.

[@?,*???&?]

Here's some more devil's advocacy.

I buy used CD's. Am I robbing anyone?

Before you answer, recall that the music industry fought against used cd sales for years, but eventually lost, because of the doctrine of first sale. Who knows how may times that used CD has been resold? The only difference between used CD resales and internet file sharing is scale.

Should General Motors be paid more than once from the sale of a Malibu if it is only sold new, once? They made money the first time, but why should they get paid the second time unless they GMAC is financing it...but that's a different kind of profit?

Buying a used CD, you are robbing no one.

[roygbiv]

I think the fees they assessed are ridiculous, and hopefully will be thrown out. And I think this problem is primarily the fault of the greedy music corporations.

Having said that, this ruling, or one like it, was probably inevitable. Complete, uncompensated theft of the intellectual property of an entire industry can't (and won't) be allowed to continue forever.

Perhaps like social-studies version of quantumn mechanics, the subject of digital piracy may be one of the 1st (of many yet to come) subjects that our analog brains are simply not capable of understanding, at least on a gut level (your gut being another analog thing).

The reason I believe this ruling was inevitable is because the problem is not going to go away. Today it is music, tomorrow who knows what.

And this is a problem because "First world" societies are increasingly switching over to being based on information and the works of the "creative class".

In such societies, the effort and compensation is for the original idea, execution and creation of the object (music, invention, idea, art, film, etc.). The manufacturing/duplication process becomes trivial in the digital age.

Probably the concepts used in patent and copyright law will eventually come to rule all of our world. Truly horrifying, but perhaps necessary.

I mean, is it fair to steal graphic art off the web and pass it off as your own? How about "mere words" from published sources? How about music? How about inventions?

How about in the future, when many of our tangible things come from an "object manufacturer" we have in our house, which depends on new schematics/data/CAD designs to make whatever we need. (don't laugh, not conceptually impossible).

Will it be cool then to just steal the information that feeds into the manufacturer? I mean, hey, just 'cause you copied the information, it doesn't keep somebody else from using it, right? Just like a song is now?

But, what happens if you get tired of your old Dildo, but all the dildo inventors quite inventing new ones? What to do?

etc.

We already see some of this with rampant IP theft by manufacturers in China. Can't say I blame them on one level, but of course their products will be cheaper if they don't have to pay R&D costs.

I suspect many of the "free-love downloader" types are also very anti-Behringer. But why? Why do you think it is bad for Behringer to steal ideas and make direct copies of an object for less in China, but it is ok for you to make direct copies of somebody elses' music?

Anyway, I suspect "the man" will have to put the smack down on all of this digital theft. Because if he/she doesn't, and society doesn't figure out some way for (hopefully fair) compensation, the whole endeavor of creating new things will for the most part simply dry up.

At which point the most desirable jobs (financially speaking, anyway) will be digital theft-proof, like plumbing. or Cops. Or morticians. Or lawyers.

Now maybe in the future we will all be so rich we can invent and post stuff for free (the open source software model), but at some point, economies depend on the transaction of money.

rant over.