Before you go on your rants, for or against, get one thing straight (and I don’t claim to have the answers myself yet):

1) Does the case assert that songs were DOWNLOADED from Kazaa, yes or no?
2) Does the case assert that songs were songs UPLOADED to Kazaa, yes or no?
3) Were legitimately purchased and locally burned songs merely shared from the local hard drive (whether intentionally or inadvertently), yes or no?

Once you have the answers to these questions you can have a semi-informed dialogue based upon the actual assertions in this case.

If YES to 1 then a copyright infringement may have occured and Kazaa would also be a party to it for hosting the copies.
If YES to 2 then a copyright infringement may have occured and the user may have to account for illegal distribution.
If YES to 3 then all those posters who are arguing about uploading and downloading are off base and off topic.

If I burn my CD’s to WMA files and inadvertently share my hard drive with the world (Kazaa or no Kazaa) then that may be a naive mistake, but hardly justifies severe punishment. If I am not actively sharing, distributing, sanctioning or promoting the making of illegal copies then I may be naive and in need of a stern warning, but hardly more than that I would say. I don’t even see the relevance of Kazaa in this discussion since it was apparently not on the hard drive and even if it was at some prior time, I don’t see how that can be linked to the issue of these particular songs unless there is some proof that the songs were transmitted via Kazaa P2P.

If songs were downloaded from another P2P Kazaa member then why aren’t other parties involved. Where did the defendant get the song from in the first place?

You may not like the RIAA for numerous reasons just as you may not like me or any other artist or author of copyrighted material, but if I copyright and publish a book, regardless of the size of my bankroll or backing publisher, that does not give anyone the right to distribute copies of it without my permission. If you do then I should rightfully feel fully justified in suing for the maximum amount that the law will allow. A single novel could be a lifetime of work for some and the copyright act is there to protect the creators and publishers contractual rights with respect to marketing that work, whether you like them or agree with their crap or not.

Each time the RIAA opens their mouth, they do it to shoot themselves in the throats with a gun. Nice job, you guys, saves us the trouble of having to come to you and polish you off ourselves.

When that happens, I WILL LAUGH MY ASS OFF AND DANCE ON THEIR GRAVES. Then I will shake his hand.

And the next day, I bet you all the REMAINING “cases” will be dropped.

YAP!
All the RIAA/MPAA parasasites are going to do the time for terrorism acrtivity and corruption.

OK! How mush for blowing up the RIAA head quarter in DC?

Just asking beeing curious!

Do not Settle! Nobody settle! BK if you have too!

If you were caught Jaywalking, and then were fined $50,000, would you argue that it was fair and you must now do the time?

i of course made the automatic assumption that the punishment was caning, which i thought would be appropriate for inane and pointless comments, such as the first one.

jammie, again, thank you for fighting.

What crime? At the very worse it was a copyright infringment and that is a civil thing. It has not even been proved. People like you are what keeps the RIAA in business.