Let me copy what was posted elsewhere, adding that nothing damages the commercial value of a song than confusion as to who owns the music. No one will record or sing in public or broadcast a song with multiple ownership, while no such damage occurs when the song is copied for private listening. Rather than damaging a song’s value, copying for personal uses and sharing, which are really unstoppable anyway, actually increases the commercial value. The posting, which is related to the Guillermo Venegas cases says:

The damages award system is far worse than it looks when we only consider the stupidity of statutory damages as applied to essentially Innocent and non commercial copying or sharing of song files.

I can only illustrate my point using a case I was involved. I have described the case before but it is worth explaining if it may help accused kids and others who have innocently shared or copied music because they like music and because copyright laws are beyond their (or anyone else, including lawyers and judges) grasp as I have been saying and repeating to deaf ears for a long time. On 2001 we filed a market damage lawsuit in a US federal court against a music publisher that destroyed the market of the over 500 songs we owned as copyright holders, by claiming ownership of the over 500 songs. During the lawsuit this fact was not denied by anyone, it was rather obvious. We only received a single “copyright infringement” award of $16,363.47 along with a lawyer bill of $76,932. Our lawyer filed the legal cost claim too late (said the judge as if he had no responsibility in the late filing of an inexperienced lawyer) so all we ended with was a huge loss of about $60,000. The filed lawsuit did not claim any copyright infringement at all, just market damage, but the judge apparently did not read the lawsuit and transformed it into a single song copyright infringement one in a 2004 trial. As a result my family has had to file a new lawsuit (in 2007) the thieving publisher in the local courts.

The point is, federal court judges are insane (if my case is an examples) when it comes to awarding damages, thus judges should not be given statutory atomic bomb of $150,000 to compensate a copyright holder for the (alleged) loss of 99 cents in a sale that may have been at best, improbable.

We have a saying, “may God catch them confessed”. Them are the lawmakers and the judges.

As far as the entairtainement criminals are concerned It is changing right now since the RIAAA and MPAA parasites are litteraly dying.

Not thanks to OBAMA! thanks to us and Internet.

YUP HES A TOOL ALRIGHT

I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE HOW REALLY NAIVE SOME OF YOU PEOPLE REALLY ARE. MORONS……….
IT’S NEVER GOING TO CHANGE. ALL POLITICIANS ARE CORRUPT,TALK OUT BOTH SIDES OF THEIR MOUTHS AND ARE IN EVERYBODY’S POCKET.

GOOD GRIEF………….

“Biden shushes wife after secretary of state slip on Oprah Winfrey show”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28736468/

The majority of the shill accusations towards vice president Biden appear unfounded since he took office. The past may be a different story. Follow the money and you’ll find that the lobbies you hate so much have probably donated/bribed more or less to both parties equally.