It turned out some idiot had burned a CD-ROM instead of a music CD, and being unable to play it in his stereo, had tossed it out his car window in disgust. Which he should have done anyway, considering the poor quality of the rap MP3s.

I see the RIAA propaganda is working nicely…

First of all, downloading copyright material is copyright infringement, not theft. However…

Even if you equate downloading with theft, that is NOT what she was fined for. She was fined for DISTRIBUTION, or in other words, UPLOADING. To my knowledge nobody has ever been taken to court for merely downloading, only for uploading.

The reason the media and most people get the two confused is that file sharing programs automatically upload everything that you download. So downloaders automatically become uploaders and that is what gets you in trouble.

That’s not to say that the RIAA or MPAA is ok with people who only download, but they’re not going to waste the time and expense to take someone to court over the cost of a single piece of media. Even if they prove their case, without any distribution, the actual “damages” can easily be proven as the cost of just that media and any settlement they might collect wouldn’t be worth it. Not to mention the PR disaster that would be. With uploaders, they can at least claim that those people are harming the companies by giving away copies of the media for free. How would they justify going after downloaders?

Of course, this is just my opinion, if I’m wrong about this, hopefully Ray B. will correct me.

The boycott continues, as does the sharing of what I already have!

They are good manipulators.

This is flawed. Every time you see some dude who works in the background on the movies equating stealing a candybar with downloading movies, you know they don’t understand much about reality.

Candybars cannot be perfectly copied for next to nothing pricewise. Nor can a car or any other tangible device. You can’t scan in a candybar, send that data to a friend, who could use his HP printer to print out a candybar, perfect copy of the original which you still have.

So these comparisons are NOT the same. Too bad people are too blind to realize this.

It is NOT stealing, it is a violation of distribution ‘rights’ only. Get the damn facts straight RIAA/MPAA, news media!

It is not even reproduction, as that would require replaying the instruments yourself or remixing the original or remastering.

I was watching a DVD I PAID for that said “any copying, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited” which clearly violates fair use! They don’t mention how you copy, such as video camera infront of a TV which the **AA have OK’d (for use with professors in classes, for example), they simply say “no copying.”

Again, misconstruing the facts and playing on words to manipulate and bend the truth. This is easy to do when legal words are so strange to begin with, you can get a talented linguist lawyer who can twist the words so anything is possible.

These lawyers that work for the **AA groups are so good, given them 1 year, and they could twist the laws enough so a murderer could get only 5yrs instead of 25yrs for First Degree.

Ray B, do you think that’s too much of a stretch? You’re a lawyer, you understand what’s going on better than I.

“With regard to the amount of punishment that may be inflicted, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment also bars punishment that is clearly out of proportion to the offense committed”

Now, she stole $24 dollars worth of songs. I don’t believe any state in the US would consider this for more than even petty theft and the perpetrator would probably be slapped with a small municiple penalty and blemish on there criminal record. To be charged $1.92M for similar offense because its occuring electronically means that we’re defining the theft of physical property different than the theft of electronic format property.

Imagine walking into a convenient store, stealing say a carton of cigarrettes and being fined $1.92M dollars for it. This is the virtual equivalent. I believe there should be a penalty but it should be proportionate. Its a terrible thing that the music industry is attacking people who do not have the means to defend themselves and then slapping the offenders with disproportionate penalties. If it starts here were does it stop?

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Cruel+and+Unusual+Punishment

I can only hope this somehow finds its way to the accused or other people in similar situation to give them a new means to defend themselves.