Sven und EIN HUND said:
Well, there is no question as to whether piracy is a crime or not, it is. When it comes to punishments, you need to make them a deterrant when people are caught and convicted, if the penelties are irrelevent it deters noone, and it becomes impractical to prosecute.
Understand that this is speaking about piracy itself, the legal system so far is not considering other matters like the behavior of the industries themselves. So far I do not think that either the music or gaming industries would fare well if the goverment was to investigate them on similar grounds to why it's been involved with gas companies over the years. Organizations like the RIAA which seem to assist with price fixing and other types of behavior throughout the music industry could be called criminal as well. Sadly though such things have yet to be officially acknowleged.
What makes this case ridiculous is that they are going after monetary settlements this way. They can get settlements for millions of dollars all they want, but they are meaningless if the person in question doesn't have that much money. In the end the court is liable to just make it so they need to "make an effort to pay" based on whatever they earn. I'd be surprised if in this ruling they see returns equivilent to the thousands they settled for in other cases.
If they want this to have meaning they actually have to start getting criminal charges pressed and jail time.
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I'll also say that a lot of details on this case seem to be missing, unlike other groups that settled she seemed to fight, and that leads me to believe it was done under the advice of a lawyer. We don't know what her defense was.
When it comes to the music industry in paticular, I have mixed opinions since a lot of what they call "piracy" especially when dealing with older music is a joke. People who already bought songs, and berfore there were limitations put on them (since noone had conceived of current technology) seem to be being lumped in with pirates when they choose to download them or otherwise upgrade the format.
Trying to get people to pay for the same material again and again in each seperate format doesn't seem right to me, especially if you purchused the material back in the days of Vinyl or 8 tracks or whatever.
See, a lot of the older guys who come out and do the whole "anti-piracy" and "we deserve to be paid" messages strike me as being ridiculous, the bottom line in many cases is that they are complaining that they didn't make very good business deals back when they were popular. Either that or they partied/snorted/shot up all their profits and are now broke. As much as I like some of the guys who make the complaints, I also can't feel sympathy for them in these cases where their objective seems to be to try and make a fortune off of things they already sold.
While getting somewhat off topic, for people who wonder about how current performers are treated (more disposable) it's in part connected to the fact that in the old days rock stars and the like were relatively easy to cheat, and there was no real reason not to hold onto the contracts when things weren't working out. Today the entertainers are more savvy and maintain their own organizations and advisors even if they are dumb, they get better contracts and a bigger share of the profits, making them far less profitable, especially when they are going through rough times and not raking in the dough. It all factors into arguements about why the industry doesn't stick with their talent through the downs as well as the ups, or cultivate them over the long term quite as much.
You can feel sorry for a group like say "Grand Funk Railroad" for example, but if you bought their records do you really think they should have the right to sue you because you download a song you paid for onto your MP3 player? I don't know if they are involved in this (I mention them as a famous case of a band being screwed), but the bottom line is that when a band doesn't make money off of some of their work, how is that YOUR fault if their contracts or the terms they sold to you at the time weren't the best for them.
Just some rambling thoughts on the subject.
