Certainly a sad day. The way I understand it, is this is the first person of 26,000 sued by the RIAA. Rather than pay the few thousand dollar settlement/extortion, she decided to fight it and take it to jury. She lost.
What is the most sad here is how sharing a few songs can cost record companies $220,000. She is guilty for sharing 24 songs, and at $.99 for a song, this is quite the markup. Each song would have to be downloaded over 9,000 times for record companies to be out that much money. Now I’m sure there is law mumbo jumbo I don’t understand here, but I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a level headed guy looking for the justification here. And this is simply wrong.
Sharing files is wrong, I agree. Nobody should share copyrighted material. Artists should get paid for their work if that is how they choose to distribute it. However, from what I can recall, every industry that is on it’s way down tries to sue themselves back into relevance. This is a last gasp at the air they have left. And this is exactly what is happening to the big music companies. At one time I felt bad for this, until I realized this is just the way of things, and if those big music companies refuse to change with the times, they will be replaced. Right now, it seems the replacing industry will be independent bands and record companies, smaller ones, that understand what is happening, and are willing to change.
Dude/Dudette! Thanks for coming back, you make my day! :D Contact me at jeremy@jeremyvaught.com and let me know what you are up to.
Cheers!
--Jeremy
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