Weekend tech reading: What's a fair penalty for piracy?

dead pixels make me cry My new Dell U2410 has one bright pixel but its hard to see unless your 6" infont of it.

Were they drunk or day dreaming that RIAA would pay some of that to them (if they ever get their hands on it in the first place) ?

Everyone is suing everyone in the high-tech industry it seems. Lots of lawyers gonna get rich off of this.

Perhaps trying to make an example. Frankly pirating is so easy its hard to believe its illegal.

No. They just wanted to ruin that person life to set an example.

IMO, $21 per song sounds like a good number, perhaps a bit more, but not much over $80 per song. Otherwise it's just plain ridicilous.

in my opinion, they should pay the cost of whatever they illegally downloaded, or if they uploaded a file, the cost of it times the number of people who downloaded it. crack down on uploaders , not downloaders.

I think the RIAA has gotten out of hand with its war against anti-piracy. If someone is found guilty of possessing illegal songs, just charge them the price for the songs, if that's even necessary. Frequent uploaders I could see possibly getting fined more, but still, $62,500 a song? That would make an MP3 player full of illegal songs quite valuable...

That means there are many mp3 players that are worth a million dollars,awesome.

I think the punishment should be harsh enough to deter it, but 62,500 per song -- someone was on something! If they want to stop piracy, they need to make it harder to illegally download the files. Anyone and everyone who wants a download just has to google whatever they want with torrent appended to the end of it. Besides, I bet a lot of what is downloaded, wouldn't have even been bought in the first place. And who knows, maybe that person will tell a friend who buys the cd, or will go see a concert or something.

So my iphone is worth around 37 500 000 dollars?

P.S. Don't judge me. It isn't fair that It's illegal to pirate video game soundtracks that haven't existed for decades.

First off making people pay an amount that they will never be able to pay is ludicrous its not going to make people stop downloading songs or videos or games. On another note dead pixels ? there should not be such a thing anymore they need to have a 0 dead pixel policy so that consumers are satisfied what ever happened to the consumer is always right and we don't want to pay for anything that is broken or not perfect we work are butt's off for what we have and don't need anyone else making things worse.

They should hang pirates. How many vessels are being held by pirates right now? And they get millions per ship. I'd figure it would be cheaper to hire some ships to escort you and kill the pirates rather than paying the ridiculous ransoms.

Oh wait, wrong piracy.

i think people being charged with piracy should only be charged the actual price of the content. charging several thousands of dollars for a couple of CDs is ridiculous. this is the result of many record companies who have failed to adapt their business model to the changing market and are trying to compensate by charging these extreme amounts of money. i do not agree with their practices one bit and i believe that all of the members involved with a party that are suing a single mother of four for a million dollars over 24 songs are simply evil and unjust.

I agree here make them pay for what they use not 10 to the 1000th power more.

3-5x the amount of the actual price of pirated material, and the money actually goes to the artist not the RIAA. All they do is ruin people's lives and piss 10x more money away then they bring in.

20 bucks per song is really the highest I can see it going without being cruel and unusual punishment.

I think that the jury members were indeed drunk. Supposedly, the woman is not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. The RIAA will never get the money; she simply cannot afford to pay that exorbitant fine.

Heck if I would judge you, that would make me feel equally stupid. Seriously though, anyone judging over game music must be really without a hobby. Not to mention, where would the money go if you got charged? The composer? Doubt it really.

I don't see how game music, could be put in the same boat really. I'd equally be a bad person, according to the RIAA (despite not being in the US) no less. It's almost impossible to find certain songs, and does it look like they bother helping? Nope, not one bit. Just slap on an outrageous penalty, just to bring people into line.

Either they embrace the internet (which is like hell freezing over), or suffer your pitiful existence. Soon they will crumble, as nothing will last with all the resistance. I'd just do it to spite them, and ask them to find what I'm looking for "legally" then if I don't want to be charged.