Swedish pirate lucks out, fined $7 per song

[Matthew DeCarlo]

It appears that Sweden plans to punish convicted filesharers with more reasonable fines than we're used to seeing in the US. TorrentFreak reports that a Swedish court has found a 26-year-old Uppsala man guilty of illegally sharing 44 music tracks online and he faces a fine of 2000 kronor, which equates to roughly $311 or $7 per song.

By comparison, a US court ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset to pay $1.5 million in damages in 2010 for illegally sharing 24 songs, or an absurd $62,500 per file. In a lesser-known case, Joel Tenenbaum was slammed with a fee of $67,500 for sharing 31 songs, and that sum was reduced from the jury's damage assessment of $675,000.

It's said that the Swedish judge initially requested the unnamed man pay around $45 per song which would have worked out to roughly $1,980, but that was eventually lowered. "Swedish courts may be slowly coming to their senses regarding non-commercial violations of the copyright monopoly," said Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge.

"The verdict is in stark contrast to the political verdict in the Pirate Bay trial, where four people were sentenced to long prison sentences and paying €3,500,000 for merely aiding in possibly sharing 33 works," he continued. Do you think Sweden's ruling will set precedence for future filesharing cases across Europe and the US?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/42523-swedish-pirate-lucks-out-fined-7-per-song.html

 

[Greg S]

Well, the US Government sure does like to get its share of people's money. I think its good that Sweden was reasonable, but at the same time, people need to realize that just because its cheap and easy, doesn't mean that it's okay. People should learn that without supporting the manufacturing company they will never provide updates or new content.

 

[Cota]

If you come to think about it, $311 - the paperwork - the salary of the people who were at the court - services like water/energy/food, who won?
I think that staving the guy i hate will give me less time in jail and tickets than getting cough downloading illegal media, wich totally makes sense.

 

[KG363]

That's much more reasonable. Since you aren't actually stealing any physical medium, I would argue that even $7 is too much, but it is progress

 

[princeton]

kg363 said:
That's much more reasonable. Since you aren't actually stealing any physical medium, I would argue that even $7 is too much, but it is progress

The thing is it will just lead to nobody being prosecuted. The courts didn't win here. The only people who won were the lawyers and their wallets. That's if there were even lawyers involved over something like file sharing.

 

[yRaz]

Is there a coin between the share and caps lock key?

 

[gwailo247]

Lesson learned? Leech, don't share.

 

[Richy2k9]

hello ...

with new technology & new laws, it is better to go for single track purchase off of those hundreds of online store than even be fined that price & having a criminal record.

well i admit that the US court overcharge people, the truth about downloading / sharing is that it cost more in the end, when you consider the risk / electricity cost / Internet cost / time & bandwidth.

there is no such thing as anonymity on the net, how hard you may try...

cheers!

 

[hitech0101]

This makes a lot sense then slapping a million dollar fine on a poor guy.

 

[Benny26]

gwailo247 said:
Lesson learned? Leech, don't share.

indeed

 

[stewi0001]

yRaz said:
Is there a coin between the share and caps lock key?

Holy crap I think there is!!!

But yea seriously that is a more reasonable fine for someone that is a common joe. Unlike the US were they seem to fine people into bankruptcy. Poor big corporations can't stand to lose a penny.

 

[EDO219]

I wish some one would steal my work so I can sue them $62,500 per file!

Draconian much?

 

[jetkami]

Music should be free or VERY cheap. Let the artist make their money from concerts, promotionals and other remunerations.. This way we save money by cutting out the money hungry jerks who own record companies (who in the past have stolen millions from artist who did not peruse their contracts.). Prince separating from WB and setting up hiss own company ( http://www.paisleyparkstudios.com/archive/ should have been the start of a musical revolution.

 

[Lokalaskurar]

I can tell you (from the inside) that some Swedes are going nuts over this. Nobody really expected anybody of being fined for illegal sharing, as the IPRED system in Sweden really did not work out as well as previously hoped for. The file-sharing community in Sweden quickly adapted to the government's instated systems designed to track pirates down - this by developing some nifty programs designed to throw the governmental digital surveillance systems off the trace completely.

By the way, 2000 SEK actually equals to 301$ as of today (2-23-11), or 6,85$ per song. Not very different from the 311$ previously stated, but 10$ will get you something yummy to eat once your done with the fine

 

[Rick]

jetkami said:
Music should be free or VERY cheap.

I disagree. It *shouldn't* be anything.

It *may* be free, it *may* be cheap but artists should be able to make money on their music as well (if they want) -- and yes -- even the people in the middle deserve their share.

I guarantee big label music has insane profit margins and I don't have any delusions regarding the trivial cost of a CD or even more irrelevant cost of bandwidth for digital music... But....

You are really paying for the *service*. An album or songs you like will be something that you may listen to for years, many times over. For that, ~$1 per song is actually a fair value. In terms of a time where many of us pay +$10 for an hour or two of entertainment (movies, concerts, sports games, shows, mini golf etc..) $11-$15 for a disc that may entertain you for years is pretty darn good.

And of course, music is art. Art is usually thought of to be a labor of love and (I hope) it often is. If those talented individuals only care about the process and the product and don't want the cash, then they are free to give it away as they please. But they have ever right to be (most certainly reimbursed or even profit from it if they choose so.

As far as the fines go, that is much more reasonable and far more representative of actual damages in many cases, I'm sure. Law suits for tens of thousands of dollars per song should really be limited to those to those who profiteer on the distribution of pirated music. Copyright laws are there to protect creators and their works, not punish people with little ill-intent into financial oblivion for 30 years.

 

[LNCPapa]

I second and third what Rick said - very strongly. No way you should expect music to be free or VERY cheap. It's their job - would you want your labor to be free?

 

[matrix86]

The thing I want to see is how much a recording company spends on a single album. You gotta think about how much time they put into recording, how much electricity was used, how it cost to edit the tracks and put in different effects (VERY time consuming) and then how much it costs them to have the music taken to get put on millions of CDs, how much the paper cost to put labels on the CDs and how it cost to put album art (oh, there's another cost) in the CD case. A lot of time and money go into making music. It takes more than a few minutes to record one song, and it takes months to record a whole CD. So a LOT of money goes into the music we listen to. People do a lot of hard work on it. So free is out of the question. You wouldn't do what those people do in the recording booth for free would you?

Now when it comes to the lawsuit, you have all the paperwork and lawyers that have to be paid. The way I see it, charge $1.50 for each song illegally obtained, and then tack on the legal fees. I find that to be a fair judgment. The person learns their lesson, plus they don't go into debt/bankruptcy unless they have thousands (or just hundreds depending on how much you make) of songs they illegally downloaded. And the price and fees should not change depending on how many songs you have. Keep it at $1.50 per song, plus the total legal fees.

 

[Modena]

That's way more reasonable than the impossible amounts they've been setting in the past. I remember this article of a single mother in Minnesota charged $220,000 before legal fee's for sharing 24 files. It's like oh hey we're gonna cripple you're financial life because you downloaded some music... Pure scum.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Don't associate the amount a judge awards with what actually gets paid. All those extraordinary amounts really just mean the person filed for bankruptcy, 50,000 or 25 million, as soon as it's more than you can pay it's all the same.

I think some comments are wrong about CD costs... have you ever really listened close to a pop album released recently. (not rock, but pop specifically). You'll notice how much more 'full' the song that's on the radio sounds than the filler tunes on the disc. Listen to a Kesha song, or Black Eyed Peas, or Lady Ga Ga... those songs are produced to the teeth. There are big name producers mixing those sounds, beats, over dubs and other fancy things I don't know the names of. This isn't 4 guys in a studio playing together, it's more like a movie with CG effects. More post production than singing and playing.

Point is... i'll bet those people get paid a LOT, and it takes a long time. I don't know what it costs to make a song, but i'll bet it's a lot, all with the risk that it may not be that big a hit.

 

[treetops]

How about they let people in each country vote on the punishment. We can call this voting system a democracy.

 

[AlienOverlord]

I think a reasonable amount would be $2 per song downloaded and $20 each time it was uploaded from your computer. So if you downloaded 20 songs it'd be $40 and if you shared those files three times each it'd be another $1200. This might make more people stop sharing after they've finished downloading which would also help their cause and also targets the people who are spreading the pirated music. An additional fee of $200 per song could be applied to those who created the torrent.

 

[Guest]

You forgot the cost of making 'singers' like Britney actually sound in tune / key...