I just read this article:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6534542.ece

This lady was busted for downloading songs off of Kazaa and ordered to pay $80,000 per song. When I read the article title I was immediately on the side of the defendant, but as I read the article I discovered that this is the SECOND TIME she's been busted for illegally downloading. My sympathy is limited, but I still think $80k per song is ridiculous.

I don't illegally download...I stopped after the Napster days. It's less because of moral reasons and more because I don't want to get stuck with an $80k bill. I still think the record companies are going about it the wrong way though...

This is going to come off sounding really stupid, but how do you illegally download songs? If you go online to say Walmart (the only place I've ever downloaded anything) and pay for it, that's legal. How do you do it illegally? And how do those web sites exist?

Its been so long I cant remember the site I used to download from

www.bittorrent.com is probably the premier one now-a days- my niece is endlessly downloading stuff.

My philosophy has always been that we come into this world with nothing and then we leave it with nothing. So I'm not really stealing music, I'm just borrowing it till I die.

Land sakes alive, the steak's alive.

Right on Doc!


Here's a few places that you can search for stuff on.

http://mp3.about.com/od/filesharing/tp/Top_P2P_Sites.htm

Be careful - a lot of the free sharing sites contain viruses.

If you've made it this far without getting into downloading illegally - don't start now :-p

I have got all my ipod songs from cd's I already had except for maybe four or five I got from itunes.

I was just kidding up there. I don't download songs illegally. I have someone else do it for me, burn them onto DVDs and then mail them to me.

Land sakes alive, the steak's alive.

My philosophy has always been that we come into this world with nothing, then we go to school, get a job and work, so we can pay for stuff that we want and need, from the hard working folks who created, produced, marketed, distributed and sold it to us. Then when we leave this world, we can leave some of what we've accumulated to the next generation, or to charity.

But yea, the fines are grossly disproportionate to the crime. And she didn't actually get busted twice, she appealed the first ruling and got screwed more the second time around.

And I make money off of the shipping costs to Doc Z

It wasn't in that article that I saw, but I read someplace that she actually had 77,000 songs up for download. And god knows how many cease and desist letters the woman got, as well as perfectly reasonable settlement offers. I don't really feel sorry for her. She's just going to BK the whole thing anyhow, instead of owning up to what she did and paying off 3 grand out of pocket for a settlement.

Interesting. 77,000 would be totally different than 24 in my mind. I also think it's interesting that the article points out she's a single mother, that should have no bearing on the story really.

While she was uploading songs, she was downloading semen.

Well the article I read (it was front page on Yahoo last night) said they only went to trial on the 24 "for simplicity". I don't know if they were allowed to talk about the fact that there were many more not involved in the lawsuit, but I kind of doubt it.

And the single mother thing comes into play when you are assesing punative damages. A single mom would pay a lot less than a big corporation to "learn her lesson", so to speak. That's why you see these large punitive damages in cases against big companies. It's meant to punish and deter them from doing it again, if you get a judgment for 3k agaisnt McDonald's it's not going to sting at all for them.

True. That makes sense. Wouldn't that still have more to do with social status than family status though? It just seemed to me that mentioning she was a single mom was trying to make people automatically feel sorry for her.

On that same note, does that mean that Bill Gates gets a million dollar speeding ticket when I would get a $200 ticket?


I know very little about law and am generally clueless.

Punitive damages are only in civil cases.

Yay, I learned something today.

Someone in the comments said they thought illegal downloading would stop if the price of legally downloading songs was reduced to $0.10

Any thoughts?

What's it's the extra 90 cents breaking people? Why would you pay 10 cents for something you can get for free, any more than you should pay 99 cents for something you can get for free?

I've downloaded a few songs stoelen songs, I'll admit, when I was using Linux and didn't have to worry about viruses or microsoft narcing on me, or all the stupid incompatible files. Now, I just use itunes. I can pay a dollar to not be a cheater (and not worry about getting a virus or being hunted down like an animal.)

Yes, it's the extra $.90. If I wanted to get 6 or 7 albums, it would cost me like $100 on iTunes. If they were $.10 a song, it would only be ten bucks or so.

If I want a song or two, I get them from iTunes now. I think they raised the prices though - all the songs I want are now $1.39 individually. Guess they want people to buy the whole album instead of just the good tracks.

Land sakes alive, the steak's alive.

I haven't read the article, but does this person live in the US?

If not, I can totally understand her case, to some extent.

I too, like Amber have on my iPod all of the CD's I legally purchased back in the day. But I also download music out of Limewire Pro. It is friggin' impossible to buy music legally from the internet if are living outside the US. Just as of LAST NIGHT Apple made their iTunes store available in my country, so it's just from now on that I can purchase music out of it.

I've also tried in the past to purchase music out of Amazon and similar outlets, with no success. All those sites require to have a valid US credit card. It's stupid. I don't mean the rest of the world is 'forced' to download music ilegally, but certainly the music industry makes it REALLY hard to do things the right way.

BTW I'm all psyched for having now access to the iTunes store.

Ever tried Amazon music store? They don't put DRM (copy protection) on their songs and they tend to be a little cheaper than itunes. Also, since you download regular mp3's you can play them on just about anything, not just your ipod, or itunes.

I've tried amazon music once or twice in the past, and althought it accepted my credit card number, it didn't pass because my 'billing address' had not a valid US postal code. DUH

I will try again to see if they have wisen up since

Microsoft is ahead of the game when it comes to downloading music. If you have a Zune, you can pay $15 a month for unlimited music downloads! You can keep them and listen to them as much as you want, on your PC or on your Zune, as long as there's no lapse in payment. If you stop paying, you lose access to all the songs you downloaded. BUT, every month you also get 10 credits that you can use to "buy" songs you want to own and keep em forever.

99 cents a song is insane. Apple needs to come up with a similar program since they have such a huge chunk of the mp3 player pie.

Mmm pie.

$.99 isn't so bad. That's a drink from a vending machine.

Maybe $0.99 isn't a lot of money in the US but here and in some parts of the world you can buy lunch with that amount.

Didn't know Microsoft had that kind of deal. I was thinking I would be more than willing to pay some kind of monthly or annual fee (I friggen pay Limewire 'Pro' already) to download music legally. It's kind of greedy though that if the subscription stops, the music vanishes, so to speak.

Yahoo tried that model and it failed miserably. Of course the yahoo software sucked and they didn't have their own player to round out the service.

I like the Zunes a lot. The controls are so much better than an ipod, plus they have FM players. The only reason I got an ipod is because they support audibe.com and zune doesn't. (or didn't?) Does the Zune service have any movies, or TV shows yet?

I don't really download songs, but I am an illegal file sharer. Mostly I download TV shows that I missed from EZTV http://eztv.it/) and delete them after I watch. I did download and keep a handful of Adult Swim shows to my computer, because I bought a video media player in December, and those are fun to watch at work. But I actually own the DVDs, which I bought leagally, but they won't let me copy them to my computer to have there. And I'm not about to pay for a show twice to get it on my player.



Why must you be the screen door on my submarine?

I've been yapping this forever....

The answer is advertising.

I and a ka-billion others would be more than willing to watch a stupid little ad, so we could download a song, or lots of songs.

The advertising model WORKS, and it supports many entertainment industries!

The songwriters need to get paid for their work. Let the big companies ads pay them pant-loads of cash.

Can you imagine if you had to pay 99 cents to your TV every time you wanted to watch PART of a show!?

ADVERTISING + PRESCRIPTION services, in the only way I see to get this train back on the track.

Music is SO IMPORTANT. It can never be "free" at all. Someone, somewhere is paying. But, equally important is the viability of a business model which allows creative songwriter and producers a means to make a LIVING doing what they do - making that "magic" that over human recognizes in his or her favorite song.

As an industry, Music must conform to economical, technological, and PSYCHOLOGICAL pulls.

Write a song.
Artist record above said song.
Put song on intertubes that flow around the world.
"Customer" goes to intertube location of magical songs.
Customer watches some stupid bullshit company try to sell him something.
Customer gets to hear, and keep, store the music.
..........and then we're full circle.......
Artist get's paid per songs downloaded by customers by Advertisers.
Songwriter continues to write songs.
And
on
and
on
and
on.

It would work somewhat like PROs (BMI, SESAC, ASCAP work), by selling licenses to those who want to "perform" play, broadcast their respective songwriters music. BUT, in the case of a "download" of a song, there could be some combination of license purchase by the PROVIDERS of the songs, and then an Advertising model for the customer.

Done and done. Fixed and fixed. Easy peazy cottage cheesy.






I'm in the middle of fucking no where in Missouri. (no offense any Missouriiiansss reading this!) BUT... The only thing I want the "Show me state" to show me is how to get the fuck out of here.


Night bored! If the natives kill me, know that I loved this little bored.

I'm happy to buy CDs. Buying music online just feels like I am paying for something too intangible.

I am