The recording industry’s inquisitorial pursuit of downloaders has reached new heights – or depths. Map Boon onto the interests represented by the RIAA and Katy onto the interests represented by the accused in this sequence from Animal House:
Boon: Unbelievable. A new low. I’m so ashamed. Almost sorry l missed it.
Katy: What did you do, human sacrifice?
Boon: No, just some harmless fun.
In other words, I just picked this up at CNN.com:
“A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each — a total of $1.9 million — for 24 songs.”
That sum represents statutory damages under copyright law, based on a finding of willful infringement. Fred von Lohmann at EFF’s Deep Links blog summarizes the Constitutional issues surrounding the proportionaliy of the offense and the remedy — and the lack thereof.
The merits, however, are only part of the story. CNN’s URL indexes the story under the heading CRIME (http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.download.fine/index.html).
Perhaps American frat house humor isn’t the best metaphor for this pairing of outcome and rhetoric. The case may be truly Pythonesque. Jammie Thomas-Rasset didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.
6 responses so far ↓
1 ginny // Jun 18, 2009 at 10:37 pm
hey, what goes around …. let’s all stop buying that company’s music. i bet that will be a bigger pinch to their company than the win…..hmmm. power to the people!
2 sparks // Jun 19, 2009 at 12:57 am
I agree if everybody would stop buying and downloading music it would put them out of business. If I’m just renting the music then I want to be able to return it for a refund when I’m done with it. I have bought music for 30 yrs. I don’t think I should have to repurchase what I have to update my vinyl to cd.
3 Foreigner // Jun 19, 2009 at 2:24 am
I have been reading several blogs and discussions on this verdict and I needed to write something immediately. For me, as a foreigner it seems amazing that you people of the USA are so nice, calm, patient and I must unfortunately say “stupid”. You are being ripped off by banks and other broken companies (car industry, for example) and at a same time you let something like this to see a light of day! Even mentioned jury that delivered verdict, …, what they think of big bankers and CEOs that destroyed massive wealth and still get bonuses. On a contrary they issue this outrageous verdict which I hope will make even more harm to always-richer RIAA and music industry. They constantly claim that they are losing money while becoming richer and richer.
You people of the USA,…, on a contrary, are being poorer and poorer. But at the end of a day, you are filling posts for members of jury, and you are giving even more money to corrupt music industry every day. It is your call…
4 carly // Jun 19, 2009 at 4:30 am
What have they really accomplished with this? they will never collect. there is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?p=1845
5 RIAA blows // Jun 19, 2009 at 6:16 am
She was found to have infringed on the studios distribution rights. That’s UPLOADING not downloading. CNN blows.
6 Bruce Boyden // Jun 19, 2009 at 12:31 pm
My thoughts here: http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2009/06/19/192-million-damage-award-for-filesharing/ . Short take: there is no easy answer.
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