Nah, I'm not going to wonder about it.  One way or another she decided she wanted to play an exciting round of "Jackpot Justice".

I really cannot find anything "good" about big, fat, greedy lawyers preying on relatively poor, uninformed people.

Let's sort the BS out first - even the terms used are misleading:

- "piracy" - piracy is a crime of attacking naval vessels on high seas. It has nothing to do whatsoever with copying or sharing copyrighted material. How would you like it if crossing a street on red lights would be suddenly called "child molesting"? It's just a label designed to make it look worse.

- "theft" - The actus reus of theft is usually defined as an unauthorised taking, keeping or using of another's property which must be accompanied by a mens rea of dishonesty and/or the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use. (Wikipedia)

See? To be called a thief, you must actually deprive the original owner of something. That's the case when you steal a car - the original owner must walk or buy a new one. That's NOT the case when you copy a song - the original owner can still listen to it. So the so called "piracy" (intentionally misleading term) is NOT a "theft" (intentionally misleading term).

How would you like it if Archimedes registered the concept of "displacing the weight of water equivalent to your own weight" as his IP for 10000 years and demanding a hefty sum every time you go swimming  for a "licence" - and calling you a child molester if you refuse? Does not make sense? Neither does the current nomenclature!

The problem, I believe, comes from people who does not create anything, only own a big wad of money, who call themselves "publishers" and by wedging between the author and the paying customer, they would like to milk both. You see, when you grow apples and want to expand, you must buy more land, plant more trees, and hire more workers. But when producing songs and games, you just need the original product and you can make zillions of copies with trivial costs per copy, and you want to charge for them the same way the apple producer does? Well, that's irresistible for the greedy mind, doesn't it?

The problem is that the same property of the information - the ease of copying - that makes it a dream product for the publisher fat cat, makes it difficult to DENY it to others. That's the point where all the circus starts - and to the original poster - no, I don't see anything good about bribed judges and politicians drawing arbitrary lines where it suits them, and ordinary people tripping on them later.

On the other hand, I agree that the author/creator/artist should be paid, and should be paid proportionally to how many people find his product useful. But that does not mean that he gets a few coins from the publishers, who keep milking the product for years to follow, does it?

If you have not noticed, there are product that do well without draconic DRM and army of lawyer vultures. Notch earned more than 1mil EUR for Minecraft, if I remember correctly. Galciv 2 did not fare bad either, and the author of Dwarf fortress lives entirely on donations, if my information is correct.

So, maybe, if you have a product that does not suck, you don't have to rely on extortion?

And don't call me a "pirate", please. I have bought so many games you'd be surprised. I also downloaded many games, tried them, found them crappy, deleted them, and never looked back. Is it a "theft"? Hell no, it's just a way of seeing whether there is substance behind the hype and doctored screenshots.

I think the problem of the current system is that too many people try to sell colored, hyped, artificially flavored crap - and when youi resist, they call it a "lost sale".

she deprived them of revenue when she did not pay for them - the amount of money they charge or the fact they already have lots of money isn't even relevent

lost sales to all those she shared with is also deprivation of revenue

no the problem comes from those who do not create anything but feel it's perfectly acceptable to take for free that which they should pay for - the feeble attempts of misdirection of crime by pointing fingers at the fat cats and overpricing is just that - a feeble attempt at misdirection - a thief is still a thief

I think the problem is that too many people try to sell colored, hyped, artificially flavored crap in order to justify their actions

Wonder how many people ever gave something...anything...they bought away to someone else for whatever reason? If you did....you just robbed the creator of whatever it was from making money off the person you gave it to.

Anytime I see the calculation on this it's clear she is paying for the theft of a lot of other people as well as herself. To me that throws it into the category of (again) Witch hunt / goat sacrifice / Jackpot Justice.  If they catch even a decent percentage of these people and the penalty is applied similarly, which of course it would have to be in order to claim "justice", just think how many times all those songs are going to be paid for, at least in theory (let's face it, most people don't have a couple of $million lying around).

And when all those people go bankrupt over all those huge judgements and all their other debt gets flushed into the pool it'll get passed on to the consumer and we'll all pay for it just like we always do.  Raise your hands high while you're watching the show and clapping, it makes it a lot easier for someone to pick your pocket.

If they don't pursue a decent percentage of them similarly, then again she's obvously a goat sacrifice.

Just think how huge the grand total on this will be (temporarily on paper anyway) after they track down about 10,000 of these people and charge them "more completely" for the number of songs they may have passed around.  Quite the little artificial industry these guys have created for themselves.  Of course the main product of it will be debt writeoffs for us to pay for.

Stealing songs is a theft - yes.  Heck I'll even go as far as to say the sharing thing is a conspiracy to commit theft.  And no, I don't do it.  Still say the judgement is ridiculous, no matter how the numbers are crunched.

Brainsucker.... Radio stations/TV stations pay a royalty to 'distribute' the music via their medium...in the format of that medium.  This is accepted/consented by the copyright owner/s.

Kazaa is NOT.

So, do you mean to say that if John, the owner of the IP, suffers no loss as a result of the 'taking', there should still be legal action that punishes the person who caused no loss, and awards retributive moneys to John who lost nothing?

I don't believe a theft can occur without a resulting loss. If a person loses nothing, then nothing was taken from them. While you may be right about the legal requirements for this definition (I really don't know myself), it doesn't change the fact that this person is being punished for theft where no actual theft occured.

Keep in mind that I'm referring to a specific example here, and that it is not always the case.

Perhaps from a legal perspective, but not from a reasonable one. Again, I think people should be paid fairly for their work, so perhaps another example.

I am Poor Joe Lives-Alone. I have a set income and set expenses. This makes my budgeting very easy. Unfortunately, I have no money after my necessary expenses. However, I really like music. I have a friend who has agreed to copy some music for me, free of charge. If I did not obtain the music in this way, I could not obtain it at all. In this way, though I have most likely broken the law, I have not actually caused a loss to any person or company.

I believe this disctinction is not ridiculous, but actually vitally important when it comes to determining whether or not an act of theft took place. If I can steal from you without you ever losing anything, that would set a very dangerous legal precedent. Eventually, people could claim they have been robbed, and ask for compensation from the alleged perpetrator without ever being required to prove that they ever suffered a loss.

The purpose of the example was not in the magnitude but in the comparable notion. I could have just as easily said 2 million copies or more. There is nothing stopping any of the people who took the CDs from the park from duplicating them and distributing them as well. The fact is, you cannot fairly prosecute a person for a crime that cannot be proven. If the 10,000 CD thief can't be punished for the potential loss of 10,000 sales for the company (or more if duplication occurs), then the mother in the OP should not be punished for leaving those music files in a public area where people can take a copy.

Then you should catch and punish Kazaa. She won't download the pirated file if there is no Kazaa in the internet. It is also true about the MP3 creator. You won't be able to steal the song if there is no MP3 around. Instead of punish the user, you should punish the creators and discourage the media that allow people to get pirated software / song.

Just thinking, when I hear a song in the radio, it is the radio station who should pay the royalty, not me. What if I hear a song from a radio that not pay the royalty? Will the police catch and punish me? It is also applied to Kazaa. They share the file, so it is them who should pay the royalty, as "sharing the file" is their business. Just like Radio and Television, the woman is only a user who download the file from Kazaa. She is as innocent as me when I hear the song from Television or Radio. It is Kazaa that should pay the royalty / license. After they pay it, it is their right to share the file freely to the people. Well, they are a distributor company after all. If they want to share their licensed song, then nobody can't stop them.

This reminds me of the "blood from a turnip" cliche. I doubt the RIAA will see a dime. She'll be able to declare bankruptcy.

While she was probably guilty, all this did was make the RIAA look bad in the public eye due to the huge fines. Also due to the bad publicity, they have dropped going after file sharers.

Funny, they never did prove that she actually distributed anything nor were they able to produce a hard drive with the evidence.

Her defence was that she never had a file sharing account and if it came from her machine it must have been hacked via spyware.

I've heard of a couple of people on WinCustomize say they were hacked...can you imagine this as the outcome?

@JAFO

I don't think we are actually disagreeing on anything. Theft of IP does occur and does cause loss to the IP owners. My argument was to prove that it is not always and by necessity the case that a person 'taking' a copy of an IP without paying for it is committing the act of thievery. The loss of control is caused by the mediums for distribution. The single taker I have described in my example is not the cause for loss of control or any injury for that matter.

Generally speaking however, applications such as Kazaa and their users are direct participants in causing loss to IP owners. Otherwise, where there is no harm, there is no foul as the saying goes.

@JAFO

I still think you are missing an important distinction. The distribution medium called Kazaa is taking control away from the IP owner. Remove this distribution medium, and all the users of it become disabled, irrelevant and otherwise unable to effect the same potential for loss.

But lets move away from Kazaa for a moment and go back to Poor Joe Lives-Alone.

I am Poor Joe Lives-Alone. I have a set income and set expenses. This makes my budgeting very easy. Unfortunately, I have no money after my necessary expenses. However, I really like music. I have a friend who has agreed to copy some music for me, free of charge. If I did not obtain the music in this way, I could not obtain it at all. In this way, though I have most likely broken the law, I have not actually caused a loss to any person or company.

Could you please explain to me how our friend Joe has caused any financial loss or loss of control to the IP owner, and how does this constitute theft? If you define loss of control here as the IP owner not being able to prevent Joe from obtaining a copy of their music, the argument becomes moot, as that form of control yields no benefit, and the lack of it bears no loss.

Again, the majority of cases don't fall under this category. The point here is that it is not always theft. If you say theft is taking even when nothing is lost, please explain how that could possibly be. If you say that in the above example, Joe has caused injury to the IP owners, please explain the form and extent of that injury, and what actual negative effect it has on the IP owners.