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This makes me extremely angry. $675,000 verdict to the average person is basically going to ruin their life. Per-capita income is still only about $21,500 in th

This makes me extremely angry. $675,000 verdict to the average person is basically going to ruin their life. Per-capita income is still only about $21,500 in the US, so you're asking for 30 years of their working life.

tptacek 17y ago
A $675,000 tort judgment is going to send you into Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which will take 3-5 years to resolve. It's bad, but it's not going to ruin your life. I think there's cognitive dissonance here between the ease of committing torts on the Internet and the severity of the penalty. If someone physically stole CDs out of a publisher's warehouse over a long period of time, the marginal cost of those CDs is so low that the damage would be roughly equivalent to what a filesharer does. But nobody would be up in arms about a six-figure judgement. But on the Internet, we all know that the same tort is a couple clicks away, and that it's widely practiced. So there's outrage and surprise when the law works the same way against those filesharers. I guess I see things a little differently because my career has been spent in close contact with other torts that, while far more damaging than file sharing, are often just as simple to commit. Nothing stops you from sharing files, and so you feel somewhat entitled to do so. But nothing stops you from crashing any number of important web applications, either.
- mrcharles 17y ago
  I upvoted you even though I disagree with you. Ultimately, it's still not the same thing as one is a physical object that cost actual money for actual materials to produce, and the other is simply a computer process that duplicates bits. I apologize for starting this conversation. That being said, I haven't seen it on HN before (though I'm sure it has happened). I'd be curious to see where the readership lands on this issue.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    The marginal cost of a single compact disc is very low. It is clearly not the physical cost of goods sold that is driving the damage estimates.
    - tjic 17y ago
      And why should it be? Nothing in tort law says that damages are limited to the physical cost of goods - all sorts of other damages exist.
      - tptacek 17y ago
        Right. That's my point.
    - steveklabnik 17y ago
      At the same time, theft isn't wrong because of marginal costs. Theft and infringement are fundamentally different activities.
  - lallysingh 17y ago
    I have to agree with the gp on this one. It's still software theft (at least in my book) to copy a CD/DVD instead of shoplifting one from the store. I can't really find a logical distinction between that and stealing music. The verdict amount, however, is ridiculous. But so far, it's just been debate. I'd love to see a study on how many actual copies of music are made through a given file share, and how many of the downloaders avoided a purchase they would've made otherwise.
    - Gormo 17y ago
      In my consideration, theft and copyright infringement seem fundamentally different in every detail. What similarities lead you not to distinguish them?
      - tptacek 17y ago
        Copyright infringement and kidnapping are also fundamentally different. The comparison to theft is an inept rhetorical device, nothing more and nothing less. It has no bearing on whether a publisher can claim damages.
        Gormo 17y ago
        The comparison to theft might be an inept rhetorical device, but it seems to influence perceptions of this issue very often. So what is the claim of damages ultimately based on? In a case of theft, there is an objective loss that can be quantified and compensated; but in copyright infringement cases, it seems like publishers most often talk about unrealized revenues. Is it appropriate for the courts to award damages based on the plaintiff's predictions of the future? What do you suppose Atari would have sued for if they discovered someone distributing unlicensed copies of the "ET" 2600 game back in the '80s - the same game they eventually buried thousands of unpurchased copies of in a landfill? Would they have based their damages claim on the same sales projections that made launching the game look like a good idea?
        tptacek 17y ago
- emmett 17y ago
  The fact that it is widely practiced is a defense. For the same reason that people would rightly object to a $675,000 tort judgment for speeding, or jaywalking, or smoking marijuana. Are they crimes? Certainly. But because they're widespread, generally unenforced, mostly "victimless", people are outraged that they'd have such high penalties. If you applied that judgment fairly you'd probably bankrupt 3/4s of America, if not more, which would be bad. Any law that you don't want enforced in the general case is a bad law that's going to generate outrage when it is enforced.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Torts and crimes aren't the same thing. There is, for instance, no such thing as a "victimless tort".
    - lutorm 17y ago
      Explain. If I burn a copy of a CD I own for shits, that is formally an act of copyright infringement. Who is victimized by this act? I understand that tort by definition is compensation for injury, but if that injury as defined by the law does not actually harm a party, it fits my definition of "victimless". Statutory damages for copyright infringement have historically been in lieu of actual damages when such were hard to prove, and IIRC earlier versions of the copyright act explicitly said that statutory awards are not to be construed as punitive. It's hard to argue that these awards are anything but punitive.
      - tptacek 17y ago
        People aren't getting sued for burning a copy of CDs that they own just for shits. That may in fact be all they've done, but what's being claimed is that they're copying and distributing content.
        nkassis 17y ago
        sadly, the proof of distribution is almost always very circumstantial.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  the damage would be roughly equivalent to what a filesharer does. Filesharers do no damage. Theft does damage, but filesharers create value.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    This assertion is repeated often by defenders of file sharing, but it's been uniformly rejected by the legal systems of --- from what I can tell --- most of western civilization. The RIAA makes over-the-top claims about the evils of file sharing, but district and appellate court judges in the US are not uniformly shills of the RIAA, and none of them adhere to your logic.
    - randallsquared 17y ago
      I wasn't suggesting it was legal, or non-infringing, only that referring to it as doing damage is incorrect. Whether something is actually damaging doesn't have perfect correlation with whether you can get legal damages in court.
      - tptacek 17y ago
        Since people are losing tort cases, I'm pretty sure the legitimacy of the word "damage" is a settled issue.
        randallsquared 17y ago
        This is the case only if you believe the law defines fact. Since some law is contradictory, it's clear that there is room to disagree with law, in at least some cases. But maybe you only meant to imply that legal damages were being awarded, which I can agree with.
- wglb 17y ago
  But in a way, isn't there a precedent in mass torts and an effective change in practice? When video recorders came out, it was clearly forbidden to record programs off the air. Enough people did it that there wasn't any prosecution, and there was eventually a settlement that validated this practice?
  - tptacek 17y ago
    The practice that was validated was time-shifting content that was provided for free over the public airwaves.
  - robryan 17y ago
    With a VHS you had to fast forward the ads and still be somewhat exposed to them, I think now TV networks are more worried by the fact you can easily skip them all together.
- defen 17y ago
  > If someone physically stole CDs out of a publisher's warehouse over a long period of time, the marginal cost of those CDs is so low that the damage would be roughly equivalent to what a filesharer does. But nobody would be up in arms about a six-figure judgement. Actually, I think a $150,000 judgment for stealing a single CD would be outrageous. I can see where you're coming from, but it seems to me that you are justifying making an example of people via massive financial penalties for causing no actual harm, only theoretical harm. If I make an unauthorized copy of an MP3, what is the actual harm? In what sense can an unobservable event be said to have happened? At best you can argue that it's a quality of life crime - if everyone did it, there would be reduced incentive to create and hence a lower standard of living. But if that's the case, why aren't other quality of life crimes punished as harshly? Drunk driving or speeding in a residential zone massively increase the chances that you will kill someone, and yet the punishment is nowhere near as harsh.
  - thwarted 17y ago
    if everyone did it, there would be reduced incentive to create and hence a lower standard of living. Let's not assume this either. Maybe this would result in more people who actually want to create, rather than doing it for the money, entering the industry. It would also avoid the middlemen who just skim off the top and don't add a lot of value.
    - stse 17y ago
      In industries where copying is accepted, like with cooking and fashion, the level of creativity is very high. You could argue that a high fashion brand "loses money" when a low price retailer, like H&M or Zara, produces more or less the same design, but very few do. I recommend reading "The Pirate's Dilemma" which is available from $0.00 upwards at http://thepiratesdilemma.com/download-the-book http://thepiratesdilemma.com/download-the-book Edit: The difference between the high fashion brand and the low price retailer clothes are quality, perceived quality, recognition/brand, legitimacy and cost. Which is more or less the same difference as between a pirated copy and an original one.
      - 17y ago
- rbranson 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure that nobody would really care if someone stole CDs out of a publisher's warehouse. It's not even worth the legal costs to press charges. If some crackhead punches a hole in my window to take my CDs and I call the cops, they're going to say "sorry bud, shit happens." I highly doubt the Obama administration would support a $675k judgement against someone who stole 30 CDs from FYE. Just sayin. The guy would get a thousand dollar fine, a slap on the wrist, and a month of probation.
- miked 17y ago
  >> per-capita income in the US is still only about $21,500. You're way off. It's $46,900. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
  - nitrogen 17y ago
    That's the US GDP divided by the US population, which is not the same as mean or median earned income.
cabalamat 17y ago
I would have less problem with the size of this fine if, when the music industry breach copyright law, they had to pay bankrupting fines too. With no limitation of liability.
city41 17y ago
Conversely, it makes me happy. Yes, yes, downvote me, as supporting copyright holders is the unpopular opinion on the internet. But this notion that everyone can just take what they please and expect no repercussions needs to stop. It's trampling on the rights of people who create intellectual things. The very people that make all of this content possible in the first place. I still don't understand why they always get the short end of the stick.
- kiba 17y ago
  Nobody is entitled to anything, not even your starving artist or starving authors. If the majority of the people don't want to support your career choice, you don't have the right do anything about it. If that mean that the creation of arts and musics grind to halt, so be it. That's how a free society work. Artists, programmers, and everybody else are supposed to die and live by their creation. It is their job to convince everyone else that their career is worth supporting. Consumer sovereign are sovereigns for a reason, because they have the money. They are your lifeline, and they're alway right. You can whine about how authors are being ripped off, or you can choose to look at reality and the economics of it. Your choice.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I like this reversal. Nobody is entitled to anything. Not artists. Not authors. Except for random people on the Internet. They're entitled to the works of those artists and authors. Anxiously awaiting the 19 paragraph response that will clarify this for me further.
    - kiba 17y ago
      Nope. I will not argue anything further than that. Nobody mean nobody. Not me, not you, not filesharers. Nothing and nobody. EDIT: I made it very clear that if nobody wants to buy from the authors, artists, programmers, the incentive to produce will suffer. If this is what the consumer sovereign truly intended, than it is an ethical outcome and an outcome that cannot be changed.

tptacek 17y ago

A $675,000 tort judgment is going to send you into Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which will take 3-5 years to resolve. It's bad, but it's not going to ruin your life. I think there's cognitive dissonance here between the ease of committing torts on the Internet and the severity of the penalty. If someone physically stole CDs out of a publisher's warehouse over a long period of time, the marginal cost of those CDs is so low that the damage would be roughly equivalent to what a filesharer does. But nobody would be up in arms about a six-figure judgement. But on the Internet, we all know that the same tort is a couple clicks away, and that it's widely practiced. So there's outrage and surprise when the law works the same way against those filesharers. I guess I see things a little differently because my career has been spent in close contact with other torts that, while far more damaging than file sharing, are often just as simple to commit. Nothing stops you from sharing files, and so you feel somewhat entitled to do so. But nothing stops you from crashing any number of important web applications, either.

mrcharles 17y ago
I upvoted you even though I disagree with you. Ultimately, it's still not the same thing as one is a physical object that cost actual money for actual materials to produce, and the other is simply a computer process that duplicates bits. I apologize for starting this conversation. That being said, I haven't seen it on HN before (though I'm sure it has happened). I'd be curious to see where the readership lands on this issue.
- tptacek 17y ago
  The marginal cost of a single compact disc is very low. It is clearly not the physical cost of goods sold that is driving the damage estimates.
  - tjic 17y ago
    And why should it be? Nothing in tort law says that damages are limited to the physical cost of goods - all sorts of other damages exist.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      Right. That's my point.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    At the same time, theft isn't wrong because of marginal costs. Theft and infringement are fundamentally different activities.
- lallysingh 17y ago
  I have to agree with the gp on this one. It's still software theft (at least in my book) to copy a CD/DVD instead of shoplifting one from the store. I can't really find a logical distinction between that and stealing music. The verdict amount, however, is ridiculous. But so far, it's just been debate. I'd love to see a study on how many actual copies of music are made through a given file share, and how many of the downloaders avoided a purchase they would've made otherwise.
  - Gormo 17y ago
    In my consideration, theft and copyright infringement seem fundamentally different in every detail. What similarities lead you not to distinguish them?
    - tptacek 17y ago
      Copyright infringement and kidnapping are also fundamentally different. The comparison to theft is an inept rhetorical device, nothing more and nothing less. It has no bearing on whether a publisher can claim damages.
      - Gormo 17y ago
        The comparison to theft might be an inept rhetorical device, but it seems to influence perceptions of this issue very often. So what is the claim of damages ultimately based on? In a case of theft, there is an objective loss that can be quantified and compensated; but in copyright infringement cases, it seems like publishers most often talk about unrealized revenues. Is it appropriate for the courts to award damages based on the plaintiff's predictions of the future? What do you suppose Atari would have sued for if they discovered someone distributing unlicensed copies of the "ET" 2600 game back in the '80s - the same game they eventually buried thousands of unpurchased copies of in a landfill? Would they have based their damages claim on the same sales projections that made launching the game look like a good idea?
        tptacek 17y ago
emmett 17y ago
The fact that it is widely practiced is a defense. For the same reason that people would rightly object to a $675,000 tort judgment for speeding, or jaywalking, or smoking marijuana. Are they crimes? Certainly. But because they're widespread, generally unenforced, mostly "victimless", people are outraged that they'd have such high penalties. If you applied that judgment fairly you'd probably bankrupt 3/4s of America, if not more, which would be bad. Any law that you don't want enforced in the general case is a bad law that's going to generate outrage when it is enforced.
- tptacek 17y ago
  Torts and crimes aren't the same thing. There is, for instance, no such thing as a "victimless tort".
  - lutorm 17y ago
    Explain. If I burn a copy of a CD I own for shits, that is formally an act of copyright infringement. Who is victimized by this act? I understand that tort by definition is compensation for injury, but if that injury as defined by the law does not actually harm a party, it fits my definition of "victimless". Statutory damages for copyright infringement have historically been in lieu of actual damages when such were hard to prove, and IIRC earlier versions of the copyright act explicitly said that statutory awards are not to be construed as punitive. It's hard to argue that these awards are anything but punitive.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      People aren't getting sued for burning a copy of CDs that they own just for shits. That may in fact be all they've done, but what's being claimed is that they're copying and distributing content.
      - nkassis 17y ago
        sadly, the proof of distribution is almost always very circumstantial.
randallsquared 17y ago
the damage would be roughly equivalent to what a filesharer does. Filesharers do no damage. Theft does damage, but filesharers create value.
- tptacek 17y ago
  This assertion is repeated often by defenders of file sharing, but it's been uniformly rejected by the legal systems of --- from what I can tell --- most of western civilization. The RIAA makes over-the-top claims about the evils of file sharing, but district and appellate court judges in the US are not uniformly shills of the RIAA, and none of them adhere to your logic.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    I wasn't suggesting it was legal, or non-infringing, only that referring to it as doing damage is incorrect. Whether something is actually damaging doesn't have perfect correlation with whether you can get legal damages in court.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      Since people are losing tort cases, I'm pretty sure the legitimacy of the word "damage" is a settled issue.
      - randallsquared 17y ago
        This is the case only if you believe the law defines fact. Since some law is contradictory, it's clear that there is room to disagree with law, in at least some cases. But maybe you only meant to imply that legal damages were being awarded, which I can agree with.
wglb 17y ago
But in a way, isn't there a precedent in mass torts and an effective change in practice? When video recorders came out, it was clearly forbidden to record programs off the air. Enough people did it that there wasn't any prosecution, and there was eventually a settlement that validated this practice?
- tptacek 17y ago
  The practice that was validated was time-shifting content that was provided for free over the public airwaves.
- robryan 17y ago
  With a VHS you had to fast forward the ads and still be somewhat exposed to them, I think now TV networks are more worried by the fact you can easily skip them all together.
defen 17y ago
> If someone physically stole CDs out of a publisher's warehouse over a long period of time, the marginal cost of those CDs is so low that the damage would be roughly equivalent to what a filesharer does. But nobody would be up in arms about a six-figure judgement. Actually, I think a $150,000 judgment for stealing a single CD would be outrageous. I can see where you're coming from, but it seems to me that you are justifying making an example of people via massive financial penalties for causing no actual harm, only theoretical harm. If I make an unauthorized copy of an MP3, what is the actual harm? In what sense can an unobservable event be said to have happened? At best you can argue that it's a quality of life crime - if everyone did it, there would be reduced incentive to create and hence a lower standard of living. But if that's the case, why aren't other quality of life crimes punished as harshly? Drunk driving or speeding in a residential zone massively increase the chances that you will kill someone, and yet the punishment is nowhere near as harsh.
- thwarted 17y ago
  if everyone did it, there would be reduced incentive to create and hence a lower standard of living. Let's not assume this either. Maybe this would result in more people who actually want to create, rather than doing it for the money, entering the industry. It would also avoid the middlemen who just skim off the top and don't add a lot of value.
  - stse 17y ago
    In industries where copying is accepted, like with cooking and fashion, the level of creativity is very high. You could argue that a high fashion brand "loses money" when a low price retailer, like H&M or Zara, produces more or less the same design, but very few do. I recommend reading "The Pirate's Dilemma" which is available from $0.00 upwards at http://thepiratesdilemma.com/download-the-book http://thepiratesdilemma.com/download-the-book Edit: The difference between the high fashion brand and the low price retailer clothes are quality, perceived quality, recognition/brand, legitimacy and cost. Which is more or less the same difference as between a pirated copy and an original one.
    - 17y ago
rbranson 17y ago
I'm pretty sure that nobody would really care if someone stole CDs out of a publisher's warehouse. It's not even worth the legal costs to press charges. If some crackhead punches a hole in my window to take my CDs and I call the cops, they're going to say "sorry bud, shit happens." I highly doubt the Obama administration would support a $675k judgement against someone who stole 30 CDs from FYE. Just sayin. The guy would get a thousand dollar fine, a slap on the wrist, and a month of probation.
miked 17y ago
>> per-capita income in the US is still only about $21,500. You're way off. It's $46,900. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
- nitrogen 17y ago
  That's the US GDP divided by the US population, which is not the same as mean or median earned income.

cabalamat 17y ago

I would have less problem with the size of this fine if, when the music industry breach copyright law, they had to pay bankrupting fines too. With no limitation of liability.

city41 17y ago

Conversely, it makes me happy. Yes, yes, downvote me, as supporting copyright holders is the unpopular opinion on the internet. But this notion that everyone can just take what they please and expect no repercussions needs to stop. It's trampling on the rights of people who create intellectual things. The very people that make all of this content possible in the first place. I still don't understand why they always get the short end of the stick.

kiba 17y ago
Nobody is entitled to anything, not even your starving artist or starving authors. If the majority of the people don't want to support your career choice, you don't have the right do anything about it. If that mean that the creation of arts and musics grind to halt, so be it. That's how a free society work. Artists, programmers, and everybody else are supposed to die and live by their creation. It is their job to convince everyone else that their career is worth supporting. Consumer sovereign are sovereigns for a reason, because they have the money. They are your lifeline, and they're alway right. You can whine about how authors are being ripped off, or you can choose to look at reality and the economics of it. Your choice.
- tptacek 17y ago
  I like this reversal. Nobody is entitled to anything. Not artists. Not authors. Except for random people on the Internet. They're entitled to the works of those artists and authors. Anxiously awaiting the 19 paragraph response that will clarify this for me further.
  - kiba 17y ago
    Nope. I will not argue anything further than that. Nobody mean nobody. Not me, not you, not filesharers. Nothing and nobody. EDIT: I made it very clear that if nobody wants to buy from the authors, artists, programmers, the incentive to produce will suffer. If this is what the consumer sovereign truly intended, than it is an ethical outcome and an outcome that cannot be changed.