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It's absurd to claim that $5,000,000 is an appropriate punishment for having filled one's iPod with downloaded music. Let's be reasonable; the fine should not

It's absurd to claim that $5,000,000 is an appropriate punishment for having filled one's iPod with downloaded music. Let's be reasonable; the fine should not have anything to do with the volume of music downloaded, as people who download music often do so to sample, and delete afterwards (or they download a stuff that they don't even want, because it's free). Instead, the fine should be several times what the person would have likely been able to spend on music during the time that the download occurred, regardless of the number of songs involved (and of course, the songs should be deleted). For a high-school student, that fine could be $500 ($50 if he/she comes from a poor family). For a programmer making $60,000/year, that fine could be around $5-10k. For a rich person, the fine could be $50/song. People who are fined millions of dollars are usually people who have done atrocious things (like pushing drugs to schoolkids for years), not downloaded some songs for their iPod, 90% of which were downloaded to try out and wouldn't have been purchased anyway.

benologist 17y ago
If you fill an entire iPod with pirated music then you deserve a sizable punishment. You're not owed and nor do you deserve gigabytes of music simply because you bought a device with the capacity to host that much. Your income and your ability to purchase whatever quantity of music legitimately also has no relationship with the storage capacity of your iPod. The other excuses you present are irrelevant too, if you downloaded the music then you downloaded it, it doesn't matter what happened next. There are free and legitimate ways to preview pretty much anything on the internet, you don't need to pirate an artist's entire catalog to see if you like that person. The only point I can agree on is making it 'comfortably excessive' relative to income, $500 means little johnny's not getting that car he's saving for, and $10k to us is as nice as prison sex. But I think that would naturally sort itself out - nobody's been held responsible for the full catalog of music they've pirated, it's always been at most up to dozens of tracks.
- deleted 17y ago
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- sounddust 17y ago
  Of course you're not owed anything; My point is that downloading two songs is not necessarily twice as "bad" or harmful to the artist as downloading one song, so trying to establish a fine on a "per-song" basis is absurd. For each additional song a person downloads, there is a diminishing harm done to the artists and labels involved, and it eventually reaches a point where absolutely no additional harm is done. Therefore, any punishment should be related to a reasonable estimate on the harm of the artists/labels (and of course multiplied to the point of punishment, but to a reasonable extent given the crime). It would be different in a case of actual theft; each physical CD stolen is a CD that cannot be sold to someone else, and it's an asset that the thief can resell.

benologist 17y ago

If you fill an entire iPod with pirated music then you deserve a sizable punishment. You're not owed and nor do you deserve gigabytes of music simply because you bought a device with the capacity to host that much. Your income and your ability to purchase whatever quantity of music legitimately also has no relationship with the storage capacity of your iPod. The other excuses you present are irrelevant too, if you downloaded the music then you downloaded it, it doesn't matter what happened next. There are free and legitimate ways to preview pretty much anything on the internet, you don't need to pirate an artist's entire catalog to see if you like that person. The only point I can agree on is making it 'comfortably excessive' relative to income, $500 means little johnny's not getting that car he's saving for, and $10k to us is as nice as prison sex. But I think that would naturally sort itself out - nobody's been held responsible for the full catalog of music they've pirated, it's always been at most up to dozens of tracks.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
sounddust 17y ago
Of course you're not owed anything; My point is that downloading two songs is not necessarily twice as "bad" or harmful to the artist as downloading one song, so trying to establish a fine on a "per-song" basis is absurd. For each additional song a person downloads, there is a diminishing harm done to the artists and labels involved, and it eventually reaches a point where absolutely no additional harm is done. Therefore, any punishment should be related to a reasonable estimate on the harm of the artists/labels (and of course multiplied to the point of punishment, but to a reasonable extent given the crime). It would be different in a case of actual theft; each physical CD stolen is a CD that cannot be sold to someone else, and it's an asset that the thief can resell.