Quote:
Originally Posted by SSJup81
Seems like a lot. Wouldn't it be more logical to charge the person in question an amount worth the amount of whatever it was downloaded or shared or whatever? I just couldn't see any person having $22k worth of downloaded mp3s (not ones ripped from already owned stuff) on the computer.
In other words, the amount doesn't seem to suit the crime, imo.
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I can understand that thinking, but I think people mistakenly associate downloading MP3s with shoplifting (or something less than shoplifting).
In reality it is something closer to drug dealing, and I will say why. If I steal a CD from the store, the store loses one sale and the artist/record company loses one sale.
In a way you can equate it to buying a bag of weed, as both crimes are done to enhance the pleasure of the criminal that did them (assuming the person wanted to listen to the CD).
However, as iPhantom often points out, the crime here isn't "stealing" (as I like to call it) but participating in the distribution of stolen goods. By taking and participating in the copying of these files, there is no way to know how many damages have been done. Torrents essentially force the downloader to also upload and "share" what they are taking. "Sharing" has positive connotations in English, but "spreading" or "distributing" is a more accurate word.
Almost everyone agrees that drug dealers should see more jail time time than drug users, but when it comes to downloading the downloader is also a distributor. They are distributing the files to other downloaders, who are in turn, distributing to others.
A bootleg of "Wolverine" landed on the Internet and was downloaded an estimated one to four million times. That's potentially hugely damaging to the studio that made the movie, into the 10s of millions. That is an estimate, but pirates like you to think the actual damages are zero, but any logical person will know that even if it wasn't 30 million dollars in damage, it was certainly more than zero. Just because it is impossible to know what the exact damages were, it doesn't mean there weren't any.