Music Fan Owes $675,000 for Illegal Downloads, Court Rules!

[Warlockz]

Enjoy that song: It'll cost you.
In 2009, a Boston jury downgraded a ruling against Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading music files from $675,000 to just $67,500, deeming the original penalty "unconstitutionally excessive."
Not so fast, an appeals court has ruled.................reinstating the $675,000 judgment

Full Story Here

 

[Austin8868]

Poor guy was going to be a doctor. Not anymore...

 

[Imperfect1]

WOW! That's scary!

 

[djl47]

Enjoy that song: It'll cost you.
In 2009, a Boston jury downgraded a ruling against Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading music files

Full Story Here

The linked story isn't entirely accurate. Tenenbaum was liable for downloading and sharing thirty songs on Kazaa. The linked article does not include the sharing on Kazaa.

Regardless, the damage award is insane, many orders of magnitude out of proportion to any real damages suffered by Sony and reflective of how the copyright lobby has captured our respective governments.

Sony BMG v. Tenenbaum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Copyright term - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is a nice graphic that shows the creeping expansion of copyright terms over the years.

 

[boohbah]

the fine system is appalling, compare the fine for file sharing and the imprisoning for being unable to pay such fines next to a criminal who holds up a bank or similar.

 

[niemiro]

That is really horrendous. I feel so sorry for him.

He made a big mistake, yes, but a fine that size...

 

[pparks1]

Lots of people make this mistake, and regardless of people getting in trouble for it over and over and over again..they continue to do the same thing.

I don't feel sorry for anybody who gets caught doing this. They know they are not supposed to do it. I know I'm not supposed to do it and for that very reason when I wanted 2 new CD's today, I went to Best Buy and bought them both for $20 total.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

And it's not like we all don't know this illegal downloading is wrong......hence the "illegal" in it's name. Another thing is it's not is if this was just a few hundred songs it was likely hundreds of thousands of songs over a long time. It almost sounds like it was some sort of addiction........the "IDA" syndrome.