Jury awards 675K in Downloading case v. 25 year old.

[LegalSmash]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_music_downloading

[Flick]

Thats a scary thought. One minute you're just listening to music you got of the internet. The next your paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for it.

[b0red]

This is starting to get out of hand, why did he admit it? and is this only happening to people that upload the music?

[trakaill]

This is starting to get out of hand, why did he admit it? and is this only happening to people that upload the music?

thats why im a selfish bastard and never share once its on my comp I stop sharing!!!

[b0red]

thats why im a selfish bastard and never share once its on my comp I stop sharing!!!

ME TO!!!!!

[2 Dwarves, 1 Coat]

I'm having trouble seeing how he got caught, someone help me out.

[Havok]

Here's an idea:

why not just demand the costs of how much the music would take to buy, rather than numbers pulled out of thin air?

[2 Dwarves, 1 Coat]

Here's an idea:

why not just demand the costs of how much the music would take to buy, rather than numbers pulled out of thin air?

I'll take that as sarcasm, as the obvious answer is "More money."

[Suffering Knave]

Well damn how that had to happen. But jeez don't get caught lol. I personally think the payments are outrageous. The music companies already have millions, if not billions of dollars.

[Italian Jew]

Well damn how that had to happen. But jeez don't get caught lol. I personally think the payments are outrageous. The music companies already have millions, if not billions of dollars.

The payments are meant to scare people out of downloading and distributing the music. The idea is that if you are downloading music illegally, you will fear being caught and having to pay a huge sum of money, thus making you stop your behavior. However, this doesn't really work as you can imagine that millions of people still download their music illegally.

Here's an idea:

why not just demand the costs of how much the music would take to buy, rather than numbers pulled out of thin air?

In order to actually make a profit from the proceedings, I don't think the general price of the song would be enough to pay for all legal fees associated with any given case. I support them trying to get more money than the music is worth, as that would at least make some people think about what they are doing. What I don't support are the hundreds of thousands of dollars owed because someone downloaded a handful or two of songs. Most people don't have that kind of money available and the outrageous penalties can encourage more music piracy.