Just ran across the story of a Minnesota woman who was “fined” 1.92 MILLION (yes that is NOT a typo) for illegally downloading 24 songs (again not a typo). Can someone please inject some common sense in to this whole digital music debate? What we’re saying is that downloading a .99 cent item is worth this? If I walk in to the Family Dollar and steal 24 items, should I owe the dollar store millions? This whole thing is insanity personified. If I don’t pay 24 dollars in taxes, do I owe the government 1.92 million in fines? Absolutely asinine.
This discussion currently has 10 responses.
June 19, 2009
Is there a worse crime against humanity than downloading music? I think not.
June 19, 2009
I heard this on NPR this morning. The woman's quote as she left the courthouse was, “good luck getting [the money] from me.” Ha! I almost WANT to be charged for illegal dowloading music. I have so many things to say to the coke-sniffing record company execs it would be comical.
June 19, 2009
To expand the dollar store argument – if you steal from the dollar store, you've stolen product that they then can't sell. Tangible loss. If you steal music by downloading, there's no tangible loss. There's potential loss of a purchase that you may or may not have made, as well as potential gain of purchases that you may make in the future (I've spent way more money on concerts and CDs of bands I found out about by downloading than I ever did before I started downloading).
June 19, 2009
testing disqus
June 19, 2009
Did it work?
June 19, 2009
if you can read this it works fine
June 19, 2009
Hey! Look at that. I'm actually signed in. Must've been a password issue.
June 19, 2009
Test comment
June 19, 2009
just testing Andrew’s theory out, ignore.
June 19, 2009
What an incredible waste of time. We should actually be really upset about this. Gov't time and money was spent on prosecution of this? What the hell for? Is this going to curb illegal downloading or pirating? I would bet money that this lady is sitting at home right now pondering on whether or not to download the latest “Seal” album. This did nothing but waste time and money and get me even more excited to steal product from the record company.