This past July, a Federal Jury ordered Joel Tenenbaum (a Boston University graduate student) who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online to pay $675,000 to four record labels.
His crime: the illegal download and distribution of...... ...... ......30 songs.
In his closing statement, Charles Nesson (Tenenbaum's Attorney) suggested the damages should be as little as 99 cents per song, roughly the same amount Tenenbaum would have to pay if he legally purchased the music online.
But Tim Reynolds, a lawyer for the recording labels, recounted Tenenbaum’s history of file-sharing from 1999 to 2007, describing him as “a hardcore, habitual, long-term infringer who knew what he was doing was wrong.” Tenenbaum admitted on the witness stand that he had downloaded and shared more than 800 songs.
The recording industry focused on only 30 songs in the case.
And this past June, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, must pay $1.92 million, or $80,000 on each of 24 songs, after concluding she willfully violated the copyrights on those tunes.
But to understand the fairness or unfairness of Copyright law, you must know how/when/why copyright law was created.
Subsequently the
Copyright Clause of the
United States Constitution (1787) authorized copyright legislation: "To promote the Progress of Science..., by securing for limited Times to Authors.... the exclusive Right to their... Writings."
The Rights of the Copyright Holder is as follows:
1.)the right to produce the work,
2.)the right to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work,
3.)the right to public distribution of copies of that work,
4.)the right to public performance of the work,
5.)the right to public display of the work, and
6.)the right to perform copyrighted sound recordings publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Copyrights generally exist for the life of the author plus 70 years.
Copyright Infringement is the violation of any of the six exclusive rights (see above) granted to the copyright owner.
Under the Copyright Act, willful infringement is a criminal offense if done for commercial advantage or financial gain. A second type of criminal offense was added to the Copyright Act following an incident in which a college student posted copyrighted software on a web site for others to download for free (we're talking about Napster here). This is the No Electronic Theft Act which imposes criminal penalties for willful infringement in which a person during any 180-day period reproduces or distributes one or more copies of copyrighted works with a total retail value of more than $1,000. Depending on the number of copies reproduced or distributed, the penalties may range from a fine of $100,000 and imprisonment up to one year to a fine of $250,000 and imprisonment for three years.
The best thing we can do now as consumers is to understand copyright law as well as its repercussions so that we do not end up in similar situations over a couple handfuls of songs.
Besides, you don't want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a handful of songs that you could have purchased for ninety-nine cents, right?
