A Little Excessive?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/court-...145028416.html

Bet he wishes he had taken that $5k settelment now.

Declare bankruptcy. they get nothing.

It's unfortunate they're doing this. Many of the people who pirate wouldn't spend money on this stuff anyway (music, movies, whatever). They either don't have the money for it or can't justify the absurd costs of music and movies. If it was not available for free, the record companies wouldn't see another dime. So they decide to go and trash someone's life who did no harm whatsoever to these companies bottom line. Let's face it, the guy is screwed for life. He has no incentive to work since the government will take care of him at our expense, and if he tries to pursue a productive or profitable career, his wages will be heavily garnished.

Personally I used to download some stuff but haven't in years. I haven't been to a movie theater, bought a DVD or CD in years. I can't justify the cost, especially for the crap they produce these days. I'm happy with the small music collection I already have, free radio, and mostly Pandora these days. I don't watch TV so they don't get money from me through cable company licensing. I won't pay money to be inundated with commercials. I watch things for free online, youtube, Hulu, Vodo, etc. when I am in the mood to watch something. I won't give those crooks any money based on the priciple of the matter, let alone that most of their stuff is overpriced junk.

I've recently gone back to listening to vinyl. I've been beefing up my collection by scouting out the local Goodwill on a regular basis. I've added about 150 records in a couple months for $0.50 each.

But this is excessive. It's like we've got a court system that's fallen back to the philosophy of throwing people to the lions. There simply isn't a justification in the world for that award.

Look at it from another angle. Tune your radio to a local station, record the song, convert to MP3, CD, or your format of choice and it's perfectly legal. Cut out your labor and just download the same song that is played on the radio, and it's illegal.

Cory I don't believe you are correct about the legality of recording songs off the radio.

Citation? It is fair use to record, or time shift, for your own private use. Distributing it to others is what makes it illegal. This falls under the Betamax case.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...=464&invol=417

For personal use, you can do anything you want. A good example of this is when you authorize another computer with your Itunes account. You can authorize up to five computers and share your song. Of course, when you are not friends anymore then you de-authorize and they can no longer play a purchased Itunes song under that account. The thing is, before this occurs the friends can burn it and then it is their's forever.

In my opinion, this is ludricous because there are so many others out there who have accounts to all sorts of sharing sites. Why ruin this one persons life when there are 10's of thousands (prolly more) who are guilty of the same or worse and are left alone?

Well the iTunes thing is Apple's TOS, not law... and the "loophole" of burning CDs is fine for that cd, but then once you rip that cd back into the computer again you compress and you've now lost another generation of fidelity.

As for timeshifting/betamax, the intended use was video (news, sports, etc) - haven't heard of it being applied to radio... But probably not as big a concern to the studios as internet based sharing due to the relative ease and speed and widespread nature of the beast. I mean how many people do you know that want to sit there and wait for *that* song to come on and try to catch it and hope the station doesn't overlay some annoying crap at the beginning/end, and that the feed doesn't glitch - etc - and not only that but the quality isn't nearly as good as even a compressed digital file. I think that they are still fighting parts of Betamax even harder than ever due to HDTV streams, so maybe HD radio is of a concern...