ACZoom  ·  Archive-2016

Copyright law as it exists should have no validity given the technological advances of the past two decades.

Yet, we continue to apply old, inapplicable laws, resulting in quite absurd results.

A jury decided that a woman should pay $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she is accused of illegally trading over the Kazaa Internet service. [:http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10268199-93.html Total damages: $1.92 million].
This itself is completely absurd, but all you have to do is to carry this to the logical next step - she was accused by RIAA of uploading 1700 songs. So the correct award should be $136 million.

Clearly if someone broke a law, there should be some punishment. But having someone, who is most likely not very technologically adept, be accused by RIAA of high piracy, and have the RIAA win in court, shows that the jury award system is quite suspect. The law is the ass here, but will the Congress wake up and change it? No chance - from recent discussions in France and the EU, to the somewhat recent US Congress support for Mickey Mouse support laws, it is clear the all lawmakers are more inclined to listen to the rich lobbyists than to any rational reasoning. Will this absurd $1.92 million, which was really $132 million award bring some sense to the copyright laws? No hope from any law makers anywhere in the world (maybe China, India, or some other country will help here), so in the US, only the Supreme Court is the last hope, though that too is unlikely given the old, conservative heads there (just listen to Scalia protecting teenagers from words that are quite common in middle schools here, but now are illegal on broadcast TV).

Hopefully more people will now see the absurdity of the positions of RIAA and MPAA. Boycott RIAA and MPAA - stop buying music and movie DVDs, if you can. If not, try listening to radio or watching TV. Make analog copies for your private use - which are still legal. It is likely that most people don't watch or listen to media more than once or twice, so renting makes much more sense. No need to buy or own stuff - you are not going to use it more than a few times anyway.