"If there is nothing physical, it does not have any value"

"If I can't afford something, then I have to take it"

We are all talking to the hand here. Just close the thread and ban the fuckers.

Just how to buy a song? When you go to music store, it is the CD that you buy, not the music.

" If you define loss of control here as the IP owner not being able to prevent Joe from obtaining a copy of their music, the argument becomes moot, as that form of control yields no benefit, and the lack of it bears no loss."

Yes, that is 'loss of control' aka breach of Copyright.

Your friend is NOT authorised to produce and distribute copies of the product to other people.

THAT-IS-COPYRIGHT-THEFT.

I cannot spell it out any simpler...

'bears no loss'?

That is your opinion, not that of the courts....hence the fine in the OP.

This reality is not debatable at all.

Only concerns of 'degree of applicable penalty' "may" be debatable.

Too many people have a naive opinion that something needs SUBSTANCE for it to be able to be taken/stolen.

It doesn't.

Never has.

By copying and redistributing [for sake of argument] - music, you are denying me [the owner/artist/muso/production company, say] my say/control of WHO gets my stuff...and when...and why...and for what remuneration.

THAT is taken from me.

My RIGHTS as a law abiding member of society....of the community....of the [whatever] country...etc, ad nauseum.... are violated.

I did nothing wrong.

You took my shit....give it back or I sue/seek restitution in the courts.

You cannot afford to buy my stuff?  Well...such is life.  You go without.

Others do.

But when some bottom-feeder without a clue can't even realise WHEN the shit DID hit the fan that she was on a road to nowhere and refuses a'fair' deal?

She's  a brainless, greedy, ignorant fool that deserves the outcome.

Seeing artists defend people who make vastly more than they do from the "defence" of intellectual property is a little disheartening.

She's  a brainless, greedy, ignorant fool that deserves the outcome.

quoth Jafo

 

That above post is just so ignorant and annoying. I hope you don't work with real people, or live in the real, chaotic world where deals are made and lies are told. You hate a woman because she is now poorer than you will ever be, and did something stupid.

You are not my person of the year. (I know you probably don't care, but you upset me a bit, cause you are really really nasty, so I just had to say.)

P.S. The penalty is the issue, and it is disproportionate. Even a 5000 dollar settlement is disproportionate.

iTunes? ... I personally use Bigpond, it cost me around $1.70 for a song.

Last night I went down to the pub and enjoyed three local bands.  The music was free, although I spent $15.00 on grog. Not a bad night out.

Your suggestion is outside the parameters of the hypothetical. Joe cannot afford anything other than necessities, and so he cannot save up any money if he never has any money left after paying his necessary expenses.

That is sophistry.

Theft is a criminal act in which property belonging to another is taken without that person's consent.

The term theft is sometimes used synonymously with Larceny. Theft, however, is actually a broader term, encompassing many forms of deceitful taking of property, including swindling, Embezzlement, and False Pretenses. Some states categorize all these offenses under a single statutory crime of theft.

Jafo, I actually wasted my time to look at your so called "art" , If anybody steals that, they deserve what the law does to them for being tasteless! It seems all your arguments are based on assumptions and assertions. Who are you worried about protecting, what company or government do you work for?  Please tell me how much money you have personally lost on your so called "art". I would really like to see a hard fact or a real number, of which you have shown none. Also I don't appreciate the threat you personally sent me about your moderator ability, if you don't like what I am saying let me know here on these pages. That is called transparency, not abuse of power!  Like you said, "sometimes it's nice to be nasty"

wow.  i finally get it.

no one should have to take responsibility for their actions.

it's not my fault for shooting some guy because colt made the weapon

it's not my fault the guy's head kept slamming into Ford's tire iron, they made it so put them in jail instead

it's not my fault the jewelry store popped open so easy, it's the crowbars fault

it's not my fault about the atm machine going missing, without that hummer I couldn't have smashed through the front and dragged it off

it's not my fault I never buy veggies and fruit, they put them out on those stands for anyone to help themselves

it's not my fault I was able to hack your computer and steal all your info, it's the computer companies fault cuz without their creations it wouldn't have happened

so what if I made a copy of the 2015 Mustang design? they should have put it on paper not their computer, that way it would be real and tangible. Since I only made a copy, they didn't lose anything

it's not my fault all your hard earned cash for the month is gone, you dropped your wallet in front of me so you must have wanted me to have it

it's not my fault the lady was selfish and stupid and gave no thought whatsoever about the possible adverse consequences of her actions and how they might affect your children

it's not my fault you're reading this, blame MicroSoft

In the example I gave, it was not implied that Joe's friend had illegally obtained his copy, and so that negates your first claim of theft. Onwards propogation in this case entailed only the copy made for Joe.

The question now is whether that act constitutes theft on Joe's part. This matter can be judged for all intents and purposes, or we can take it from the viewpoint of rules for the sake of rules, regardless of whether the purpose of the rule has been defeated.

Theft is immoral because it deprives a person of some property. We have a law against theft to protect and keep people's property in their possession. With digital media, a person can be caused to suffer loss without physically being deprived of their property. This is true where the total value of that property is diminished as a result of the property being used in such a way that deprives the owner of a due that would otherwise have come their way.

In the case of Joe, there was no capacity to acquire the music in such a way that gives the owners their dues. This means that Joe has not diminished the total value of the property, as he was never a part of the potential. In other words, he has caused no loss.

As Joe has not breached that which the law was made to prevent (i.e. he has caused no loss), the purpose behind the rule has been defeated.

If you take the rule over its purpose, you take the word over the meaning, and give weight to the effect whilst denying that it had a cause.

The salient point here is that in determining what is fair, or right, or Just, the focus should remain the purpose and intent, rather than the wording of the rules.

I think I see what the problem is here. It seems that you've come into this sub-conversation half way through. I am in no way defending the actions of the lady in the OP. What she did was theft, plain and simple. There is no argument there.

I gave a specific hypothetical example about a fictional person named Poor Joe Lives-Alone, for the purpose of arguing the point that not all cases are the same. My argument was that the actions of Joe in that specific example, cannot be fairly classified as theft for any reasonable intent or purpose.

Nothing in IP case law is ever plain and simple. If someone nicks your car, it's obvious that he has the car and you don't. If someone copies your sound recording, it's not at all clear what exactly has been taken from you. You haven't lost the use of the song as you did the use of your car, so it's cost you nothing to replace it. You can argue convincingly that you're out the net profit of one song, almost (you did pay nothing for duplication and distribution, after all), but it would be a time-consuming argument to make, for both you and the court. So, as an expedient to make the costly enforcement of the law via civil action generally unnecessary, lawmakers introduced statutory damages for copyright infringement well in excess of any imaginable actual damages in order to deter would-be rule-breakers.

Virgin Atlantic didn't ask for actual damages in Capitol v Thomas; they sued for statutory damages, which don't require plaintiff to demonstrate actual losses or even the possibility of loss - the award would be no different had she shared a bootleg of Richard Branson singing an Al Jolson medley in falsetto on karaoke night. The award was not supposed to be fair - if it was fair, it would not deter other scoff-laws, and the courts would be clogged with what amount to nuisance suits by distribution companies. There were no fines (this was a tort, buck-o) or actual damages awarded, so the value of the songs and the fairness of the award were (legally) irrelevant. Intent was only relevant in determining whether damages were limited to $30,000 per song or $120,000, not in whether damages could be awarded.

In fact, Virgin didn't claim that Thomas had illegally downloaded her songs, or even that she had illegally shared her songs, but that she had only made them available for sharing via Kazaa. Virgin produced server logs demonstrating that a Kazaa account with the 24 songs had been updated from an IP address assigned to Thomas. It did not produce evidence for its claim that 1678 other songs had been shared from that IP address, nor did it provide evidence that Thomas had possession of any of the songs, or even possession of a copy of Kazaa. The jury deliberated for 5 minutes before awarding Virgin $220,000. The judge in the original trial, who had made the questionable and controversial instruction to the jury that making the songs available for distribution was sufficient for infringement even if no songs were actually distributed, sent the case to appeal when case law failed to support his instruction. The appeals judge solved the trial judge's problem by refusing to define "infringement" for the jury in his instruction, and by instructing them NOT to specify in their decision whether Thomas had infringed by downloading songs or by sharing them. This jury decided that Thomas was not only guilty but willfully so, and returned $1.9M judgment, again. A third judge vacated that award as violating the Constitutional injunction against "unusual punishment", Virgin (now Capitol) offered to settle for $25,000 but was refused, and a third jury awarded $1.5M without revisiting the verdict. Capitol then sought a court order instructing Thomas to destroy all of the 1,702 songs they had originally accused her (without evidence) of distributing and to demonstrate to the court that it had been done. (!) Thomas will undoubtedly fight on. She is Ojibwe, Chippewa, first cousin to the Sioux. They don't give up when they believe they're in the right.

Before you argue fairness, crack a history book. Before the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998 (it makes me laugh a bit just to write that), copyright law in the US served the strictly utilitarian role of securing published works for the benefit of US citizens. After Sonny-no-share, intellectual property in the US became more durable than ground rent in London. (Except for Sonny of course - TREE!) Sonny actually wanted copyright to last forever, but that would have been unconstitutional. Jack Valenti, who invented the R-rating and compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler before leading the MPAA afoul of antitrust law by banning the distribution of screen copies to film critics and Academy Award voters, proposed to make term forever less a day to satisfy the letter of the US Constitution, which only demonstrated that he was a better lobbyist than a lawyer. Copyright wasn't even transferable until Congress acted to secure the profits of US Grant's deathbed memoirs to his otherwise penniless family, and consequently neither real nor personal property.

Ironic really that a Chippewa (cousins of the Sioux, people - you did see "Dances with Wolves" even if you didn't read history, yeah?) would lose everything (again) thanks to a dubious legal construction of the white man's law. I know that some of you feel very deeply about this subject, but it would be best if you could engage your heads as well as your hearts when you write about it.