It is NOT a statistical fallacy. The difference is well illustrated in my post.
Or, to put it another way, it’s the difference between looking at the chance of something from behind, and looking at something from ahead. If I know ahead of time that rolling two dice and producing double 1s will have a certain meaning, based on the small chance of that occurring, then when double 1s show up, we accept the result on that basis. It doesn’t matter that I can point to my roll of a 4 and a 5 and say, “but THAT roll is just as unlikely to occur!”
All your statement did was to say that things that have little probability can still occur. But since what is at issue here is, did she do what the RIAA was saying she did, we can certainly look at each of the things we would have to accept as true to accept her overall claim. Yes, it is possible she didn’t do what the RIAA said she did. So what? :dubious:
And I’m saying that noble purpose has been rendered impractical by technology and perhaps should no longer be law. Unenforceable and unpopular laws are not good laws.
I don’t see the analogy, but I hope you can see that technology is what makes spam both possible and difficult to control. So far, making it illegal hasn’t stopped it.
Technology changes things and society must adjust or face the economic and social consequences. Canyou imagine what the situation would have been before Gutenberg if a copyright law had been inacted requiring a monk to be compensated each time a book was hand-copied? Then the printing press came along and the monk only had to do it once for each book. Can you imagine the outcry?
You can argue until blue in the face that an artist should be compensated for a work, but if you can’t collect without alienating the audience and looking like a badass, it’s merely academic.
No. The difference between the case you cited (and its predecessors) and the case at hand is that the case you cited deals with the imposition of punitive damages in a common law tort case. In the case at hand, the cause of action is established by law, with damages established within the framework of the statutory scheme.
In common law tort cases, there are few or no guidelines for the award of punitive damages. The ability to award them may be established by statute, but often isn’t. The extent of the damages is not covered by statute, either. There is a body of common law in the tort field that allows for punitive damages in certain types of cases, including fraud and bad faith cases. The trouble, as the Supreme Court noted, is that, without some statutory scheme in place for deciding exactly what the punitive damage liability will be, juries can get out of hand in imposing the “punishment” aspect of the case. So the Court has imposed certain guidelines to be observed in such cases; in the State Farm case, the Court was holding that the Utah courts had failed to follow those guidelines.
In the case under discussion here, the liability is set statutorily. Thus, regardless of whether Congress was intending to compensate or punish, there is no worry that the potential defendants won’t know ahead of time what their potential liability is. The liability isn’t random, set at whim of the jury; it is statutorily set. It may have a fairly large range, but the upper limit is known, and calculatable.
Which isn’t to say that Congress can establish ANY damage imposition it wants in civil cases. I couldn’t, for example, get Congress to allow a civil suit by private parties against people who play car stereos too loudly, in which the statutory damages are $1M - $10M; if Congress tried that we can readily imagine that some due process issues would pop up! :eek: But as a general rule, the Court will grant great deference to Congress on statutory compensation schemes; the days of the application of arbitrarily applied substantive due process review are over.
Which is why it is stupid to try and discuss this case in terms of “stealing.” The basis for copyright protection has nothing to do with “theft.” It has to do with understanding that, if we are going to establish the right to control the copying of a created work, then we have to establish penalties for infringing upon that right of control, regardless of whether or not that infringment results in monetary loss. Copyright law says that, if I create a performance of a song, I get to choose when, how, where, and to what extent it gets reproduced. I can be a total dick about it if I want, and if I am, it doesn’t matter. YOU don’t get to make a copy unless I say you can. End of the discussion (well, not quite, of course, because of fair use, but that’s not really implicated in the case under discussion). Congress has decided, for good or for ill, to allow certain copyright holders to address copyright infringment with rather substantial civil remedies, as the defendant in the current case has discovered. Whether those remedies are intended to be remedy or deterrent doesn’t much matter. State Farm isn’t applicable.
I think the verdict is likely to be overturned if she appeals, and if not, the amount awarded probably will be reduced. That’s often the final outcome of cases like this. It’s still early in the process.
It’s unenforceable because unless the RIAA proscecutes each and every person who posts a single file on the Internet, most file sharing will be unaffected. Has the route interception, huge fines and property confiscation stopped drug traffic from Columbia?
Source: same article linked to in my previous post.
The most likely outcome will be that the RIAA allows her to pay a reduced amount, not because it will be overturned, but it would be in their best interest to do this.
It’s enforceable, one step at a time. Obviously, your opinion is different.
I’m not sure what you think is enforceable? Sure, there can be the odd cherry-pick of an idiot with a big fine, but that has been the case for many years with “The War Against Drugs”, as an example. Note how well that has gone. There are a couple of hundred legal jurisdictions capable on the network as it is, and that particular distinction will blur when wireless tech takes the strain. I hate to use the phrase “paradigm shift”, but copyright is about to go out the window. Smart people are already thinking of new business models.
Devaluing someone’s property is not the same as stealing it.
Suppose you make chainsaws at a cost of $50 and sell them for $100. I come up with a new way to make equally reliable chainsaws for $10, and I sell them for $30. Now I’ve devalued your entire inventory, because no one wants to buy yours when mine are so much cheaper. But I haven’t stolen anything; you still have a warehouse full of chainsaws. The loss of value is in the minds of your would-be customers, not in your property.
Ah, but there already was a way to profit, and a motive to create things for other people. It’s the same one that people had, and still have, in every other industry: the prospect of getting paid for their labor. If I’m the only guy in town who can write songs, and there are people around who like music and have money, then I don’t need copyright to make a profit. Their money will find its way into my hands simply because I have what they want.
Copyright allows a more speculative business model, essentially a tournament that you enter by recording something for free, and you win somewhere between $0 and $millions depending on how many copies you manage to sell. But it does so at the cost of restricting communication and innovation (both technological and artistic) for everyone else, not to mention alienating customers with ridiculous lawsuits.
I’d say it would change ethically, too. Cloning a chainsaw doesn’t seem any more unethical than Captain Picard cloning a cup of tea. Physical scarcity isn’t an inherently good thing, and anything we can do to work around it should be embraced.
Just because it’s calculable doesn’t make it fair. Does fining someone 1 million for jaywalking seem fair, even if you are warned ahead of time about it?
As I noted, some liabilities would be too much. However, just because $220,000 seems like a large sum for this kind of transgression to you, it isn’t quite the same as $1M for jaywalking, now is it?
You ask a question, you get a reasoned response, showing why the case you cited isn’t applicable, and you want to argue with the response. That’s the sort of behavior that shows that your aren’t interested in an answer, you just want to rant about what you perceive is unfair.
I’m quite interested in the answer, it’s just that I find the answer appalling. It’s frankly batshit insane that downloading a song worth 1 dollar can net the RIAA 10 grand, and no amount of legalese is going to make it any more fair. Our system may allow it, but that doesn’t calm me down, it just pisses me off more that our system is so fucked up.
I guess you owe the record company 10 bucks. Hell, make it 10 bucks compensatory damages and and 100 in punitive damages. Plus reasonable cost of lawyers fees. Does anyone think a 10 to 1 ratio plus lawyers fees is too lenient? It stings, but you won’t lose your house. Seems fair to me.
