US Supreme Court Refuses to Hear File-Sharing Appeal

Wait it is easier for me to break in and steal from the stores?
Well I guess I have a new plan

Its not easier for you to break in and steal from the store. But your sentence will be much lesser once they catch you. (if security guards don't shoot you full of holes ofc).

Height of fine being proportional to ease of crime makes no sense whatsoever, argument is ridiculous.

Yeah America is not the place to try random robbery.
It is wonderful for planned events though as no one differs from the schedule or attempts to intervene.

I think a fitting fine would be something more like this:

The cost of the downloaded song at retail price is your profit from the filesharing. Your damages are N times that amount per song, with an N somewhere between 1 and 10.

So for N = 5 with 30 downloaded songs (say all available for expensive paid download for USD 3 each) you get a USD 450 fine.

If you apply the same thing to commercial copyright infringement you get a quite different sums. Say someone sold 500 bootleg CDs at USD 20 a pop. That works out to a fine of USD 50.000.

You could also adjust N between making money off it or just getting the content as profit.

Is there other corroborating evidence? If not, yes. In fact, they instruct Grand Juries to NOT indict if you only have a confession but no corroborating evidence to reasonably suspect the person.

BUHAHAHA!! People have been convicted of murder plenty of times on circumstantial evidence.

Yes... that would be, you know, corroborating evidence then. As oppossed to just having the guy confess in teh absense of all other evidence.

Epic Fail. Not quite clear on what 'corroborating evidence' means, are we?

So it was downloaded zero times...

Wich is bullshit wrapped around horseshit since they have 70+ years to profit from it.

On what do you base that?

Reasonable assumption, people are assumed innocent until proven guilty Squishy, so if they can't prove it has been downloaded, than it most likely hasn't. Burden of Proof.

Except it's been proven that he committed the act... the question is not whether, it's how many times.

Uhm, if I make 3 dozen copies of Shades of Grey and leave them on a public bus bench it doesn't matter of no-one takes them I've still violated the authors copyright.

Uploading yes, but did he actually share it? Its like a professional hitman, you know he shot someone, but you can't prove he shot any specific person, and therefore can't charge him. Is that a good analogy for what I am attempting to say?

And so you are saying that because we know he shot someone but don't know who, he should be allowed to walk free?

That's absurd.

If I was on a jury like this I would have voted to fine the guy INFINITY DOLLARS! (the capitalization is important here), because applying a law meant to punish commercial copyright infringement, where the people / organization doing the infringing might very well be making millions, to individuals like this guy, no matter how unsympathetic, is absolutely retarded.

But he won't have to shoot himself in the head... if he has the money he'll have to pay... and if he's just some poor dumb schmuck the judgment against him might as well be INFINITY DOLLARS! He's judgment proof... and if he ever does come into money its not hard to hide it or tie it up completely legally... like if he gets married and has a kid... guess what? Kid comes before RIAA/MPAA because the state govn't doesn't like paying for Medicaid and Food Stamps when it doesn't have to.

Seriously, the lawsuit craze of the mid 00's was the dumbest strategy the RIAA/MPAA ever embarked upon (and that's saying a LOT). Copyright content creators live and die off their reputation and goodwill, and instead of actually campaigning to try and increase respect for IP they shit all over the idea as if fear would actually be able to counter 'free and easy.'

If the RIAA/MPAA really wanted to stop piracy using suits, they'd be for changing the laws to make it 'easy' for them to sue and collect judgments from individuals for file sharing separate from the commercial $150k per instance law one uses to go after the bootleggers. It would be like traffic laws... if you're caught, pony up $500. Sure, you've just shredded every last smidgen of goodwill you ever possessed before or in the future, but you'll hit up a lot of people for cash in the meantime (maybe they could call it retroactive purchasing).

No because anyone can say they are a professional hitman. The crime isn't saying you're a hitman the crime would be murder. In this case the guy actually did perform an illegal act (Uploading a file). That is the actual crime, he copied and shared a file that he did not have the rights to copy and share. Downloads are a seperate crime, and not actually HIS crime. That would be on the downloaders.

I am saying that he can't be charged, because it can't be proven that he shot any particular person, or killed them, it is just known that this person has done this, but there isn't any evidence.

You can't charge soemone with a crime if you don't know that they actually committed a specific incident. Perhaps charge them with intent, or with something else that is related, but you can't charge them for something you can't prove they actually did.

Sort of like OJ, except we know OJ did, there is plenty of evidence, but the lawyers manufactured reasonable doubt instead of it being some already there.

But they can. And did. They know that he uploaded the file.

Except they know he committed the crime. That's not the problem.

This is like it being illegal to discharge a firearm inside city limits, and then not being able to find the bullets, so you don't know how many times he discharged it. You know he committed the crime, but you can't figure out how many times.

Yes, that's happened. People have been convicted with eyewitness testimony, and little else.

Here's a handy-dandy definition of corroborate for you.

Yes, I understand what the word means. I stand by my point.

That would be, again, corroborating evidence.

Ok, let me amend my statement to say that the corroborating evidence in many cases was flimsy and taken by itself would not mean anything. For instance, a guy the same general height and build in the same rough area can be convicted of murder if an eyewitness is convincing enough.