$42 German P2P fine stark contrast to seven-figure US judgments
Found on Ars Technica on Wednesday, 03 November 2010
Accused file-swapper Jammie Thomas-Rasset was yesterday hit with a $1.5 million fine for downloading and distributing tunes by Richard Marx, Journey, Def Leppard, the Goo Goo Dolls, No Doubt, and others. Each of the 24 songs at issue in the case cost her $62,500. Meanwhile, the same offense in Germany might cost you €15 ($21) a song.
The cases are certainly not identical in their details, but they nicely illustrate just how different approaches to copyright infringement can be.
Fictional numbers should never be relevant in a lawsuit. When the plaintiff cannot reliably prove how often a song has been shared, the court has to assume zero times; or once for the test download (although you might argue that downloading a song you have the copyright for is hardly copyright infringement). As for the worth of each upload: online stores sell music for $0.99 each. That's how fines should be calculated; it would be fair and the industry would suddenly have no interest in further lawsuits, putting less work onto the overloaded legal system.