Thomas Knierim
22nd June 2009, 09:47 AM
An American single mother was fined 1.9 million USD for illegally downloading 24 songs from the Internet and sharing the same in a peer-to-peer network. The court charged her 80,000 USD per song which she could have legally acquired for 24 USD (one dollar each). See: news story (http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/273911,woman-fined-19-million-dollars-for-illegal-download.html).
Irrespective of what one might think about Internet piracy, this verdict is outrageous. Quite obviously, the case is being used for public deterrence and intimidation on behalf of the music industry. In my view, it also shows a deep perversion of the American legal system. The defendant is left with no other choice than declaring private bankruptcy.
Earlier this year I made a fairly disappointing experience with the music industry myself. I subscribed to emusic.com to (legally!) download music. After only 10 days the service stopped working. It turned out that emusic.com had withdrawn from several countries, including Thailand. They did so without informing their customers.
I took me three weeks and repeated emails to get emusic.com to respond at all. They informed me that the service is no longer available and that my subscription fee was to be refunded, which they did, but only after I wrote a letter threatening to initiate a chargeback procedure that would have been more expensive for emusic.com.
A few months later I began to receive spam addressed to the email address I had used for emusic.com. I can assign emails quite easily, because I use a unique email address for each subscription. In this case it was emusic@... Though I don't have conclusive evidence, I must assume that emusic.com has sold their ex-customers email database to spammers, since I did not use this address anywhere else.
The way emusic.com treats their customers can only be described as cynical.
Furthermore, cynism appears to be defining attitude of the music industry these days, judging from the recent American verdict.
One can only hope that these are the spasms of a dying industry.
Cheers, Thomas
Irrespective of what one might think about Internet piracy, this verdict is outrageous. Quite obviously, the case is being used for public deterrence and intimidation on behalf of the music industry. In my view, it also shows a deep perversion of the American legal system. The defendant is left with no other choice than declaring private bankruptcy.
Earlier this year I made a fairly disappointing experience with the music industry myself. I subscribed to emusic.com to (legally!) download music. After only 10 days the service stopped working. It turned out that emusic.com had withdrawn from several countries, including Thailand. They did so without informing their customers.
I took me three weeks and repeated emails to get emusic.com to respond at all. They informed me that the service is no longer available and that my subscription fee was to be refunded, which they did, but only after I wrote a letter threatening to initiate a chargeback procedure that would have been more expensive for emusic.com.
A few months later I began to receive spam addressed to the email address I had used for emusic.com. I can assign emails quite easily, because I use a unique email address for each subscription. In this case it was emusic@... Though I don't have conclusive evidence, I must assume that emusic.com has sold their ex-customers email database to spammers, since I did not use this address anywhere else.
The way emusic.com treats their customers can only be described as cynical.
Furthermore, cynism appears to be defining attitude of the music industry these days, judging from the recent American verdict.
One can only hope that these are the spasms of a dying industry.
Cheers, Thomas