Court Slams Music Pirate With Huge Fine – of $41.00 - Polidicks

[quote][B]A young man, who as a teenager file-shared two music tracks, has finally discovered his fate. After rightsholders demanded damages of 600 euros ($828) the case dragged through the legal system. After nearly five years a court in Germany has just published its decision. It ruled that the damages demands of the rightsholders were excessive and instead ordered the defendant to pay 30 euros ($41.00) damages.[/B] In 2006, a then 16 year-old German used a file-sharing network to make available two music tracks, “Angel” by “Rammstein” and “Roll Over not” by Marius Müller-Westernhagen. The teenager had used his father’s Internet connection to share the songs. Rightsholders monitoring the unauthorized sharing mounted a case and demanded 300 euros ($414) per track, a total of 600 euros in damages. Yesterday the Hamburg Regional Court published its final decision. Firstly, the Court rejected the rightsholders claims against connection owner, the teenager’s father. He neither carried out infringements or authorized them, and had no knowledge of them occurring. Although he was considered responsible for his connection, that did not lead to a liability for damages. However, the Court did uphold the complaint against the teenager. It was determined that he had violated copyright law and as such was required to pay compensation to the rightsholders. There was, however, disagreement on the amount to be paid. While the rightsholders had demanded 600 euros in damages, it was for the Court to decide the amount to be paid for what would in effect amount to a fictitious license for the songs. The Court took several parameters into consideration when arriving at its decision. Notably it was decided that since the tracks were old there would be a limited demand for them. Furthermore, since it could only be proven that the tracks were made available for a short amount of time, few downloads of the tracks would have taken place. To this end the Court ruled that the defendant should pay damages of just 30 euros ($41.40). Lawblog.de notes that the decision puts recent damages claims against file-sharers of 1000 euros per song under severe pressure. In the light of this ruling by the Hamburg Regional Court, even brand new hits might only be worth 40 to 80 euros per infringement. [quote][tab]Source: [/tab][url=http://torrentfreak.com/court-slams-music-pirate-with-huge-fine-of-41-00-101028/][B]TorrentFreak[/B][/url][/quote][/quote] I guess those five years in court finally paid off.

Greedy fucks.

What a great victory that was :downs:

Reminds me of when TPB was prosecuted and had to pay a fine of $5.5 million or something. It was 80 torrents. $71110 per torrent. If they were to prosecute them for every torrent on the site, they would have to pay the equal amount of Sweden's entire workforce's income until year 2300. I call corrupt :/

[QUOTE=Kab2tract;25728436]What a great victory that was :downs:[/QUOTE] :woop:

I don't see the point in Sueing people for downloading music, Music belongs to everybody.

This is the kind of punishment that needs to be dished out to pirates. Not the THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLAR fines that some people get. Pirate a fifteen dollar album and get caught? Pay fifteen buckaroonies plus whatever the court demands. Problem solved. In my opinion at least, this is a huge step forward.

That's probably the amount of money they actually lost, as is the same with most music sharers.

The idea of having to wait 5 years to get fined $41 for piracy scares me shitless. :ohdear:

Hah, stupid fucks thought they could bite off more than they could chew

wow make every pirate pay for each song he downloaded delete torrent sites too make this world free of theft

[QUOTE=BigHeaded B;25728747]wow make every pirate pay for each song he downloaded delete torrent sites too make this world free of theft[/QUOTE] They tried that. They had a bust on pirate bay's servers a few years back, shut them down completely, was back up in 2 or 3 days. Best thing to do is just ignore it, cause it isn't going to stop.

[QUOTE=Trunk Monkay;25729123]They tried that. They had a bust on pirate bay's servers a few years back, shut them down completely, was back up in 2 or 3 days. Best thing to do is just ignore it, cause it isn't going to stop.[/QUOTE] well its time to shut down the internet then

[img]http://cubeupload.com/files/800a351275615562747.jpg[/img]

[QUOTE=Moby-;25728357]Greedy fucks.[/QUOTE] If I ever get busted pirating I'm more than willing to pay what I owe.

Pay the amount you stole, add on an additional (and REASONABLE) fine, and possibly remove the music from his custody? Sounds good to me.

I wish my money can reach as high as the moon.... twice. :frown:

I think if you are being fined the value of the item that you have pirated then you should be able to keep it as you would effectively be buying a licence for it. Hopefully other courts in other countries will see this and in the future if companies demand stupid amounts they will be pointed in the direction of this case.

I bet it cost more to take him to court.

should i become an artist, i will never sign with a record company it sounds dumb, but i'd rather go broke than give them even more money

I wonder how far this needs to go before the record industries finally give in and adapt their stone-age business models to modern technology. Clearly working against it isn't paying off.

[QUOTE=ElVerdugo;25728539]This is the kind of punishment that needs to be dished out to pirates. Not the THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLAR fines that some people get. Pirate a fifteen dollar album and get caught? Pay fifteen buckaroonies plus whatever the court demands. Problem solved. In my opinion at least, this is a huge step forward.[/QUOTE] I agree. I mean if an album costs $20 bucks why should you be forced to pay upwards of thousands of dollars in fines? It's cruel punishment. I'm not saying pirates should get off free, but I imagine a fine of a [I]maximum [/I]of 400 bucks would be sufficient. 400 bucks won't break anyone's bank permanently and it's enough of a fine to make purchasing the album worth it. [editline]29th October 2010[/editline] Yeah even then I'd say $200-250 should be enough of a fine.

How about no fine at all? Downloading music does shit all to hurt the industry. Anyone who thinks downloading a CD is ruining music doesn't know the first fucking thing about music. Music is leaving the "Industry" that we have now simply because there's no fucking reason to go about things with that archaic model, and yes, it's very archaic. You want to talk about economic damages from CD downloads? You can't. There simply isn't any. The artists that "suffer" piracy are actually making money off the fact that their music has circulated so well, and spread so far, and offered new tour destinations, and new fans quicker than CD selling EVER did. Tours are how they make money, so the artists have always been fine. The only people "suffering" are the record companies which [b]should[/b] suffer seeing as they're going extinct, and that's part of what going extinct is. They're no longer a relative business model, do away with it already. They're only trying to line their own pockets based on false ideas.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;25734558]How about no fine at all? Downloading music does shit all to hurt the industry. Anyone who thinks downloading a CD is ruining music doesn't know the first fucking thing about music. Music is leaving the "Industry" that we have now simply because there's no fucking reason to go about things with that archaic model, and yes, it's very archaic. You want to talk about economic damages from CD downloads? You can't. There simply isn't any. The artists that "suffer" piracy are actually making money off the fact that their music has circulated so well, and spread so far, and offered new tour destinations, and new fans quicker than CD selling EVER did. Tours are how they make money, so the artists have always been fine. The only people "suffering" are the record companies which [b]should[/b] suffer seeing as they're going extinct, and that's part of what going extinct is. They're no longer a relative business model, do away with it already. They're only trying to line their own pockets based on false ideas.[/QUOTE] piracy is killing every piratable industry there is no desputing that fact if you pirate you are a criminal and that is a crime my friend

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;25734558]How about no fine at all? Downloading music does shit all to hurt the industry. Anyone who thinks downloading a CD is ruining music doesn't know the first fucking thing about music. Music is leaving the "Industry" that we have now simply because there's no fucking reason to go about things with that archaic model, and yes, it's very archaic. You want to talk about economic damages from CD downloads? You can't. There simply isn't any. The artists that "suffer" piracy are actually making money off the fact that their music has circulated so well, and spread so far, and offered new tour destinations, and new fans quicker than CD selling EVER did. Tours are how they make money, so the artists have always been fine. The only people "suffering" are the record companies which [B]should[/B] suffer seeing as they're going extinct, and that's part of what going extinct is. They're no longer a relative business model, do away with it already. They're only trying to line their own pockets based on false ideas.[/QUOTE] Well said, but I doubt they're going to listen any time soon, they'll just keep on howling and hollering until the music/recording "industry" as we know it becomes a mere vestige of what it once was. [QUOTE=BigHeaded B;25734754]piracy is killing every piratable industry there is no desputing that fact [/QUOTE] [Citation Needed] [QUOTE=BigHeaded B;25734754]if you pirate you are a criminal and that is a crime my friend[/quote] That may be, but the laws aren't always right, or effective.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;25734558]How about no fine at all? Downloading music does shit all to hurt the industry. Anyone who thinks downloading a CD is ruining music doesn't know the first fucking thing about music. Music is leaving the "Industry" that we have now simply because there's no fucking reason to go about things with that archaic model, and yes, it's very archaic. You want to talk about economic damages from CD downloads? You can't. There simply isn't any. The artists that "suffer" piracy are actually making money off the fact that their music has circulated so well, and spread so far, and offered new tour destinations, and new fans quicker than CD selling EVER did. Tours are how they make money, so the artists have always been fine. The only people "suffering" are the record companies which [b]should[/b] suffer seeing as they're going extinct, and that's part of what going extinct is. They're no longer a relative business model, do away with it already. They're only trying to line their own pockets based on false ideas.[/QUOTE] A crime is still a crime. There is a price to pay if you wish to acquire another person//group/company's goods, and if you don't pay, it's a crime. I'm not even disagreeing with you, but until a rule/law is changed, they need to be fined.

[QUOTE=ExplodingGuy;25734773]Well said, but I doubt they're going to listen any time soon, they'll just keep on howling and hollering until the music/recording "industry" as we know it becomes a mere vestige of what it once was. [Citation Needed] That may be, but the laws aren't always right, or effective.[/QUOTE] the law is always right [img]http://imgur.com/Eyar3.jpg[/img]

You know what, they should only be fining what the people owe, like they seem to have done here, and no more than that. It's pretty clear that the RIAA just made up those numbers in that pic that smallfry posted. It's one thing to charge someone what they owe, but it's absolutely outlandish to make someone pay much more than that, not including legal fees.

[QUOTE=Mikaru-Yanagida;25735512]You know what, they should only be fining what the people owe, like they seem to have done here, and no more than that. It's pretty clear that the RIAA just made up those numbers in that pic that smallfry posted. It's one thing to charge someone what they owe, but it's absolutely outlandish to make someone pay much more than that, not including legal fees.[/QUOTE] They should fine people whatever the law states for theft in that area, but yes thousands per song is bullshit.

[QUOTE=Explosions;25734807]A crime is still a crime. There is a price to pay if you wish to acquire another person//group/company's goods, and if you don't pay, it's a crime. I'm not even disagreeing with you, but until a rule/law is changed, they need to be fined.[/QUOTE] Yeah, but the rule isn't a formal law, it's still subject to case law, so far it's only given out fines that are beyond retardation, so subject to case law, a judge would simply have to decide that this is bogus based on evidence he should be presented with and do away with it.