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BU Student Ordered to Pay $675K in Music Downloading Case
In yet another piece of news set to clarify the fact that the record industry still has its head lodged firmly up its own ass, a federal jury on has ordered a Boston University grad student to pay $675,000 to four record labels for illegally downloading and sharing music online.
Even more absurd is the number of songs he "stole": 30. The student, Joel Tenenbaum, is being asked to effectively pay $22,500 for each incident of copyright infringement, beyond the standard $750 per song fine, due to the fact that his actions were willful.
Tenenbaum claims to be thankful that he wasn't given the maximum fine of $4.5 million (sarcasm?), but his lawyer, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, said he plans to appeal the decision because he was not allowed to argue a case based on fair use.
In a statement, the record industry describes Tenenbaum as "a hardcore, habitual, long-term infringer who knew what he was doing was wrong," and was able to get him to admit to having shared more than 800 songs, beyond the 30 he is being charged with.
Tenenbaum, who plans to file for bankruptcy, wouldn't tell the court whether or not he regretted downloading the music. We particularly like this gem: "I don't regret drinking underage in college, even though I got busted a few times," he said. [From: Yahoo! News/AP]
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Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsFrostieAug 3rd 2009 10:47AM
Why are the sites that allow the illegal downloads not being punished ?
BugGuyAug 3rd 2009 11:09AM
This guy looks like a Tool. If he does file bankruptcy they need to throw his smug
a#s in jail.
BugGuyAug 3rd 2009 11:10AM
Frostie,these p2p sites have an out. They all have a pop-up that states that you
have no license to download . If you close the pop-up and proceed,it's on you.
ninjalurkAug 4th 2009 3:27AM
Its getting really ridiculous how out of hand the RIAA is getting about suing the pants off people for downloading music, or sharing for that matter. By that logic, shouldn't radio stations be considered 'illegal' because they're sharing music to thousands upon thousands of people daily? What about sites like last.fm, or yahoo music, or MSN music? The only tangible difference is that the music is saved to a person's hard drive instead of being streamed or automatically selected like how internet radio is done.
I think that the RIAA is more uptight about getting every damn penny they can squander than the artists themselves, who wrote it. Look at it this way: at least your stuff is getting listened to and someone liked it enough that they decided to let others listen. Sueing your customers is not good business at all, and on top of that, makes you look like a total asshole. Nobody likes assholes. Just enjoy the publicity you're getting. If your music is worth listening to, then its worth buying. If no one's buying your music then put 2 and 2 together.