|
As far as I know, she's not actually a criminal, as it was not a criminal case but a civil one. Having said that she was certainly guilty of copyright infringement.
Part of the problem here is that there are statutory damages involved, at a minimum of $750 per song, which puts a hard floor on the damages at $18000. Given the circumstances, I think that's what the award should have been. One issue here is that the penalties were originally created with pirate CD distributors in mind, and so are based on a completely different economic model. For one thing, it's a lot easier to contend that people who bought an illegal CD would probably have bought a legitimate copy instead. File sharing has neither the same profit motive nor the same mapping to lost sales.
In fact, there is a fair amount of evidence that file sharing has almost no measurable impact on CD sales. What has really hurt the market is the combination of high prices and a reduced selection of new music. When I go into a music store I find very few CDs that even look worth trying. I'd go so far as to say that their greatest loss from file sharing is due entirely to people boycotting the major labels because they don't approve of the way they're handling the file sharing issue.
|