Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinecone
Where is this?
Can you point to the actual statuate?
|
United States No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 or NET Act for sort. It was a kneejerk reaction to the dismissal of the US v. LaMacchia case.
Before then, in order for infringement to be felonious it had to be for profit, but NET Act changed it to
Quote:
|
(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain or (2) involve the reproduction or distribution of one or more copies of a work or works within a 180-day period with a total retail value of $1,000
|
You can be punished up to five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.
The biggest problem with the NET Act, is that the retail value part is a bit vague. You can argue it two ways. Method one, that the RIAA have been pushing for is the total of the each count. So, if you bought a a single song for cents that you are torrenting, and 50 people download it from you. RIAA says each download count goes towards the total, and the RIAA is also saying that due to Title 17, Chapter 5, 504 the minimum in statutory damages is $750. So, they claim that $37500 as the total value. Argument two states that you offered one single song, and the retail value was the 99 cents, and so your total is 99 cents. Varying by $37499.01, is a not a slight difference.
NET Act is wrong all over. From the misuse of the word "theft", which doesn't even agree with any other law on the books over what theft is, to the poor wording. I remember a few years ago, there was a comparison of how the NET Act screwed with penalities, and in it they compared Capital v Thomas (where Thomas had 24 different songs that they shared over Kazaa) to that of someone convicted of a stabbing in Pittsburgh. Capital v. Thomas has gone through 3 jury trials, and Capital was initially awarded $222,000 [$9250 a song], $1,920,000 [$80,000 a song], and $1,500,000 [$62500 a song] after each trial. There was the first trial, because the Judge ruled that simply "making available" was not infringement. The second trial had its damages reduced to $54,000 [$2250 a song] under doctrine of remittitur. Capital rejected this, and filed for another trial. The third trial had its damages reduced once again to $54,000 as the defense argued that the plaintiff failed through Due Process to prove that the defendant specifically caused them damage, only that file sharing had. The record label has one again filed for an appeal against this latest ruling. Ok, so, you have this case where the plaintiff has repeatedly tried for extremely high amounts of damages, with the most recent being one point five million, as compared to the stabbing victim, that was awarded $53,824 [the amount of their medical bills]. The moral outrage aside, look at how much money that NET Act has cost us, because of cases like Capital v. Thomas (which has been dragging on since 2005).
Oh, if this gives you any idea of the genius behind NET Act, the guy who wrote and proposed NET Act also brought forth a bill that demanded that all presidental candidates submit their birth certificates, because he didn't believe that Obama was a citizen.