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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
[SNIP]
re: criminal penalties--
Copyright Infringement—Penalties—17 U.S.C. § 506(a) and 18 U.S.C § 2319
Up to 5 years, $250,000, for "the reproduction or distribution, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, with a retail value of more than $2,500."
Hm. Which seems to mean that copies of Harry Potter ebooks aren't prosecutable by this law, because they have no retail value--they aren't on the market at all. All a person would have to do to avoid this law is make sure their distributions stayed under $2500 retail value in a 6-month period. If they're distributing content that isn't purchasable, this law may not apply at all. (Books that aren't commercially available as ebooks; comics/manga; digital conversions of out-of-print albums.) Even distributing songs--you'd have to prove an awful lot of distributions to hit $2500 worth of copies at $.99 each. |
Nope. They'd just ask for statutory damages. And compute the "retail value" using the statutory damages as the amount. (I know that's of dubious legality, but it's been done in music-uploading cases by the RI-f-ing-AA...)
Xenophon