Rapidshare loses court battle against German booksellers

[Alexander Turcic]

Torrentfreak picked up the verdict:

http://torrentfreak.com/supreme-cour...nternet-130819

[usuallee]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

No. But just like I don't want to ruin the lives of college student downloaders, I don't want to ruin the lives of people working at Warner Brothers or Penguin Random House. This should be a civil matter.

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Not saying people should fileshare illegally, just that the current ways of dealing with it seem to be bullying and saying my lawyers are better than yours and I can afford a hell of a lot more of them.

Let the rights holders put their money where their mouth is and come up with a foolproof and inexpensive way of policing online content or do the actual policing themselves and be prepared to pay damages if they do it incorrectly.

100% Agreed. Downloading should be a slap on the wrist, speeding ticket type of offense, I'm not opposed to some sort of fine. I don't think it's right, but people's lives should not be ruined over it. The reprehensible behavior of the RIAA a decade ago has left a permanent bad taste in my mouth on this issue. Creators should of course be paid, but most of those who download would not have purchased the content anyhow, so in that sense it is a victimless crime. "The "every download = a lost sale" argument is a joke.

And clearly creators are getting paid by someone, since there seems to be more stuff available all the time. If downloaders were having a detrimental impact we'd see the content dry up. If those of us who pay for content are in a way subsidizing those who don't, I don't like it, it's not fair, but also I can't get really worked up about it.

And I certainly do not like the sound of "proactive filtering" of all files or other draconian measures. We do not need the internet to get all Orwellian (more than it already is) just to catch a few freeloaders. That would be a clear example of the cure being far, far worse than the disease.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by usuallee

100% Agreed. Downloading should be a slap on the wrist, speeding ticket type of offense, I'm not opposed to some sort of fine. I don't think it's right, but people's lives should not be ruined over it.

Any fine has to be considerably greater than the retail value of the goods obtained in order to act as a deterrent. My local bus company imposes a fine of 40x the fare that should have been paid for "fare dodgers", which seems like a reasonable deterrent. Let's say someone illegally downloads material which has a retail value of $1000. Would you consider a $40,000 fine for that offence to be unreasonable?

[usuallee]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Any fine has to be considerably greater than the retail value of the goods obtained in order to act as a deterrent. My local bus company imposes a fine of 40x the fare that should have been paid for "fare dodgers", which seems like a reasonable deterrent. Let's say someone illegally downloads material which has a retail value of $1000. Would you consider a $40,000 fine for that offense to be unreasonable?

For someone downloading for personal, non-commercial use (as opposed to commercial pirates), absolutely that is unreasonable. Even for a chronic offender, a $40,000 fine would be excessively vindictive, I believe. A fine of no more than $1000 for a repeat offender, and loss of internet privileges (like a black list that all ISPs and mobile providers would adhere to) for a certain period of time would be reasonable, and plenty enough deterrent, in my opinion.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by usuallee

For someone downloading for personal, non-commercial use (as opposed to commercial pirates), absolutely that is unreasonable. Even for a chronic offender, a $40,000 fine would be excessively vindictive, I believe. A fine of no more than $1000 for a repeat offender, and loss of internet privileges (like a black list that all ISPs and mobile providers would adhere to) for a certain period of time would be reasonable, and plenty enough deterrent, in my opinion.

If the fine is not at a minimum a multiple of the value of the goods obtained, it is in no way whatsoever a punishment. If I only got fined $500 for downloading $1000 of material illegally, I would have profited from my actions. And it needs to be a high multiple to act as deterrent. There would be no point in the bus company only fining people £10 for evading a £5 fare - people would just think "oh, it's worth the risk", and not pay.

[John F]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If the fine is not at a minimum a multiple of the value of the goods obtained, it is in no way whatsoever a punishment. If I only got fined $500 for downloading $1000 of material illegally, I would have profited from my actions. And it needs to be a high multiple to act as deterrent. There would be no point in the bus company only fining people £10 for evading a £5 fare - people would just think "oh, it's worth the risk", and not pay.

And yet, when Apple (and publishers) illegally collude to fix prices, the multiple is low or a fractional multiple.

[usuallee]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If the fine is not at a minimum a multiple of the value of the goods obtained, it is in no way whatsoever a punishment. If I only got fined $500 for downloading $1000 of material illegally, I would have profited from my actions. And it needs to be a high multiple to act as deterrent. There would be no point in the bus company only fining people £10 for evading a £5 fare - people would just think "oh, it's worth the risk", and not pay.

We might have to agree to disagree then. I don't happen to think the value of the goods should be the primary parameter, and certainly not the sole parameter for determining the amount of the fine levied. If you do tie it to the value of the goods there must be a cap. I threw out $1000 earlier. I think a fine of much beyond that would be cruel and unusual punishment, as we say in the States.

Your argument about the supposed deterrent value is very nebulous, since there is no way to quantify what would deter an individual from engaging in a certain misdeed, and the threshold of deterrence would almost certainly vary widely from person to person. And then there is the fact that studies have shown that the death penalty, for example, has little if any deterrent value: http://www.deathpenalty.org/download...eStudy2009.pdf

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by usuallee

We might have to agree to disagree then. I don't happen to think the value of the goods should be the primary parameter, and certainly not the sole parameter for determining the amount of the fine levied. If you do tie it to the value of the goods there must be a cap. I threw out $1000 earlier. I think a fine of much beyond that would be cruel and unusual punishment, as we say in the States.

Your argument doesn't make any sense to me, I'm afraid.

Let's suppose someone illegally downloads items that have a retail value of $10,000. You're saying that, if caught, they should only have to pay $1,000? They get $10,000 of goods for $1,000, whereas the honest consumer pays $10,000?

Sorry, but that makes no sense. The dishonest person should be punished. Saying "you'll only have to pay 10% of what you've taken" isn't a punishment at all - it's more like a reward!

[doctorow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry, but that makes no sense. The dishonest person should be punished. Saying "you'll only have to pay 10% of what you've taken" isn't a punishment at all - it's more like a reward!

Your argument is based on the premise that the real value of the downloaded item is its face value. That, I believe, is wrong. The typical downloader is not the person who would spend $1,000 on a piece of software. If he gets caught breaking the law, even if the fine is not a multiple of the face value of the software he downloaded, in no way would he profit from his actions.

It is the usual fallacy of RIAA and others who throw around imaginatively high numbers of supposed damage, while completely ignoring the fact that those who commited the criminal act of downloading something are often not the ones who would have purchased the item to begin with.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by doctorow

Your argument is based on the premise that the real value of the downloaded item is its face value. That, I believe, is wrong. The typical downloader is not the person who would spend $1,000 on a piece of software. If he gets caught breaking the law, even if the fine is not a multiple of the face value of the software he downloaded, in no way would he profit from his actions.

The dishonest person has gained the use of the item that the honest person pays $1000 for. I really don't see how you can possibly say that they haven't gained $1000-worth of goods. It's like saying that the bus company hasn't really lost anything if someone doesn't pay their fare. In both cases the dishonest person is a leech on the back of the honest purchaser of the goods or services, without whom the product or service wouldn't exist.

[Billi]

It's clear that this goes on the back of the honest purchasers but I can't agree with you about the punishments.

- Given the general costs of living and earnings and the general amount of fines for crimes (at least here in Europe) a fine of 2.000 Euro/Dollar is - although "only" as double as the price - a very hard punishment for an ordinary people.

- The bus analogy would perhaps work if there was only one case in this world that an honest people had benefitted from the fine. Quite the contrary, although they earn here quite a lot from not-paying people the fees for public transport in Berlin rise yearly and yearly and yearly. For the honest people it is very much the same if the fines were zero or 50 or 100 Euro, if all or only 90 per cent of travellers (that's the official estimation) pay, it doesn't improve his situation in no way.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

TorrentFreak has a story about it when it was closed:

http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-k...ncerns-100620/

Thanks

It seems they stopped that in 2010?

Helen

[Jozawun]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Any fine has to be considerably greater than the retail value of the goods obtained in order to act as a deterrent. My local bus company imposes a fine of 40x the fare that should have been paid for "fare dodgers", which seems like a reasonable deterrent. Let's say someone illegally downloads material which has a retail value of $1000. Would you consider a $40,000 fine for that offence to be unreasonable?

How do people get on the buses without paying, just as a matter of interest?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Jozawun

How do people get on the buses without paying, just as a matter of interest?

My local bus company estimate that it's about 5% of passengers. It's become a lot easier now it's all swipe cards rather than paying the driver.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The dishonest person has gained the use of the item that the honest person pays $1000 for. I really don't see how you can possibly say that they haven't gained $1000-worth of goods. It's like saying that the bus company hasn't really lost anything if someone doesn't pay their fare. In both cases the dishonest person is a leech on the back of the honest purchaser of the goods or services, without whom the product or service wouldn't exist.

The person who has stolen $1000 software, been caught, convicted, and fined, say $500, does not get to keep the software by virtue of paying the fine, and has not profited from the theft.