Gautham Narayan
The $675,000 man
This is Joel Tenenbaum. He is my age. Like me, he is a grad student getting his doctorate in Physics. Like many my age, he illegally downloaded music in his "nefarious" youth. Unlike us, he is being asked to pay $675,000. Because he got caught uploading 30 songs.
Now, you can argue the merits of copyright and illegal downloading and artist compensation and the RIAA's position as middlemen till the cows come home and not get anywhere. You can talk about how the case was poorly defended by a professor and students without enough real experience in the court room. You might point that his mother is a lawyer and ought to have advised him better. You might even point out that he admitted guilt and had it coming.
What we know is that they just charged him $22,500 for something you can get for 99 cents on itunes.
He could have been on the hook for $4.5 million because that is what the law allows. Or $1.92 million for 24 songs like Jammie Thomas got.
These numbers are completely disproportionate to the damages done. They are essentially pulled out of someone's arse at random. The law is daft and the entire situation stinks.
The idea here is that by penalizing him, others will be deterred from file-sharing. That or some people will be sufficiently pissed of to develop p2p networks that are resistant to deep packet inspection, and software to rip audio streams that everyone else will use. One should never underestimate the bandwidth of a person with two legs and a terabyte external harddisk under an arm. Or heck, use internet radio stations and the internet archive, and be completely legal. You might even try some of the excellent venues for live music. I love the LilyPad in Inman for instance. Every dollar of that $675,000 is probably just another itunes sale that people will not make if they feel they are being screwed over.
(Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA)
M6TTL, 50mm/f1.4, Arista Premium 400
The $675,000 man
This is Joel Tenenbaum. He is my age. Like me, he is a grad student getting his doctorate in Physics. Like many my age, he illegally downloaded music in his "nefarious" youth. Unlike us, he is being asked to pay $675,000. Because he got caught uploading 30 songs.
Now, you can argue the merits of copyright and illegal downloading and artist compensation and the RIAA's position as middlemen till the cows come home and not get anywhere. You can talk about how the case was poorly defended by a professor and students without enough real experience in the court room. You might point that his mother is a lawyer and ought to have advised him better. You might even point out that he admitted guilt and had it coming.
What we know is that they just charged him $22,500 for something you can get for 99 cents on itunes.
He could have been on the hook for $4.5 million because that is what the law allows. Or $1.92 million for 24 songs like Jammie Thomas got.
These numbers are completely disproportionate to the damages done. They are essentially pulled out of someone's arse at random. The law is daft and the entire situation stinks.
The idea here is that by penalizing him, others will be deterred from file-sharing. That or some people will be sufficiently pissed of to develop p2p networks that are resistant to deep packet inspection, and software to rip audio streams that everyone else will use. One should never underestimate the bandwidth of a person with two legs and a terabyte external harddisk under an arm. Or heck, use internet radio stations and the internet archive, and be completely legal. You might even try some of the excellent venues for live music. I love the LilyPad in Inman for instance. Every dollar of that $675,000 is probably just another itunes sale that people will not make if they feel they are being screwed over.
(Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA)
M6TTL, 50mm/f1.4, Arista Premium 400