RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

[Miroslav]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/arts/music/20arts-192MILLIONFI_BRF.html?ref=arts

Many of you have probably heard about this. I fully understand that that woman was in the wrong and that she should be held accountable for her theft.

But... $1.92 million? That's $80k per song. Are these people out of their minds?? People in this nation probably get smaller fines related to manslaughter, for God's sake. We give smaller fines to executives who destroyed the entire economy than to this woman who stole 24 songs.

As if it wasn't clear enough before, it's thoroughly obvious that the RIAA is the most clueless bunch of idiots on the planet. They were even in the moral right here; they had the opportunity to set the general rules of the game so that they would end up scoring a reasonable victory and sending a solid message to the public...instead, they have now created a permament public relations disaster for themselves. How could a group of educated businesspeople possibly be so stupid?? This does NOT work in the favor of the record industry. They will now find it very difficult to get anyone to work with them or to see their perspective as reasonable ever again if these are the kinds of outcomes the public can expect. Eventually, the RIAA will back down and that woman will never end up paying anywhere near $1.92 million... but the reputational destruction to the RIAA is now complete (as if it wasn't bad enough before).

What a bunch of morons. If they go completely bankrupt some day, it will only be due to their own incompetence.

[i!!ustrious]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

^ well said.

that's so fucked up. i wanna see the RIAA burnnnnnnn to the ground!

[tiddles]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

greed - it's the americun way

[Miroslav]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

I'd even be ok with greed. This is just sheer stupidity; it doesn't even really serve their greedy objectives. I've never seen a group of business professionals so neatly shoot themselves in the ass.

[Kamal]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

I read another article that said that even the RIAA was surprised by the fine levied by the Judge and in a lot of the responses from RIAA reps to questions about the case, no one was really being upfront about the penalty, which sort of indicated that the fine even from the RIAAs position sucked big time.

[DIDI]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

Yeah, All it achieves is sympathy for the women and more bad PR for the RIAA.

It would actually have been much more effective if it had been a fine she could have paid. If people knew they would get fined in say, parking ticket range they couldn't be that indignant. They certainly wouldn't get favourable media.

[Haziel]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

This is a joke , clearly these guys need a map and a compass.

[cohiba]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

I read on a local forum that she was one of a group of people who got caught. Everyone else chose to settle for $3000-5000, but she chose to take it to court. If true, she doesn't really have anyone else to blame but herself.

[feather]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

How did a 220k fine get thrown out and turn into a 1.92m fine??

[Weizy]

Re: RIAA fines woman $1.92 MILLION for 24 illegal downloads

Yeah this story is quite a shame IMO. This Minnesota woman will NEVER be able to pay off this amount of money.

Figures that the RIAA would pick on some poor woman from so-called "flyover country" here in the US. As someone stated earlier this will really hurt the RIAA from a public relations standpoint.