Friday, July 31, 2009

There Ain't No Justice!

Only two file sharing cases have ever gone to trial. In the first case, the jury awarded US$222,000 in damages for 24 songs, but a mistrial was declared. At the retrial, the jury awarded US$1.92 million(!) for the 24 songs. In the second case, which just concluded today, the damages was pegged at US$675,000 for 30 songs.

So, let's get this straight. A billion company sues an ordinary individual for completely non-commercial copyright infringement. Why do the courts allow such trivial cases to proceed at all? That's not justice. No one is looking out for the little guy at all.

In each case the defendant eventually admitted sharing files online. I say, so what? Sharing is a natural human right, just like freedom of speech. Copyright is a granted privilege. A natural right should trump a granted right, should it not?

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