Obama sides with RIAA, supports $150,000 fine per

[fusilierb]

Obama sides with RIAA, supports $150,000 fine per music trackTuesday, March 24, 2009 - 08:52 AM EDT"The Obama administration for the first time is weighing in on a Recording Industry Association of America file sharing lawsuit and is supporting hefty awards of as much as $150,000 per purloined music track," David Kravets reports for Wired."The government said the damages range of $750 to $150,000 per violation of the Copyright Act was warranted," Kravets reports."The position -- that the Copyright Act's monetary damages are not unconstitutionally excessive -- mirrors the one taken by the Bush administration and should come as no surprise," Kravets reports."Two top lawyers in President Barack Obama's Justice Department are former RIAA lawyers: Donald Verrilli Jr. is the associate deputy attorney general who brought down Grokster and fought to prevent a retrial in the Jammie Thomas case," Kravets reports. "Then there's the No. 2 in the DOJ, Tom Perrilli. As Verrilli's former boss, Perrilli argued in 2002 that internet service providers should release customer information to the RIAA even without a court subpoena."

[mojobone]

Frankly, ISPs have been getting a free ride on the backs of the entertainment industry for far too long. Now that even Hollywood is beginning to feel the piracy pinch, perhaps the industry can start to get its house in order.

[tedsingingfox]

Agreed. I guess not EVERY bit of news today is bad...

[cameron]

Mar 24, 2009, 1:44pm, mojobone wrote:Frankly, ISPs have been getting a free ride on the backs of the entertainment industry for far too long. Now that even Hollywood is beginning to feel the piracy pinch, perhaps the industry can start to get its house in order.Hey Mojo,I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I own a small ISP, and I don't make any money off illegal downloading. In fact, I'd love to see it go away. The Bit Torrent and Limewire guys would easily consume all of our network resources, to the detriment of our other customers, if we let them. I think you'll find ISPs, even the big guys, are the first ones who would like to see it stopped, but the FCC has already started clamping down on those ISPs who block it.Cam

[chriscarter]

Mar 24, 2009, 7:45pm, cameron wrote:Hey Mojo,I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I own a small ISP, and I don't make any money off illegal downloading. In fact, I'd love to see it go away. The Bit Torrent and Limewire guys would easily consume all of our network resources, to the detriment of our other customers, if we let them. I think you'll find ISPs, even the big guys, are the first ones who would like to see it stopped, but the FCC has already started clamping down on those ISPs who block it.Cam Your situation might be unique. Several ISPs actually used the concept of downloading pirated music in their advertising campaigns... most noteably Verizon if I'm not mistaken. Lawsuits made them stop. It actually has been very good for ISPs because they are able to sell higher speed services to their customers. There's not much use for a regular ordinary person to need more than a 1.5mb connection, unless they are transferring large media files.

[mojobone]

Thanks, Chris. Yes, many ISPs have used file-sharing to market their service. (not accusing anyone in particular, Cam ) Eventually, agreements have to be hammered out; we don't go around suing libraries for infringement, but we must have some way to see to it that the artists get paid. I won't shed a tear over the loss of several layers of middlemen, though...