 pogPremium
join:2004-06-03
Kihei, HI
 ·Hawaiian Telcom
| reply to fAcEtIOUs
Re: Get rid of statutory damages! said by fAcEtIOUs:... Think of this as the reverse side of a class action suit where millions sue 1 company. A class action, however, results in a portion of the award being given to each individual person. The sum, IOW, of all these portions, plus lawyer fees etc, equals the agreed upon figure.
A true reverse of a class action would have all responsible parties paying a fair share of the damages... not just a few people paying colossal amounts while everyone else pays nothing.
... a huge swat in the forehead of a selected few is used to scare off the majority. Deterrence, on its own, is not justification enough.
Think of it as the same way the IRS goes after a very small percentage of taxpayers in order to keep the rest in line thru fear and intimidation. The IRS will not audit me and then require me to pay my own back taxes and penalties plus those of everyone else in my town.
Most law enforcement is based on the severity of consequences and the FEAR of getting caught - not on the likelihood of getting caught. If that wasn't the case, then we would need 1 cop for every 10 people instead of 1 for every 1000. Fear of getting caught is not independent of likelihood of getting caught, though. You can't run law enforcement, for eg, with a death penalty for jaywalking and 1 officer for 1,000,000 people... and, unfortunately, I think this not so far removed from what we have with the music industry and the general public.
The statutory damages are already extremely high enough to achieve the objective of deterrence and intimidation. The damages are insanely high and, I figure, were conceived in an era when the bad guys were professional counterfeiters and rip-off artists... NOT grandma firing up her computer and grabbing a few tracks.
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