said by fundamentalz :

You're right about it being a deterrent, however it was never intended to be a deterrent for individual people, rather, it was meant to be a deterrent for businesses. The current copyright system wasn't designed to protect artists from casual copying, but from theft by a competitor or big business. It was never intended to penalize average people for these relatively minor infractions.

Besides, i would say that to your average citizen, there is almost no difference between $150,000 and $150,000,000; either way they can't pay it, so what the actual dollar amount is doesn't really matter once you reach such astronomical amounts.