said by TKJunkMail :

The amount of loss the RIAA quotes isn't for the cost of a single DOWNLOADED song. It is for the estimated cost of that song being uploaded to thousands of other people. The RIAA for the most part has gone after those UPLOADING songs and that is what the costs are meant to reflect.

said by Omega :

Then the RIAA needs to prove that user uploaded the song to thousands of people.

said by NormanS :

The RIAA only needs to prove two things:

•That their estimate of lost revenues is reasonable.
•That running a P2P application allows others to download the works.

said by mlundin :

That depends on who's sitting on the jury.

said by NormanS :

•That their estimate of lost revenues is reasonable.
•That running a P2P application allows others to download the works.

said by Capharnaum :

There hasn't been anything that has proven that filesharing incurs a loss of revenue. If it did, then radio would also incur a loss of revenue, since they're playing songs for free as well (but they're being paid as well by the music companies). As far as I know, radio is a promo way to raise revenues, so why wouldn't filesharing be the same?

As to estimates of files shared, wouldn't the RIAA have to estimate the availability of said file (time + bandwidth)? For exemple, couldn't I use for defense that I metered the time I was using the filesharing utility and the bandwidth used (some software utilities do this) and get a figure of how many songs I have really uploaded? In such case, if the number was small, couldn't I contend that it was fair use, and that the penalties are out of line?

Now I don't use the filesharing programs anymore, but back in the glory time of Napster, people were rarely downloading my songs despite the fact I was offering a fairly large selection (200 songs?). I would upload something like one song per night of usage (two times a week).

said by NormanS :

You overtrimmed the quote. There is more context that you deliberately omitted.
Commercial radio makes money off of the advertising, not off of anything paid them by the RIAA. In fact, they pay the RIAA for distribution rights.

No defense. You did not have permission to distribute the work, therefore your distribution of the work is a violation of the copyright.

All that is left to hash out is the degree of damage done by the unauthorized download.

AFAIK, they need some kind of provable metric to estimate the number of people who downloaded from you. I don't know how I would go about it. Could be that the RIAA will be in the position of Shylock from "The Merchant of Venice" (I think), who was told by the judge that he could have his pound of flesh if he can get it without drawing a drop of blood.