RIAA, the most eminent organization of the Recording Industry in U.S., is known for its insatiable greed for more money. And it would go to any lengths to get this money by nabbing online pirates and ruining their lives on the way. Now, RIAA has virtually ruined the life of a youngster, Joel Tenenbaum, over illegal download of 31 songs.
Naturally, this is ridiculous and absurd, and folks over at RIAA should dwell in shame for having ‘accomplished’ such a thing. The justice system in U.S. also needs to be seriously reviewed since it has been blatantly siding with RIAA and dishing out harsh punishments.
For instance, the U.S. District Court Judge, Rya W. Zobel who denied the student’s appeal and upheld the $675,000 fine, said that even this punishment was a mild one and that the jury could have asked him to cough up millions of dollars.
Zobel, after denying the student’s plea, seemed to have ample time to take the moral high ground and dish out a sermon, “In short, there was ample evidence of wilfulness and the need for deterrence based on Tenenbaum’s blatant contempt of warnings and apparent disregard for the consequences of his actions. In spite of the overwhelming evidence from which the jury could conclude that Tenenbaum’s activities were willful, the award of $22,500 per infringement not only was at the low-end of the range – only 15% of the statutory maximum – for willful infringement, but was below the statutory maximum for non-willful infringement.”
Let’s not forget that all this is happening over 31 stupid songs. The things with pirates is that if these songs costed, they probably wouldn’t ever buy them. So how exactly can the recording industry earn more by eliminating piracy? The issue of ending piracy has more to do with RIAA greedily demanding greater control over the whole flow of content online, rather any genuine monetary gains.
Courtesy: Gizmodo
[ttjad keyword=”hot”]
