File sharer fined for sharing music

An American student has been fined $675,000 for sharing just 30 songs. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8177285.stm)

It seems to me that the recording Industry has been too slow to react to these things. The internet has been in a growing number of homes for the last 20 years, and file sharing available since the mid 90's. How come it's taken the recording industry this long to do anything about file sharing?

The porn industry has driven secure payment processing (and digital rights management to a lesser extent) for a vast chunk of this time, and has done it all to protect their customers. Those on the moral high ground of music have done pretty much nothing, other than chase people for money where they have simply copied music form one format and made it available to others.

There was no copyright system to get round for this guy, other than a piece of paper which he didn't necessarily even have.

I accept that Sony tried to protect their rights, but were knocked rejected by the consumer. Installing software that affects your whole system is basically malicious code, and that's why it was rejected.

This also looks like an excessive fine for someone sharing just 30 songs - others have shared far higher numbers of tracks but have not been caught - and this was not done for profit.

Joel Tenenbaum, I hope you win your appeal.

Especially since the price of on-line music has been excessive until the arrival of itunes. I remember being given the option to buy music to listen to on my PC for £2 per track, despite this being the price of CDs in Woolworths at the time. This with basically nothing to show - and minimal distribution costs for the product. And most of the secure payment development had been done by the porn industry!

In my opinion the fine should be costs plus restitution to the affected parties. I.e. Mr Tenenbaum has to pay $0.79 per download from his shared files to the record companies. Maybe a fine on top of that.

If someone copies music and then sells it on, then this is totally different. Yes, throw the book at them. Cease their ill gotten gains and fine them, but not for simply sharing music with like minded fans.

Sometimes I go crazy.

Hayseed Dixie have the right idea. They actively encourage bootlegging of their gigs and actually giving hints on recording their gigs on their website. Check it out. They just want to be famous!