Court orders woman to pay £16,000 for file-sharing

[fiddledd]

http://www.out-law.com/page-9360

I'd guess a lot of Bittorrent users (using it illegally) will not sleep well tonight.

EDIT: Added in brackets to prevent further confusion.:)

[tom66]

Bittorrent isn't illegal.

It depends on how people use it. I use it to download Ubuntu.

[fiddledd]

Bittorrent isn't illegal.

It depends on how people use it. I use it to download Ubuntu.

I never said it was illegal. I was trying to keep the post short. I figured adding "Windows Users, Pirates, Movie Downloaders etc" wasn't necessary. Looks like I should of typed more in my original post.

[doas777]

http://www.out-law.com/page-9360

I'd guess a lot of Bittorrent users will not sleep well tonight.

yeah, this is a particularly stupid case. Its been on thereg and /. for some time now.

I'm much more interested in the Tanya Andersen and Jullie Thomas cases.

[billgoldberg]

Who comes up with these numbers?

I don't agree at all.

That young mothers live is ruined for some lame *** computer game that nobody would have bought anyway.

[fiddledd]

Who comes up with these numbers?

I don't agree at all.

That young mothers live is ruined for some lame *** computer game that nobody would have bought anyway.

I think the idea is to try to frighten people, hence the large amount of the fine.

[sydbat]

They always go after people who cannot afford to properly defend themselves (ie poor). I have yet to see any story about someone who either has money or is financially supported by someone with money to fight this kind of thing. I bet those "laws" would quickly be thrown out as unconstitutional if someone had the wherewithal to take it to the Supreme Court (based upon your own country's judicial/governmental system).

[Canis familiaris]

This is TOTALLY ridiculous and unfair.
These people who imposed fine on someone like her are cruel not to mention lack any feelings of humanity and extremely unfair.

[Lster]

That is way too excessive. She paid almost 1800 times the cost of buying the product she was accused of stealing!

I disagree with illegal file sharing, but it wasn't that bad!

[swoll1980]

I never said it was illegal. I was trying to keep the post short. I figured adding "Windows Users, Pirates, Movie Downloaders etc" wasn't necessary. Looks like I should of typed more in my original post.

What you said in the op was very clear. Some people just don't comprehend English very well.

[koji042]

I can understand why they would want to crack down on illegal file sharing, but isn't that a bit too much for just a single program? It's like forcing a person to pay $100 for a stolen bar of chocolate. It just doesn't make sense to ask for that much.

[mips]

I always thought the scales of justice was intended to strike a balance. If you take $1 then restitution should be $1.

[Canis familiaris]

What you said in the op was very clear. Some people just don't comprehend English very well.

Dont be so sure about it. As I understand the OP edited the post to be more clearer by adding more info in the bracket before this comment was made.

[zmjjmz]

I can understand why they would want to crack down on illegal file sharing, but isn't that a bit too much for just a single program? It's like forcing a person to pay $100 for a stolen bar of chocolate. It just doesn't make sense to ask for that much.
Judging by the price of the sh*tware, it's like having to pay 16K$ for a Toblerone that you shoplifted from a gas station.

I mean, if they charged a 500$ fine it'd be cool, but 32,000$ is just greedy.

[billgoldberg]

What kind of judge would agree with this I ask myself?

Surely some judge who lost all sense of reality.

[doas777]

I can't say I like the things I'm seeing in the US and the UK. surveillance security societies tend to lead to fascism eventually. man, between defeating terrorism and protecting the children (read Hollywood), they're going to destroy the free Internet.

when ever I hear "Protect the children" I know an invocation of Godwin's law approacheth.

[fiddledd]

Dont be so sure about it. As I understand the OP edited the post to be more clearer by adding more info in the bracket before this comment was made.

Yeah, I did. But I do think most people knew I wasn't slating Bittorrent users. The point of the post was the excessive amount this woman was fined, Bittorrent just happened to be used in this case. Anyway, I added the edit.:)

[bobbocanfly]

The game costs £27.62 to buy in a store (conversion from 34.99 EUR). The fine is just less than 580 times more than the actual game.

That is like getting fined £300 for stealing a £0.50 chocolate bar or £5800 for stealing an album. Crazy.

[rune0077]

The game costs £27.62 to buy in a store (conversion from 34.99 EUR). The fine is just less than 580 times more than the actual game.

That is like getting fined £300 for stealing a £0.50 chocolate bar or £5800 for stealing an album. Crazy.

You will notice that the fine itself is not that big at all. The problem is, the woman herself insisted on contesting the charges, which means it ended up in court. If you loose in court, you pay the legal expanses, that's how it's always been. That means she pays for the other sides lawyers.

As the article said, those who did not contest the charges, was fined 2000£ only. The rest was legal expenses.

[Bodsda]

I think if you get busted downloading torrents illegally you should just have to pay 2x the RRP of the product, i agree with the earlier post about the courts only going after people with no money. This world is meant to be rid of classes (upper and lower class citizens)

TBH sooner or later there will be a rebellion, im certain of it, within 10 years England will have a civil uprising, and i will be in the front line!

[Sealbhach]

Yes, if you have money, you get treated differently.

Hans Rausing drug charges dropped (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g4S9GYg5FVN64Y_YnLCXsHrRslbg)

We all know what happens to poor people caught with Class A drugs. Makes me angry.

All the same, downloading and selling somebody else's video game is theft - plain and simple. Who's going to invest money in making video games if they're going to be pirated like this?


.

[NovaAesa]

As a (soon-to-be) software engineer, I can certainly see where they are coming from. I also agree with the magnitude of the punishment, but maybe it is more appropriate as a second or third offence punishment. And maybe the punishment should be means-tested, i.e. poorer people wouldn't have to pay as much.

[SuperSonic4]

DRM is a bad joke, they could at least make it available in a number of formats. I do not mind paying for good music. It is the filetype I do not like, Kubuntu doesn't like m4p (itunes) or wma protected (windows) but mp3 is ok.

[intense.ego]

Although I completely disagree with the punishment (and the whole case) in general, I have a point to make.

the large fine is "1000x the RRP" for a reason. they are charging her for all the "stolen" copies she gave everyone else. they assumed she seeded the torrent to 1000 people (or whatever number) and are charging her for the copies they would have bought.

[viciouslime]

Although I completely disagree with the punishment (and the whole case) in general, I have a point to make.

the large fine is "1000x the RRP" for a reason. they are charging her for all the "stolen" copies she gave everyone else. they assumed she seeded the torrent to 1000 people (or whatever number) and are charging her for the copies they would have bought.

This is still unjust though. Would those 1000 people really have bought the game? I reckon they only downloaded it, because that was free to them. Had there been absolutely no way to obtain the game other than pay the RRP for it, I bet none of them would actually have bought it.

[Sealbhach]

Although I completely disagree with the punishment (and the whole case) in general, I have a point to make.


I don't understand this attitude. You think it's OK for people to work hard, investing time and money to make a commercial game, only for people to take it and use it without paying the market price for it?

I know this is an Open Source forum, but if people are making commercial products I don't see how end users can assume they have the right to use it for free.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds like theft to me.


.

[rune0077]

Although I completely disagree with the punishment (and the whole case) in general, I have a point to make.

the large fine is "1000x the RRP" for a reason. they are charging her for all the "stolen" copies she gave everyone else. they assumed she seeded the torrent to 1000 people (or whatever number) and are charging her for the copies they would have bought.

You people really should read the article first. The woman's actual fine is nowhere near the amount. She is not paying because of how much or little she seeded.


The Patents County Court in London ruled that the 32-year-old mother should pay Topware damages of £6,086.56 plus costs and disbursements of £10,000, according to a statement from the firm's lawyers

10.000 of those money where paid to the lawyers, and had nothing to do with the fine.


The four other file-sharers were fined £750 each and ordered to pay costs of £2,000. The cases involved the BitTorrent system of file-sharing, which automatically shares files once a user has downloaded them in order to make the system an efficient distribution mechanism.

The others, not contesting the charges and hence not ending up in court, ended up paying less than 3000£ The only reason this woman is paying more, is because she took it to court. If she was guilty of the crime, and instead of just accepting the fine, actually insisted on a legal battle, then she kind of had it coming. She could have saved herself a lot of money.

[days_of_ruin]

That punishment does not fit the crime.Thats the only unfair part.