The Supreme Court has decided to not hear the case of a (at the time of the offense) minor who downloaded and shared up to 30 songs over the internet. The interesting part of this trial is not that a copyright case went to the courts, but that the person bringing it did not argue whether or not he did something wrong. The case was continually challenged through the courts in an attempt to fight the insane fine that was placed on downloading and sharing (guessing the use of a torrent program here) the music, to a tune of 675,000 dollars.
I did not know that this was a case, nor did I think that it was something that would have been brought up against the Supreme Court this year. The truth is that I have believed for years that the penalties that people try to enforce on copyright violations are insane. While I would have liked nothing more than the court to decide that it made no sense to ask for that much money, I think the really interesting part of all of this is where they think that this person is going to come up with that amount of change. I don’t even know if this is something that you can be put into jail for.
Source: AFP
