Trancendental
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The Obama administration told a federal judge Friday the $1.92 million jury verdict against a Minnesota woman for sharing 24 music tracks on Kazaa was constitutionally sound, despite defense claims it was unconstitutionally excessive.
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“The current damages range provides compensation for copyright owners because, inter alia, there exists situations in which actual damages are hard to quantify,” the government wrote. “Furthermore, in establishing that range, Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights (.pdf) in an environment where many violators believe that they will go unnoticed.”
www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/feds-support-192-million-file-sharing-verdict/
Not that this is a big deal, I thought of it more as a way of easily demonstrating that when you get past the rhetoric, both political parties are simply corporate lackeys.
The settlement goes past draconian and into the realm of the absurd. A 1.79 million verdict against a single mother who naively shared a few tunes online. I understand the point is to bring down financial ruin on anyone who gets caught sharing files online, I just think it's funny (and sad) how obviously the government is tipping it's hand.