Danish Man Fined For Sharing Music, But At Around $2/Song

from the seems-a-bit-more-reasonable dept

Tue, Oct 21st 2008 3:51pm — Mike Masnick

It looks like the IFPI has won a lawsuit against a guy in Denmark, who was accused of sharing over 13,000 songs. From the brief description on TorrentFreak, it sounds like there was plenty of evidence pinning this directly to the guy (though, it's not clear if there's evidence that he actually shared the files, or simply made them available). Either way, what's more interesting is that the court has fined him approximately $24,400, or a bit less than $2 per song. As the article notes, the court estimated actual losses from the file sharing, and then used a "doubling up" method. So it sounds like the court said each file cost a little less than a dollar and the fine was double that. While the whole issue of suing people for file sharing still seems a bit absurd, you have to admit that approximately $2/song seems a lot more reasonable than the $750 to $150,000 per song that the RIAA pushes for in the US (and in the Jammie Thomas case it actually got $9250). Even so, the guy in Denmark is thinking about appealing the "doubling up" aspect, believing that even that fine is too high, as there's no evidence that his file sharing resulted in any reduction in sales for the recording industry.

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Filed Under: copyright, denmark, file sharing, fines
Companies: ifpi

6 Comments

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PaulT (profile), 21 Oct 2008 @ 4:50pm

In terms of real "losses", that's probably the right figure. Most people, if they plan to buy music to begin with, will buy CDs (somewhere between 60c and $1.20 per track generally) or legal downloads (99c/track max).

OK, you have to factor in the distribution, but in most of these cases there's no evidence that tracks were actually distributed other than to agents of the legal copyright holders. So, the fines are punitive. But, you then have to factor the positive aspects of file sharing - from the fact that people can get excited about music generally to the fact that most studies show that file sharers often buy more music than those who just buy CDs. So, the IFPI (probably not the artists represented) got little more than the cost of the relevant CDs.

Overall, another failure. Nobody's going to be deterred by this ruling and thanks to the restricted release schedules and inflated prices than tend to be opposed in Europe, the guy probably paid less than he would at retail anyway.
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www.custompcmax.com, 21 Oct 2008 @ 8:16pm

I am not condoning piracy. But, they always seem to forget to take in the fact that many of these people downloading these songs would probably never actually have boughten the music legally. So, sales lost, it may be some. But, it is nowhere near what they claim. I know people that download all sorts of stuff they never would have actually paid money for. They got it because they could get it for free...and only for that reason. It is fine line to walk, but there needs to be some consideration for this part of it. http://www.custompcmax.com
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Kent, 22 Oct 2008 @ 12:16am

piracy arrrr
In the last 4 months since I discovered lossless audio files on bittorrents, I have purchased more CDs than in the previous 5 years. At the same time, I have friends who can't afford CDs because theyre taking heavy course loads and don't have time to work enough to pay for extra stuff like that. They download a lot of music or burn a copy from somebody else, does the RIAA consider this a loss? Even if this person couldn't get a free copy of the music, they still would not have bought it.

The greedy f*#&s at the record companies clearly get all crazed about this concept but any musician who gives a rats ass about what they're creating and not just their paycheck is probably very happy that my friend is able to enjoy their recordings, even though the cost of a CD is beyond of their student budget.
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Balazs Szemes, 22 Oct 2008 @ 2:46am

Making available theory in EU
"though, it's not clear if there's evidence that he actually shared the files, or simply made them available"

In the European Union it is not a concern whether it was only made available only or redistributed - both are illegal.

It is laid down in Article 3 of the so-called 'Infosoc' directive (DIRECTIVE 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society), and all member states had to adopt it.

Of course it might influence the amount of damages awarded.
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mike allen, 22 Oct 2008 @ 2:54am

i cant help wondering
As you say there is a differance between offering to share and sharing but i really cant help wondering if only 20 songs were offered would the fine have been $40 i think not it may still have been $24,000 that would have been a lot more per song of course.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Oct 2008 @ 6:53am

Re:
Exactly. If I am downloading something illegally it is because I am not willing to pay for it, and since the copyright owner stills retains the orginal copy they are out precisely zilch.
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