By now you may have heard that the jury found Jammie Thomas Rasset guilty of stealing music and set the judgement at $80,000 per song for a total of 1.92 million. There has been a lot tossed around about that figure for and against both parties. People who hate “The Man” are decrying it as the continuation of oppression to the people. Fewer people are saying the defendant deserved it and probably more because she wants to blame it on her kids. It also looks like there are some who are able to peel away the rhetoric and look at this significant event in our understanding of intellectual property in the digital age.
Continued debate about the merits of the legality of downloading and the size of the award will continue around the blogosphere and most assuredly will make its way to heated disputes at summer music festivals, keg parties and any place a music lover will find an ear. Two million dollars is a lot of money, people take notice. For me, that is the aspect of this case that really matters. What is music worth?
The RIAA started this campaign to educate people about the laws surrounding ownership for intellectual property. Now even more people hate the labels and want to steal from them just to get back at them. But what could they do? Society in general takes a cavalier attitude towards the arts. If you don’t agree, go to your local school district and do the math. In Minnesota, the people of the state just voted for funding for the arts but it had to be tacked onto a broader bill supporting the outdoors. Division of the spending for the arts ended up being not even 25% of the total amount.
The point is, people may be stealing music because they aren’t getting the message that artistry is worth something in our society. Think what you will of the RIAA’s informational campaign of suing the fans, they are coming from the fundamental principle that their product is worth something. It is really hard to dispute that. As they point out in on their blog at least 24 people came up with some figure for music. That is encouraging.
The question I would like to raise is, “Is music really worth $80,000 a song?”
I can understand that the RIAA and many musicians, including myself, would like to be able to protect our intellectual properites. But at what cost to the ONE person that decided to stand up for themselves? As a society are we so determined to make a case or make an example out of someone that we over step our ethical bounds and basically sentance a common person to a life time of poverty? Or do we instead give a proper but fair punishment to someone that deserves it?
I do not support illegal music sharing, I will admit that in previous years, when I was much younger I was a big user of Peer2Peer programs such as Napster, Morpheus, LimeWire, etc. But as I have gotten older and more protective of the work I do and the art created from that work I realise the wrong doing of those previous acts. It is not beyond me to understand that downloading music without paying for it is illegal and ethically wrong. But at what point should we say stop, when trying to enforce our intellectual property rights? Are we so shallow that we feel we should be able to milk every bit of money possible from one person to make an example of them to the world? Or do we place a fair penalty on them to really get the point across? The RIAA is trying to get the point across to millions of fans, but at what point do they realise that putting such high penalites on one person isn’t going to stop the problem, but actually continue to encourage it more? While at the same time putting the RIAA in a worse spotlight to the common public than ever before. There comes a point when the RIAA needs to take a step back and realise they are taking it too far. Fair and Equal punishment is a right in our country, but I see no one stepping up and making sure that it is enforced in this case at all.
Comment by Jamieson Copeland — January 6, 2010 @ 6:16 pm