UNBELIEVABLE VERDICT

this is sick, and it just goes to show how sick some of the legal profession really are. it makes you think they're just scoring brownie points so they'll get picked up by some legitimate company, to keep them off the streets?

i dont agree with copying and distributing someone's hard work, which is why i wont down-load or copy, we are all trying to earn a living after all. but making all that money by suing is criminal. ambulance chasers of 21st century....?

phill

Copying for personal use is legal under U.S. copyright laws.  Not sure about UK.  But what you described is perfectly acceptable here. 

Copying for distribution is not unless there is permission to do it.  It doesn't matter whether the distribution is free or for a cost.   

My sister's just now got a situation where someone who had permission to display her work on the internet (it is for sale, and is a low-res demo of her art) had the stuff copied and someone used that copy in their own for-profit site without permission.  Now, the use to which it was put may have been fine with my sister if they had asked, but they didn't.  So now it's a situation. 

- Zurf

It wasnt right what she did...but what the riaa did was many times worse..no way that the punishment fits the crime here...they riaa is trying to stiff arm its way and this really needs to blow up in their face... http://www.boycott-riaa.com/facts/

Every Music CDR since the AHRA was enacted has a hidden tax built into the price! (2% of the manufacturers sales) This is supposedly to pay the artists for home recording. Who Collects the Tax? The RIAA under the auspices of the AARC. Who shares office space with the RIAA and has many of the RIAA employees working for it. I haven't been able to find one artist that was paid a cent of the money.  4% is set aside for non-featured artists, of the remainder 40% for the featured artist and 60% for the labels. To date  I have not found one artist who has received one cent of this money. (Source: RIAA website)
In addition every CD recorder has a $2.00 surcharge built into the price that goes directly to the RIAA
The artists received not one cent of the money from the MP3.Com settlements of approx $158 Million to the labels. Who did??? The label themselves.
SoundExchange" the new digital rights collective for collecting royalties from internet play is a division of the RIAA. They did not distribute royalties in July 2001 as they were supposed to do, but instead decided to wait until next year.
85% of all music is released by 5 major labels (Sony, EMI, UMG, Time Warner, & BMG)
Federal Trade Commission (FTC Statement): "At any given point about 20% of the music every recorded is available legally." The rest is locked away by the labels depriving the creators of a potential source of income, the fans of the music they want, while creating a false market for the band "d'jour."
The RIAA on their website say the cost of CD's haven't risen as much as they could have read our take it.

Read the settlement statement of the FTC findings against the Big 5 concerning charges that all five companies illegally modified their existing cooperative advertising programs to induce retailers into charging consumers higher prices for CDs
See where the money really goes  Steve Albini (producer of Nirvana's "In Utero) Interesting comment from Fox Entertainment Group (FOX) Chief Executive Peter Chernin, who has about as much of a clue as Jack Valenti:
"Film makers can offer their audience a choice of ways to see movies -- they can view them in the theater, rent them, or buy them. . .Music companies are much less flexible.. . .It's hard to buy one song. You're forced to buy the CD," he said.
"I'd like to introduce the recording industry to something called bottled water," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of Digital Media Association, in a recent interview commenting on Free vs Fee online music. His lobbying group represents music sites that are trying to promote and sell music over the Internet.
"It is not correct to assume that every time a copy is made, a sale is lost," said Gary Shapiro, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association. And, he also pointed out that many of the companies he represents, which make computers and other gadgets that enable people to copy music or download MP3s, have seen their sales fall much more sharply.

Settle for a paltry $5000 "gee" that was awfully nice of those greedy,money grubbing illegitimate offspring, such kindness I had them all wrong they really are swell

Randy the jury was lienient they only awarded $1.2 million I cant imagine what the collective thinking on this jury was, I can understand a settlement for wrongful death or injury resulting in a person being incapacitated and unable to help themselves but for uploading a few tunes for free and not recieving a profit where is the injury? is it a boo boo that takes $1.2 million to heal? were not talking about a person who is running a bussiness raking in internet cash at the expense of starving artist this is a ordinary housewife with children who most likely uploaded her files to a few friends without her knowledge whatever happened to common sense? justice in this case was not only blind but deaf and dumb.

Locking Up Music http://www.brandnamebullies.com/excerpts.html
ASCAP Stops the Girl Scouts from Singing around the Campfire
You may think that it's O.K. for little campers to sing "Happy Birthday" and "Row, Row, Row" around the campfire for free, without asking for permission. But in fact, you may have to pay a license to a licensing society known as ASCAP. ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, is a performance rights body that licenses copyrighted works for non-dramatic public performances. It then distributes royalties collected from those performances and channels them to the appropriate composers, authors and publishers. The system is intended as a way to assure that creators receive monies for the public performances of their works.....even some campfire songs.

In 1996, ASCAP decided that that since hotels, restaurants, funeral homes and resorts pay for the right to "perform" recorded music, and since many summer camps resemble resorts, why shouldn't they pay too? Under copyright law, a public performance occurs "where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered." Like a summer camp.

After reportedly opening its negotiations with the American Camping Association with an offer of $1,200 per season per camp, ASCAP eventually settled on an average annual fee of $257. But once ASCAP's plan went public, and people learned that the Girl Scouts were among the 288 camps being dunned, the group beat a hasty and embarrassed retreat.

Then again, why shouldn't songwriters get paid for a fair day's work. If there was no-one to collect the fees, then who could afford to keep writing songs.

And why condone people stealing, which is what illegal downloading is all about ? I think most of us would agree that artists should receive what's due.

ASCAP distributed $741.6 million to copyright owners in 2007. You can read all about it in their Annual Report at http://www.ascap.com/about/annualReport/annual_2007.pdf .