[icebraining]

I don't know about this specific case, but in the US they often use statutory damages instead:

"the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504

This is how Thomas-Rasset was at one time convicted to pay almost $2M for having shared 24 songs on Kazaa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thoma...

[some_account]

America is always winning the craziness award in these threads, due to being ultra capitalistic with no regard to common sense.

[digi_owl]

With the added irony that they were late in signing the Bern convention on copyright (didn't happen until the 1980s).

[tzs]

We probably need a new kind of statutory damages geared to this kind of infringement. The current statutory damages are geared toward commercial infringement.

Note, though, that she had to work really hard to get damages that high. As noted in your quote, statutory damages fall in a range. She probably would have gotten near the low end of the possible range if she had not tried to destroy evidence, had not perjured herself in court, and had not tried to blame her children for the copyright infringement.

Note also that she could have avoided this by taking the very reasonable settlement offer the RIAA made before they sued her. She was offering for distribution 1702 copyrighted songs, and they asked for $5000. That's under $3/song.

When she refused and they sued, they only sued over 24 songs. Why only 24 instead of all 1702? I haven't seen anything that explains for sure why, but there are a couple plausible reasons.

First, 24 x $750 = $18000. That's enough to get them the $5000 they wanted, plus a little more to cover the expense of having to actually start a lawsuit to get it.

At this point, everyone in her life that is not a colossal moron should have been telling her to take that initial settlement offer, because when she loses in court the absolute minimum she loses is $18000, which is $12000 more than she could settle for.

Second, for each song that is included in the lawsuit there is paperwork to be dealt with. They will have to introduce into evidence proof that all the proper filings were done at the copyright office, and that they represent the copyright owners and have the right to sue. Each and every one of those can be challenged by the defendant. There's just no point if all they want is what they asked for originally ($5000 to cover 1702 songs) plus something for the extra expense of having to go to trial.

Note also that after the first couple of trials, which first led to a $200k award and then the $2 million award, the RIAA again offered a settlement: $25k. She refused.

Eventually more proceedings got it back down to $200k, and again the RIAA offered to settle for a lower amount, if she would make a video about copyright infringement. She refused.

[dmd]

On the other hand, if she had accepted any of those settlement, she would have been out that amount of money, whereas by not doing so, she hasn't paid a cent, choosing to file bankruptcy instead.