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by ionised 4065 days ago
> As I understand it, wealthy people had a lot of influence over the government and were able to lobby for extreme punishments to protect their fortunes.

Western society has come a long way indeed.

Oh, wait...

1 comments

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.down...

"A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs."

(After long battles in courts, the penalty was ultimately settled at $222,000).