Single Mother Must Pay Greedy Corporations $222K

A single mother of two from Minnesota must pay $222K to six lame record companies for her use of Kazaa. The deal breaks down to $9,250 each for 24 songs. The dirt bag record companies are Sony, Arista, Interscope, UMG, Capitol, and Warner Brothers. I am not really sure what this accomplishes other than providing the record companies with the extra funds for a nice little end of the week party catered with a wide variety of sandwiches and wraps, some canned sodas, pasta salad, brownies, powdered cookies, and a nice big cake! Hopefully, the record companies will invite their starving artists down to get a plate full of goodies.

All single mothers beware! Stop all your downloading! No more Bon Jovi and Gwen Stefani!

UPDATE: Here is a link to an article from CNET explaining how and why the RIAA won the $222K judgement.

Extortion: The New Anti-Piracy Technique

It seems the Motion Picture Association of America and the Record Industry Association of America are now attempting outright extortion and intimidation. The MPAA has set up a website, GetAmnesty.com, as a tool to scare people into giving them money. The GetAmnesty program finds supposed offenders of copyright laws, threatens them with notices of infringement, and notifies them of ways to quickly clear up the problem by making a tithe to the MPAA. The MPAA realizes that many people may be more willing to simply pay off the MPAA rather than have to enter into the complicated legal system.

Another reason this extortion track has been taken is the poor record the MPAA and other organizations have had against accused offenders. Proving these cases against specific individuals is difficult. It is fairly easy to demonstrate the IP address involved but not the individual.

Here is a little taste of the GetAmnesty method, from Torrentfreak and the GetAmnesty site:

"If you receive a notice that means that we have evidence of you infringing a copyright holder that we represent. Please stop and consider what such a paper trail could do to one’s future. We understand that this notice may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but we sincerely believe that signing our agreement is in your best interest."

See the full story on Torrentfreak. Thanks to Jay for passing this along.