Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

Re:Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines sho... by PotatoEngineer on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @07:11PM (#3245794)

The current laws allow huge fines per song. Download about $100 worth of music (~6 CDs), get hit with over $500,000 in fines. That's simply overkill. A fine of less than $100 (even on a per-song basis) would make the punishment fit the crime.

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Re:Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines sho... by carbocation on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @07:57PM (#3245916)

I thought it was up to $180,000 per violation (~$10 million, if taken to the extreme for 6 CDs)?

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Re:Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines sho... by Natsu on Thursday November 17, 2011 @02:34AM (#3246799)

The quick summary is that statutory damages are between $750 and $30,000, at the court's discretion, except in the case of willful infringement, wherein they go up to $150,000 per work. Conversely, in cases where the infringer "was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright", damages may be reduced to "no less than $200."

See 17 USC 504 (c) for more information: http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504

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