RIAA Must Divulge Expenses-Per-Download
Found on Slashdot on Monday, 26 November 2007
The Court has ordered UMG Recordings, Warner Bros. Records, Interscope Records, Motown, and SONY BMG to disclose their expenses-per-download to the defendant's lawyers, in UMG v. Lindor, a case pending in Brooklyn. The Court held that the expense figures are relevant to the issue of whether the RIAA's attempt to recover damages of $750 or more per 99-cent song file, is an unconstitutional violation of due process.
Again up- and downloading is mixed up here. The whole reason for all those lawsuits is the fact that you share while and after you've downloaded. This figure could mean that they think every file is shared about 750 times (when assuming $1 per song). It would take quite some time until a song has been shared that often (on average; I'm sure some B. Spears goes faster thanks to the kids). Now if they charge the money for "multi-level sharing" (the one you uploaded it to uploaded it to someone else and so on), then they'd charge multiple times. In the end, they could only charge whoever put the song online first; but finding that user would be impossible. But I'm sure we'll see some messed up explanation soon.