Christopher Joel

The MPAA has stated today that they shouldn’t need to prove infringement occurs in order to collect fees from “law breakers”.

“Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances.” - MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert

Are you kidding me!?  This will just open the door to copyright owners being able to collect $150,000 from any person they choose to target.  The whole idea of taking someone to court that you have to prove it in order to win.

“It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement.”

Wah.  Boo-f’ing-hoo.  So you can’t catch them.  Too bad for you.  Either release your stuff and try to make money from it, release it for free to anyone who wants it, or don’t release it at all.  It’s not the government’s job to make sure that you’re able to make insane levels of profit.  It’s bad enough they have enabled you to have practically unlimited monopolies on your content, but now you want to collect money from just anybody!?

Puh-lease!  These quotes are regarding the Jammie Thomas case, where the RIAA authorized a company to download 24 files from Ms. Thomas’ computer.  I’m sorry, but if the RIAA authorized the downloading, then it’s not copyright infringment!  It was authorized!  Sorry, but you’ll not only need to prove that actual infringement occured, but you’ll need to prove that it wasn’t you guys doing it!  These people need to figure how to make money doing something other than suing people, but I’m no expert!